Elon Musk's Twitter has reportedly disbanded its entire Brussels office, raising question marks over the social media firm's ability to comply with new EU laws, and a week after the billionaire businessman told staff to work 'long hours at high intensity' or leave.
Some executives had already left the small office in the Belgian capital at the start of November when Musk slashed global staff numbers from 7,500 to around 3,750 after his US$44 billion takeover of Twitter. There are currently around 2,700 staff.
According to the Financial Times, Julia Mozer and Dario La Nasa, who headed up Twitter’s digital policy in Europe, left Twitter last week.
They were instrumental in getting the company to comply with the EU's recent landmark Digital Services act, which laid out new rules for Big Tech firms to keep users safe online. It is reportedly unclear whether they were made redundant or chose to leave.
READ: Musk hires renowned hacker George Hotz to revitalise Twitter
The collapse of the Brussels team has raised questions about Twitter's ability to enforce new EU rules intended to rein in the power of big tech and restrict hate speech.
It comes as data from the EU on Thursday revealed that Twitter - along with most other tech companies - had become slower in responding to hate speech reports.
The report found Twitter assessed just over half of the notifications it received about illegal hate speech within 24 hours, down from 82% in 2021. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube also took longer but TikTok was the only one to improve.
In 2016, large social media companies agreed to a code of conduct with the EU executive, pledging to assess most notifications of hate speech in less than 24 hours.
And Twitter faces even more scrutiny in Europe next year, when new EU rules will start applying to the biggest online platforms. Violations could result in huge fines of up to 6% of a company's annual global revenue.
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