The social media company X, formerly Twitter, is establishing an Austin-based “trust and safety” center and appears to be building out an Austin-based office.
The company mentioned its plans in a post Sunday for the new location and in a wider post detailing X’s plans to “tackle child exploitation” on its website.
“We are also building a Trust and Safety center of excellence in Austin, Texas, to hire more in-house agents so we can keep accelerating our impact,” the post said.
The post followed a Saturday report from Bloomberg that the company would set up a new Austin-based content moderation team. According to the Bloomberg report, Joe Benarroch, head of business operations, said the social media company plans to hire 100 full-time content moderators in Austin.
The post comes just days before X CEO Linda Yaccarino is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about child safety online, along with executives from other social media companies.
Musk, who took over the social media company in October 2022, has been widely criticized for slashing X’s trust and safety teams after his purchase.
On X’s careers page, a job posting lists “Agent, Trust and Safety (Content Moderation)” positions for Austin and says the team will provide customer support and investigate issues that could cause harm to users or X, such as “spam and fraud.”
According to Bloomberg, Benarroch said the team would fight materials related to child sexual exploitation and help enforce the social media platform’s other rules, including restrictions on hate speech and violence.
It’s not clear when the team will be operational, or whether X’s Austin office is already open. Job postings on X’s website for the content moderation position have been active for at least 30 days.
The job posting lists a salary of $50,000 to $55,000 a year, and requirements include being an active X user and having experience in content moderation and/or customer support.
The company is also showing signs that other positions might expand to Austin. X’s careers page lists engineering positions that can be based in Austin or several other X offices.
Musk has alluded to expanding X into Austin before, including in November 2022 when he floated the idea of dual headquarters in Austin and California, according reports from technology news sites at the time that were based on recordings of a meeting Musk held with Twitter employees.
A number of business leaders and industry analysts have speculated that some of Twitter’s operations could move to the Austin area, in part because of the number of companies Musk has expanded into Central Texas. In 2022, a Texas rancher even offered Musk free land if the billionaire would move Twitter’s headquarters to Schwertner, an unincorporated community in Williamson County, east of Jarrell.
More: Mapping Musklandia: A guide to Elon Musk-related activity in the Austin area
Musk, who said in 2020 that he moved to the state to be closer to Giga Texas and SpaceX’s South Texas base, spends significant time in Central Texas. Tesla announced it would build out Giga Texas, its massive Austin-area facility, in 2020, and then announced it was moving its headquarters to the same location in late 2021.
Like X, several other Musk entities have expanded into Austin with no formal announcement outside of job postings and vague posts.
This includes his tunneling and infrastructure company, the Boring Co., which is now headquartered in Central Texas, as well as aerospace company SpaceX and neurotechnology company Neuralink, all of which have significant Austin presences. Musk also moved his private foundation, the Musk Foundation, to Texas without any fanfare.
Recent filings have shown that Musk’s latest move to expand his Central Texas empire could be a school. Tax filings showed the billionaire is aiming to open a STEM-focused primary and secondary school and eventually a university in Austin.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, appears to build out Austin office
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