Many of the employees fired by Twitter were in charge of combating disinformation during the elections

By Ben Collins, Brandy Zadrozny and David Ingram -

The mass layoffs that rocked Twitter on Friday included

, which will affect the company's ability to curb dangerous messages just days before the November 8 midterm elections. .

These details were confirmed to NBC News, the sister network of Noticias Telemundo, by a Twitter worker and six former employees familiar with the cuts, most of them recently fired.

The sources warned that the cutbacks could create chaos around the election, as they particularly affected the teams responsible for moderating user posts, including those on

.

All the sources requested anonymity, for fear of reprisals and because they were not authorized by the company to speak on the subject.

Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, said the cuts were necessary to secure the company's financial future, a week after buying it for $44 billion.

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The sources said the layoffs appear to have affected many employees

Twitter has not announced any changes to its content moderation policy.

Earlier this week, Yoel Roth, the company's chief security and integrity officer, said the company was vigilant against attempts to manipulate information about Tuesday's election.

But Gita Johar, a Columbia University business professor who is an expert on disinformation, said the staff cuts risk

for rumours, conspiracy theories and falsehoods. "

that seize the imagination of the people”.

Twitter has not released figures on which workers were hit hardest by the layoffs, but the cuts have been widespread.

At an investor conference this Friday, Musk appeared to confirm that the company had

, according to CNBC.

"Elon will own a company with no employees," a source on Twitter told CNBC.

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An email sent to Twitter's public relations team had not been replied to as of Friday.

Some members of this team tweeted that they had lost their jobs.

Twitter's team of moderators, which help put real-time context to tweets on trending controversial topics, appears to have disintegrated, a source said.

Andrew Haigh, leader of the London-based team of content curators, said on Twitter that the team "doesn't exist anymore."

"We already expected an increase in rumors and misinformation around the election, even before Musk took the reins," said Kate Starbird, a professor of design and engineering at the University of Washington who studies misinformation.

“But the mass layoffs mean we get to see what a great platform without moderators really looks like in the year 2022, an era of algorithmic manipulation and online toxicity, and during a massive online convergence event where huge political interests are at play,” he added.

The team of about 100 people running Twitter Blue, the site's subscription service, has also been cut, according to a former employee.

Most of the team's engineers and product managers were laid off on Friday.

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Several of the sources who spoke to NBC News said they were concerned about the company's plan to sell account verification badges to users.

This could allow anyone to post false information from accounts pretending to be the official ones.

while counting votes during the election, they said.

Musk has said that this site verification feature, previously used to confirm the identity of celebrities and public officials, can be purchased for $8.

Misinformation and violent threats remain a problem on social media platforms ahead of the election, and US law enforcement has warned of the danger of violent incidents fueled by conspiracy theories.