Twitter’s Panic After Trump’s Account Is Deleted Caps a Rough Week - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/technology/trump-twitter-deleted.html
Only after further review did executives discover that it was a contractor who was leaving Twitter that day who had disabled Mr. Trump’s account, said the people involved in the matter.
The incident immediately made the unnamed contractor a hero to some and a villain to others for muting, even temporarily, Mr. Trump. Yet the outcome for Twitter was black and white: It was another fiasco that the social media company had to clean up.
The discovery that it was a contractor who deleted Mr. Trump’s account is difficult for Twitter, as well as other technology companies. Nearly every major technology company including Google, Facebook and Apple relies on contract employees to fill positions. In general, the jobs tend to be nontechnical roles such as customer support or administrative and operational positions.
Many of these workers are brought on by staffing companies like Accenture, Adecco and Cognizant and work on renewable one-year contracts. Facebook, Twitter and other companies also outsource content review to third-party services like ProUnlimited and Cognizant, which are essentially internet call centers staffed with hundreds of workers who deal with customer service issues.
Many of these people work side by side with full-time employees, but they are often paid significantly less, are identified with different color employee badges, and are not afforded the same perks and amenities that full-time workers have. Many complain of being treated like second-class citizens.