They always seem to be hiring people for sales and advertising. I've known some people go to them, and from what they've said their ads team is huge.

Hence why they have so much "free" advertising - they likely have a massive department swarming every major media outlet to create and maintain partnerships, i.e. the little Twitter mentions that you see on TV.

I don't know if these kinds of deals cost Twitter money directly (I wouldn't be surprised), but I'm sure their marketing department is the most expensive operation they have.

I personally know a few people on their media team, the ones responsible for these relationships, and it sounds like they have 1-3 people per genre (tv, music, government), at least in the US. The amount of media they get on television alone is likely worth multiples of that if you think how expensive it is to buy tv spots, even if you try to normalize for the "Twitter shout outs." Maybe a lot of resources, but nothing compared to the engineering.

Put enough bright engineers in a room and they'll over-engineer a monstrosity. They probably didn't need as many engineers as they have to scale, but it's entirely possible that they've introduced enough unnecessary complexity into their systems that scaling back down isn't easy or even possible in the short term.

what roles do these "buffoons" work in? tech?

Perhaps they're Court Jesters?

It wouldn't surprise me to hear some tech company has hired comedians to entertain the staff.

Nice, implying that this council of non-profits and academics (who, I'm unsure, but it doesn't seem like they've been "hired" or are necessarily being paid) aiming to reduce abuse are buffoons.