Elon Musk has begun to slash Twitter's 7,500-strong workforce as the social media platform's new billionaire owner warned of a "massive drop in revenue" following his $44bn buyout of the group.
As Musk embarked on his cost-cutting cull, he said yesterday that Twitter «has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists». Brands such as General Motors, Mondelez, Carlsberg, Volkswagen and General Mills have paused marketing on the platform since Musk took the helm, with some advertisers fearful he will allow a wave of hate speech and misinformation to spill onto the site. The move was immediately met by a class-action lawsuit from a small group of Twitter employees, alleging the company had violated labour laws by failing to give the required advance notice. The job losses cap a chaotic first week for Twitter under Musk's command, during which the world's richest man overhauled the management team, asked staffers to work round the clock on new products and publicly brainstormed plans to shake up the business via his own Twitter account.
Although Musk has not publicly discussed the lay-offs, Twitter lit up with staff announcing their departure. There has been turmoil inside the company for months since Musk first bid to buy it before trying to back out while publicly mocking Twitter's staff. After a legal battle, the deal closed last week, with Musk paying his original offer of $54.20 a share. Musk has made no secret of his plans to overhaul Twitter, which has been criticised for sluggish innovation.
I am very curious to see what changes with Twitter in the next 3-4 months. Will it become a place where hate-speech is accepted? Or will it become more of a place where you can actually have a debate? Lately it was a place where you needed to say and do certain things or risk getting outed.
ReplyDeleteMusk shouldn't have just fired those people. Notices should have been handed down and they shouldn't have been treated so poorly. It just doesn't look good and it's not nice at all. I understand that some people need to go, not disputing that, but the way this happens is very important.
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