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PremiumMicroblogging site Twitter has been plunged into turmoil as the new chief of the company, Elon Musk laid off wide swaths of the company's workforce, infuriating staff and rattling the tech industry. The microblogging site sacked 50 percent of its employees on 4 November.
The mass layoffs were documented on the Twitter website itself, where many employees appeared to rally together under the #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked hashtag. Employees found themselves abruptly locked out of their email accounts. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and former chief executive officer said that he regrets growing the company too quickly as the social media platform downsizes following its sale to Elon Musk.
Defending the layoffs, Musk, also tweeted that the service was experiencing a "massive drop in revenue" as advertisers pulled spending. Musk has sought to slash costs and impose a demanding new work ethic.
On Saturday, Twitter launched the subscription service for $8 a month that includes a blue checkmark now given to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the platform’s verification system. In an update to Apple iOS devices, Twitter said those who "sign up now" for $7.99 a month can receive the blue checkmark next to their user names, "just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow."
Livemint is closely following the events as they unfold. Stay tuned for live updates!
French minister and government spokesman Olivier Veran said on Sunday that he would not pay Twitter's $7.99 a month fee for account verification and that he had concerns about the ambitions of the social media platform's new owner Elon Musk.
"You will also get: Priority in replies, mentions and search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam; ability to post long video and audio; half as many ads"
Twitter owner Elon Musk had said that the monthly payments from users for the blue tick will also give the micro-blogging site a revenue stream to reward content creators.
A blue tick signifies that a particular account is verified because it is notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.
Earlier this month, Musk had announced that verification blue tick in front of a user's name that authenticates an account will be charged USD 8 per month. Twitter's strategy to introduce a monthly charge for the verified badge has polarised users globally.
Mark Ruffalo wants Elon Musk to get off the microblogging site Twitter. Retweeting US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's tweet, Ruffalo wrote, “Elon. Please—for the love of decency—get off Twitter, hand the keys over to someone who does this as an actual job, and get on with running Tesla and SpaceX. You are destroying your credibility. It's just not a good look," he tweeted." To which Musk replied saying, "Hot take: not everything AOC says is accurate."
The 'Hulk' actor further reacted to Musk's tweet and wrote, "Maybe so." That’s why having robust filters for disinformation and credible verified users has been a popular feature for people and advertisers alike. We need those safeguards to make sure it’s accurate information, or the app loses credibility, as do you. And people leave."
Elon Musk's newly acquired micro-blogging platform Twitter has announced that the application will soon allow users to add long-form text to their tweets.
“Twitter will soon add ability to attach long-form text to tweets, ending absurdity of notepad screenshots," Musk said.
“I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly," he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that," Dorsey said on Twitter.
Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut, on Sunday, extended her support to the new Twitter owner, Elon Musk's decision to charge $8 a month to get verified accounts. Calling the social media platform as intellectually and ideologically motivated she termed it as the "best" and said that anybody who has an Aadhar Card "must get" a verified blue tick.
"Twitter is the best social media platform that is there right now, it's is intellectually/ ideologically motivated not about looks or lifestyle, I could never understand the idea of verification that some selected few get, as if others don't have an authentic existence, for example, I will get verified but if my father wants a blue tick then 3-4 clowns will dismiss his very identity as if he is living some illegal life...everyone who has an adhaar card must get varied simple as that," Kangana wrote on her Instagram stories.
In just one week since Elon Musk took charge of Twitter, the world's richest person has made several changes at the micro blogging company including lay offs, $8 for for blue tick, content council, advertising, home page, etc. Musk has vowed to shake up the social media company, keeping employees, advertisers and users on the edge of their seats, according to the news agency Reuters. Read more here
The whirlwind week that Elon Musk took over Twitter began with sleepless nights for company engineers -- and ended with half the staff getting the axe.
"It was a strange week," said one former employee speaking on condition of anonymity. "Executives were getting fired or were resigning, but there was basically no official communication until 5 pm Thursday," some seven days after the deal was officialized.
The employees received a first email on Thursday informing them that they would know their fate the next day. On Friday, the second email confirmed the rumors: 50 percent of the staff lost their jobs.
The cull hit the marketing department hard, took two-thirds of the design department, and maybe 75 percent of managers. Content moderation was somewhat spared, with a layoff rate of only 15 percent, according to Yoel Roth, head of safety at the platform.
The layoff decision did not come as a surprise to employees -- rumors had been growing -- but they were shocked by how brutally it was carried out.
"People would find out not by any phone call or any email... but just by seeing their work laptop automatically reboot and just to go blank," Emmanuel Cornet, a French engineer who had been at Twitter for a year and a half, told AFP on Friday.
The mass firing at Twitter has acted as a double whammy for some foreign nationals working in the US office as losing their jobs has put their immigration status under threat. Most of them, who are in the country with H-1B, L-1 and O-1 visas, are on a desperate job hunt as in the next few days, they will either have to find another company to sponsor them or leave the United States. Read more here
Elon Musk has said to improve better search function for Twitter. In a tweet he wrote, "Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in ‘98! That will also get a lot better pronto.".
He had earlier announed to introduce the ability to add longer-form text attachments to tweets.
Twitter blue tick will to roll out in India in less than a month, Elon Musk has replied to a user in a tweet. When a user named Prabhu tagged Elon Musk and asked, “When can we expect to have the Twitter Blue roll out in India?" Musk replied, "Hopefully, less than a month."
Twitter's new owner Elon Musk has pledged the platform will not devolve into a "free-for-all hellscape," but experts warn that mass layoffs may deeply impair the social network's ability to curb misinformation.
"I would be real careful on this platform in the coming days... about what you retweet, who you follow, and even your own sense of what's going on," said Kate Starbird, a disinformation researcher and assistant professor at the University of Washington.
Jessica Gonzalez, co-chief executive officer at the nonpartisan group Free Press, said she was concerned that Twitter's content-moderation efforts could potentially slacken prior to the election, "when we know social media goes off the rails to misinform, intimidate and harm voters of color."
"Twitter was already a hellscape before Musk took over, and his actions... will only make it worse," said Gonzalez.
A former executive has said that Elon Musk doesn’t know what he’s doing with Twitter. The statement was made by Bruce Daisley who was Twitter’s vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa from 2015 to 2020.
“I think Elon thought he was going to come in and solve everything and very quickly he’s going to work out that it’s far more complicated," the guardian has reported citing The News Agents podcast.
“It’s pretty evident from every public action that he’s taken with this whole acquisition: he doesn’t know what he’s doing," he said.
Elon Musk's decision to pull Twitter off the stock market allows him to make major changes quickly, but it also takes the company more heavily into debt, a risky choice for a money-losing business. It is a long-established strategy with notable successes and failures, from computer manufacturer Dell (a success) to toy stores Toys "R" Us (a failure).
But Twitter "is very different from a traditional buyout" of a company that delists from the market, said Steven Kaplan of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Most such takeovers are of companies with positive cash flows, Kaplan said, but the social network is losing money -- having posted losses in the first two quarters of 2022. The equation is further complicated by Elon Musk's $13 billion in loans, which will have to be repaid by the San Francisco company, not by the entrepreneur personally.
According to a calculation made by AFP, Twitter will have to disburse a little less than $1 billion from the first year as interest and principal, a high amount for a group whose turnover reached only $5 billion in 2021.
In a Tweet, Elon Musk has shared another update on the changes Twitter will undergo.
He wrote, “Twitter will soon add ability to attach long-form text to tweets, ending absurdity of notepad screenshots." “Followed by creator monetization for all forms of content," he wrote.
Adam Foster, a music producer and DJ asked him, “Twitter VS Substack Will people be able to subscribe / donate to pieces of writing like this?" to which Musk replied, “Absolutely"
Former Twitter Human Rights Counsel Shannon Raj Singh shared the news that the company's human rights team was eliminated on Friday. "Yesterday was my last day at Twitter: the entire Human Rights team has been cut from the company. I am enormously proud of the work we did to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, to protect those at-risk in global conflicts & crises including Ethiopia," he tweeted.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk on Saturday issued an open letter to the new CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk and urged him to "ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter," following the reports of layoff of entire human rights team of the microblogging site.
"In short, I urge you to ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter under your leadership," Turk said in a letter.
"Twitter is part of a global revolution that has transformed how we communicate. But I write with concern and apprehension about our digital public square and Twitter's role in it," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated in the letter.
"Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them. Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform's use and evolution," he added.
Twitter on Saturday updated its app in Apple's App Store to begin charging $8 for sought-after blue check verification marks, in Elon Musk’s first major revision of the social media platform.
The change comes a week after Musk took over the social media company in a $44 billion deal. The billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of electric car maker Tesla cut half the staff at Twitter and has vowed to start charging users more.
In an update to Apple iOS devices, Twitter said those who "sign up now" for $7.99 a month can receive the blue checkmark next to their user names, "just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow."
Before Musk took over, blue check marks next to a person's user name meant Twitter confirmed the account belonged to the person or company claiming it. It was not immediately clear how or if Twitter planned to verify the identity of the user beyond charging a fee.
According to the iOS notification, other benefits in the update include "half the ads", the ability to post longer videos to Twitter and priority ranking for quality content.
Reports have emerged that Elon Musk's tweets in the past were a window to the new Twitter owner's mind and plans for future.
Twitter is seeing a ‘massive drop’ in revenue, according to Musk himself, after advertisers paused their adverts owing to content moderation issues.
“Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April," the world's richest man had tweeted about Covid-19 in March 2020, just as the pandemic galloping towards peaking.
Tweets like these from Elon Musk offer a view into the Tesla CEO's mind. The Twitter's new moderator in chief seems playful, aggressive and sometimes reckless, thereby also a businessman at large who used social media to tout his businesses, punch back at critics and burnish his brand as a brash billionaire who is unafraid to speak his mind.
Twitter founder Jack broke his silence on Saturday on the micro-blogging platform's overhaul brought about by the new owner Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Elon Musk Twitter overhaul saw the global workforce reduce to a ‘roughly 50%’ after many were laid off on Friday.
“Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient. They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment. I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that." Jack wrote on Twitter.
Influencers and activists are now weary that Twitter might become a haven for racist and toxic speech under the control of Elon Musk, a serial provocateur who has indicated he could loosen content rules.
Many people have come to rely on Twitter, a relatively small but mighty platform that has become a digital public square of sorts for influencers, policy makers, journalists and other thought leaders.
“Before Elon took over, I felt like the team was working to make Twitter a safer platform, and now they are kind of not there. I don’t know what’s going on internally. I have lost hope in that," AP quoted Chandler, 31, founder of Black Tech Pipeline, a jobs board and recruitment website. “I’m both sad and terrified for Twitter, both for the employees and also the users."
Pariss Chandler built a community for Black tech workers on Twitter that eventually became the foundation for her own recruitment company.
According to news agency ANI, Twitter users were left bewildered when they saw that Elon Musk has tweeted about he #TwitterLayoffs in Hindi. The tweet was about his step to reinforce his move to charge USD 8 per month for blue tick users.
ANI stated that with the hashtag #TwitterLayoffs, the post is shared from an account that at the first glance looks like the handle of the tech billionaire.
However, the handle, with username @iawoolford, from which the post is shared created the confusion with the blue tick beside the profile name.
It initially led many to believe that Musk shared the tweet himself.
Reacting to massive layoffs, many of the post written in Hindi has gone viral.
"Twitter will be divided into pieces, even Twitter gang will have to pay USD 8."
Another tweet read, "This bird is sold." The Twitter user used the line imitating the viral "Government bik gayi" meme. The post is complete with a pic from the viral meme.
"This time the broom will run, this time the broom will run! The broom will hit the corrupt Twitter!!" read another tweet by @iawoolford.
The post had a Bollywood angle too, wherein a famous dialogue from the movie, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, wherein, Shahrukh Khan uses the dialogue, "Small things like this keep happening in big countries... isn't it?"
He also used a famous Bhojpuri song sung by Pawan Singh - "Kamariya Kare Lapalap, Key Lollipop Lagelu."
Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Elon musk took to twitter to defend his decision to lay off ‘roughly 50%’ of the global workforce, which also included most of the employees in the Twitter India office.
Elon Musk has earlier said that Twitter revenues has seen a ‘massive drop’ owing to advertisers pausing their their adverts on the social media platform.
Amid backlash that Elon Musk layoff his employees without a proper notice, Musk said, "Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,"
"Trash me all day, but it’ll cost $8" Tesla CEO and now the sole owner of micro-blogging platform Twitter Elon Musk on Saturday tweeted.
Amid massive layoffs at Twitter across the world, including in India, and the subsequent backlash, the microblogging site's new owner Elon Musk on Saturday justified the move, saying there was "no choice" when the company was losing millions of dollars daily.
The company posted a net loss of USD 270 million in the second quarter ended June 30, 2022 compared to a profit of USD 66 million in the same period a year ago.
Twitter's emails to employees, who got fired and who survived the job cuts, have gone viral on social media.
Twitter Inc told the sacked employees, "Today is your last working day at the company, however, you will remain employed by Twitter and will receive compensation and benefits through your separation date of 2 February 2023. During this time, you will be on a Non-working notice period and your access to Twitter systems will be deactivated".
The email added, "Within a week, you will receive details of your severance offer, and financial resources extending beyond your non-working notice period".
Employees who were retained by Twitter receive a separate email. The social media firm wrote, "We are sending this email to confirm that your employment is not impacted by today's workforce reduction".
Until Monday, Birdhouse is temporarily offline. "All badge access is temporarily suspended. offices will reopen on Monday, 7 November," it added.
Experts have warned that the mass layoffs at Twitter Inc could spell disaster during the US midterm elections next week. The Guardian citing Paul Barrett, an expert in disinformation and fake news at New York University said the lack of staff will create ideal conditions for election misinformation to thrive.
An internal source at the company told Reuters that the infrastructure cuts were “delusional", adding that when user traffic surges, the service can fail “in spectacular ways".
As per the Guardian's report it is too soon to measure concrete impacts of Twitter’s restructuring, early tracking shows hate speech is increasing. Researchers from Montclair State University claimed found in the 12 hours immediately after Musk took ownership on Twitter, “vulgar and hostile" rhetoric saw an “immediate, visible and measurable spike", the news report added.
Elon Musk threatened to name-shame the advertisers who are backing out from Twitter after the micro-blogging site announced mass layoffs.
While replying to a user on Twitter, Elon Musk said, "Thank you. A thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues."
Mike Davis, a user on Twitter said, "Dear @elonmusk: You have nearly 114,000,000 Twitter followers. Name and shame the advertisers who are succumbing to the advertiser boycotts. So we can counter-boycott them. And get your USD 8 monthly subscription going asap. So we can start to makeup for lost revenue now."
President Joe Biden criticised Elon Musk’s acquisiton of Twitter Inc., saying the social media platform was responsible for spewing lies.
“Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world," Biden said.
“There’s no editors anymore," Biden added. “There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?"
Elon Musk’s approach to managing Twitter has been an unpredictable one. The world’s richest man has axed staff and floated a payment idea of $8 per month to retain blue tick. Musk has promised there will be no changes to content policies, or reinstatements of banned accounts such as Donald Trump’s, until a newly announced content moderation council is convened.
The tech giant has also floated the idea of splitting Twitter into different strands of content. He suggested that users select which version of Twitter they want, in the style of choosing a film based on its content rating.
Twitter Inc considering charging for video content. This would involved letting people post videos and charging users to see them, with Twitter taking a cut, according to a report by The Verge.
Several big brands have halted paid advertising on Twitter, days after the social media platform was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk for $44 billion.
The companies that have paused ad spending on Twitter are United Airlines, General Mills, General Motors, Volkswagen AG, Pfizer Inc, etc.
The growing exodus of advertisers comes amid concerns Musk will scale back misinformation and security protections on the platform.
Shortly before taking over the social media company last week, Musk issued a vow to advertisers that he would not allow Twitter to become a “free-for-all hellscape,"-- an indication there would still be consequences for violators of its rules against harassment, violence, or election and Covid-related misinformation.
About 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertisers but it’s far from the biggest platform that advertisers turn to for digital marketing. Google, Amazon, and Meta account for about 75% of digital ads, according to The Guardian.
Elon Musk blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing Twitter's top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation.
Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and done "everything we could" to appease the groups. "Extremely messed up! They're (civil right groups) trying to destroy free speech in America."
After the massive layoff at Twitter Inc, Musk defended his move. In a tweet, he wrote, "unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day".
Those who exited were offered three months of severance, "which is 50% more than legally required", he added.
Twitter sacked half of its 7,500-strong staff on Friday as the new owner Elon Musk launched his major overhaul of the troubled company.
As per the media reports, "roughly 50 percent" of employees were impacted and would be denied access to company computers and email on an immediate basis.
According to AFP, an internal document states that roughly 50% of Twitter's employees are hit by layoffs.
According to Bloomberg, the lawyer who sued Twitter Inc. “pre-emptively" on the eve of mass layoffs by Elon Musk said she’s “pleased" to learn at least some employees will continue being paid until 4 January.
Employees have been told they will receive a severance agreement next week in which Twitter will ask them to waive any potential claims against it, she said.
Elon Musk on Thursday had said, ‘Twitter can be thought of as a collective, cybernetic super-intelligence with room for improvement’ hinting at the massive layoff that would take place on Friday across the Twitter offices worldwide.
Twitter Inc. began notifying employees affected by a far-reaching round of job cuts, and some learned they’ll be paid for two months. As this was happening, the new owner, Elon Musk, said the business experienced a “massive drop" in revenue as many advertisers withdrew.
Amid the overhaul, Elon Musk took to Twitter to defend the layoffs. He wrote, "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.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America."
According to tweets by the sacked Twitter employees, staff who worked in engineering, communications, product and content curation were among those impacted by the layoffs.
According to reports, Musk is looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce, as he seeks to slash costs and impose a demanding new work ethic
Twitter users have taken to the micro-blogging platform in numbers saying that the mass layoffs of Twitter employees is a Slot machine-style layoffs that saw a massive chunk of employees from the India office being laid off, along with ither payoffs in the global offices.
Apart from the sacked tweeps, Netizens have taken to Twitter to ask if the mass layoff, that can potentially reduce Twitter's global workforce to half, is a hostile takeover by Tesla CEO Elon Musk since after a week of his takeover.
Bloomberg shared the memo that was shared with Twitter employees ahead of the massive layoff. Read the memo here
Team,
In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.
Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. Please check your email, including your spam folder.
If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email.
If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.
If you do not receive an email from twitter-hr@ by 5PM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, please email peoplequestions@twitter.com.
To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.
We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.
We are grateful for your contributions to Twitter and for your patience as we move through this process.
Thank you.
Big companies including General Motors, General Mills and Audi have all paused ads on Twitter due to questions about how it will operate under Musk. Volkswagen Group said Friday it is recommending its brands, which include Skoda, Seat, Cupra, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche and Ducati, pause paid activities until Twitter issues revised brand safety guidelines.
Musk has tried to appease advertisers, but they remain concerned about whether content moderation will remain as stringent and whether staying on Twitter might tarnish their brands.
As of Friday, Musk and Twitter had given no public notice of the coming layoffs, according to a spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department. That’s even though the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held.
A class action lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It alleges that Twitter intends to lay off more employees and has violated the law by not providing the required notice.
A CA employment attorney have pointed out that the laid off employees were entitled to ‘60 days notice under federal and state WARN Acts.’
The company said that in order to "ensure the safety" of employees and company data, the main offices would remain closed and all badge access suspended.
"Those on the way to the office should turn around and return home," the email added.
The layoffs come at a tough time for social media companies, as advertisers are scaling back and newcomers -- mainly TikTok -- are threatening the older class of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk who closed the USD 44 billion twitter acquisition deal last week and took control of the micro-blogging platform dissolved the board on Monday and was named the sole director of Twitter, the social media platform said in a securities filing on Monday
Some employees tweeted early Friday that they had already lost access to their work accounts. They and others tweeted messages of support using the hashtag #OneTeam. The email to staff said job reductions were “necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward."
Twitter’s roughly 7,500 employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm of the company. Already, the billionaire Tesla CEO has fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, on his first day as Twitter’s owner.
Twitter has fired the majority of its over 200 employees in India as part of mass layoffs across the globe ordered by its new owner Elon Musk who is looking to make his USD 44 billion acquisition work.
Sources said the layoffs are across engineering, sales and marketing, and communications teams.
However, there is no clarity yet on the severance package to be paid to employees laid off in India.
The entire marketing and communications department in India has been sacked, the sources said.
