Elon Musk Complains About Twitter Losing Revenue As He Lays Off 50% Of Employees
On the same day as mass layoffs of 50% of Twitter staff were announced, its new owner Elon Musk also wrote a Tweet complaining about how unnamed “activist groups pressuring advertisers” are causing a dip in revenue of the platform.
He also wrote bizarrely that advertisers choosing not to pay to be on his site is somehow an example of activists trying to “destroy free speech in America.”
For a brief period, Musk’s own Tweet was flagged with a “notes” feature adding extra context, but that eventually got scrubbed.
His tweet was flagged by Twitter’s own fact checking system as needing more context. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/uJEvr2rPtp
— 💀 damned sinker 💀 (@dansinker) November 4, 2022
Seeing Elon try to blame anonymous activists for tanking the site and not his own erratic behavior for putting advertisers off is pretty baffling.
He has been revealing himself to be increasingly right-wing this past year, and also recently elevated an untrue right-wing conspiracy theory about the recent assault of Paul Pelosi on Twitter that he later deleted.
Internal memos told staff to wait until Friday to hear about their job status, and would know whether they got fired by which email account the message came in.
Employees in Twitter just got an email from their bosses saying layoffs are coming tomorrow.
Those who are staying will get a note tomorrow in their work email. Those who are let go will get an email sent to their personal address.
Slot machine-style layoffs.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) November 4, 2022
Several team members have taken to the very platform they were fired from to announce the firing.
Joan Deitchman, a former senior manager at Twitter announced that she and her entire team were laid off, and they were “inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies.”
🫡 Yep, the team is gone. The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone.
— Joan Deitchman (@JoanDeitchman) November 4, 2022
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Another ex-employee put Musk on blast for firing an entire team who was working on a feature he teased as part of his plan to charge $8 per month for verification. Many teams had been working exhausting overtime hours through the weekend to try and execute elements that Musk demanded.
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Just to be clear, he fired the team working on this. https://t.co/56I1uyBIIR
— sillyrobin is a fmr Tweep (@SillyRobin) November 4, 2022
Twitter has already been hit with a class-action lawsuit regarding the layoffs, which was filed on November 3 the day before in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California.
The filing claims plaintiff Emanuel Cornet was one of the first people laid off without written notice on November 1, which may be in violation of both the California WARN Act and the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
Musk pulled the same move earlier this month at Tesla, and there is also a lawsuit in the works on behalf of those employees.
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