New York
CNN Business
—
Death is in the air on Twitter.
On the platform on Thursday night, where #RIPTwitter was top trending worldwide, users wrote what they feared might be their last post, offering a shy goodbye and listing other (more stable) social media platforms they can still find.
They are reacting to the terrible news coming from within Twitter. A lot of the remaining employees at the social media company on Thursday appeared to reject owner Elon Musk’s ultimatum to work “extremely hard,” sending the media platform into disarray. complete chaos and raises serious questions about how long it will last.
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Twitter’s death will have dire consequences, as the platform is indispensable to global communication. The platform is often compared to a digital city square. World leaders use Twitter to communicate, journalists use Twitter to gather news, dissidents in repressive countries use Twitter to organize, people Celebrities and big brands use Twitter to make important announcements, and the general public often uses Twitter to track all of that in real time.
If the platform dies or becomes unusable due to instability issues, no single space will replace it immediately and communications may be disrupted across multiple social media sites. , leading to seismic disruptions and slowing information flow.
Inside the company’s Slack, a mass layoff effectively happened after Musk’s 5pm deadline for employees to come to a decision. Hundreds of employees appear to have abandoned it, accepting Musk’s offer to leave in exchange for three months of severance.
Employees flooded the “#social-watercooler” channel with a welcome emoji, indicating that they chose not to sign Musk’s pledge. A similar series of events took place on the Slack channel earlier this month when Musk eliminated about 50% of the company’s 7,500-strong workforce at the time.
A former Twitter executive, who recently left the company, described the situation as a “mass exodus”. When asked about the situation, the former executive said: “Elon is finding out that he can’t bully top-level talent. They have a lot of options and won’t accept his antics.”
“They will struggle just to keep the lights on,” the former executive added.
That review was widely shared by half a dozen other current and former employees on Thursday. Things were bad enough after Musk conducted mass layoffs at the company earlier this month. So bad that Twitter asked some people who had left to come back just a few days later. The state of play has only gotten worse since then.
In fact, Twitter management went into a state of panic a few hours before the deadline ended, people familiar with the matter said, explaining that senior leaders were “scrambling” to persuade talent to stay in the company.
Musk himself seems to have finally realized the dire situation, sending out an email asking all employees to relax their previously staunch telecommuting position. “For remote work, all it takes for approval is your manager’s responsibility to ensure that you’re making an outstanding contribution,” Musk said in the email.
It doesn’t seem to do much.
The two employees who decided to reject Musk’s ultimatum on Thursday were pretty clear about why they did so. “I don’t want to continue building a product that is poisoned from the inside out,” said one, later adding that he felt satisfied making a decision “in line with what I stand for.” .
“People don’t want to sacrifice their mental health and family life to make the world’s richest person richer,” said one newly fired employee who still keeps in touch with former colleagues.
And Twitter seemed to have the mess on its hands on Thursday night, emailing employees informing them that it was once again closing all offices and suspending employee badge access, possibly Probably to protect your system and data.
Twitter’s already decimated communications department did not respond to requests for comment. But Musk nodded to the situation in a tweet.
“How do you make a small amount of money on social media?” musk asked. “Start with a big one.”
