The purge has already begun. Two days after the finalization of a high-profile takeover operation that will be a landmark both in terms of business and in terms of story telling, Elon Musk has full power on Twitter. After laying off a large part of the network’s management team in the wake of the takeover announcement, the billionaire is now planning to cut up to 30% of the staff in certain departments of the company, from of this weekend. “It will be a bloodbath”sources told the American press.
Sources inside the company, on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, told the New York Times that workforce reductions have been ordered throughout the company. The managers still in place have been asked to list the employees they could part with, some teams should be affected more than others.
The extent of the layoffs could not be determined at this time. At Twitter, which has around 7,500 employees, the cuts are expected to be particularly brutal in the Product department, with engineering heads and product managers to be thrown out. The marketing department, which is considered internally as well supplied with employees, could be the subject of a very severe purge. “I think people are preparing for a Black Monday, but the question is where the majority of the cuts will be”said a source to the American site Axios.
Teslas full the garage
The layoffs at Twitter are expected to occur before Nov. 1, when stock options granted quarterly to most employees must vest. These shares typically represent a significant portion of employee compensation. By making layoffs before then, Musk can avoid paying out the awards, although he is supposed to pay the employees in cash instead of their stock, under the terms of the buyout agreement.
Shortly after the new boss arrived, the garage at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters began to fill up with Teslas in the reserved spots, parked in rows, a source told the outlet. Axios. The new boss reportedly started bringing in engineers from Tesla to interview engineers from the social network and begin reviewing the company’s products and code. He also reportedly started calling on his friends and relatives to reorganize the business. Musk has yet to announce which of his inner circle he intends to recruit to replace the fired senior executives.
The purge started by Musk shows his determination to reshape the organization of Twitter, to make it a more profitable company, but also a platform for “absolute freedom” as he had promised. And he was quick this weekend to set an example for his 112 million subscribers by reacting to the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi, by a right-wing supremacist. In response to Hillary Clinton, who shared an article from Los Angeles Times on the attack suspect, Musk tweeted, then deleted: “There is a remote possibility that there is more to this story than meets the eye”. Earlier today, he cited a highly discredited website which suggested the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi was not carried out by a lopsided far-right blogger, but was instead linked to a “theory” anti-LGTBQ regarding a skirmish at a local bar. He also linked to an article from the Santa Monica Observe, a website known for publishing fake news. The website “is anything but trustworthy”, according to a media executive NewsGuard, which employs trained journalists to rate news sites. The website of santa monica went down early this morning shortly after the tweet was posted – reportedly due to an influx of traffic related to Musk’s tweet.
The new owner of Twitter, an outspoken libertarian and critic of social media moderation regulations, presents himself as an ardent defender of absolute freedom of expression, raising fears among supporters of strong moderation of the content a resurgence of hate speech or misinformation. After the dismissal, among others, of the lawyer Vijaya Gadde who had been in Musk’s sights for months for having participated in the banishment for life of Donald Trump from the platform, the new boss who relays conspiratorial media on an act of violence, only confirms fears about the future of the social network.
.