By Pen Fang
Since the Musk acquisition of Twitter, the website has undergone some major changes (to say the least). Musk’s acquisition of the site was a messy process in and of itself, stretching back to January 2022 when he first started investing in Twitter. In March, he became the company’s largest shareholder. In April, he was invited to join the company’s board of directors, which he declined, before offering to buy the site; Twitter accepted the offer the same month. However, in May, the acquisition deal was suspended over Musk’s concern about the number of bot and spam accounts on the site—and whether or not Twitter was covering up the true number. In July, he made plans to end the deal entirely, until Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk for not upholding the deal. The trial date was set to be in October. Then, in October, Musk re-offered to buy Twitter in exchange to put off the trial, closing the deal the day before the trial.
In early November, Musk began mass layoffs of Twitter’s employees; those who were laid off received an email notice. He also fired its chief executive as well as other managers. About half of Twitter’s then 7,500 member workforce was laid off. Musk said that he had “no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” regarding the layoffs.
Layoffs and resignations continued throughout November. Musk fired employees who criticized him on Twitter. Furthermore, he issued an ultimatum to the remaining employees: to stay, they had to answer “yes” in response to a Google Form by 5 pm EST on Thursday, November 17. If not, it would be treated as a resignation. These changes all point toward Musk’s desire to restructure the workforce as he shifts the site towards “Twitter 2.0.” “This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” he said. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
Hundreds of employees resigned from Twitter, some bidding farewell through tweets, others with goodbye messages sent into Twitter’s Slack. These included members of Twitter’s Command Center, engineers always on call to deal with internal site problems, and much or all of critical teams within Twitter. In a fitting manner, the Verge revealed, in regards the resignations, “Twitter no longer has a communications department to contact for comment.”
Employees, engineers, and even outside experts said that they expected the site to break. The mass layoffs and resignations—cuts to the workforce maintaining Twitter—left some critical systems within Twitter with little to no employees to manage the site. In fact, Downdetector reported an increase of Twitter outages throughout Thursday and Friday. On Friday, hashtags like “#GoodbyeTwitter,” “#Twitterdown,” and “#RIPTwitter,” were trending. Prominent media figures like teams and politicians even made tweets suggesting other ways to find them if Twitter shut down.
Musk called for “anyone who actually writes software” to report to Twitter headquarters, even asking if workers could fly to San Francisco in person. “These will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack,” he said in an email sent to employees.
Furthermore, Musk revamped “Twitter Blue,” with the main feature being that users could buy themselves a verification checkmark with a monthly subscription. Usually the checkmarks are used to denote accounts with significance in the public eye, such as celebrities or companies, to prevent impersonation. To address that concern, Musk announced that users would be permanently suspended for impersonation. (Spoiler alert: it was not enough to deter anyone.) The flood of impersonators elicited a halt on Twitter Blue, which allowed users to see whether the checkmark was bought with subscription or genuine.
One noteworthy case of the feature was when an impersonator of the insulin company Eli Lilly made a tweet stating, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” Subsequently, the company’s market cap dropped an estimated $15 billion, prompting Eli Lilly cut funding to its Twitter ad campaigns, possibly costing Twitter millions of dollars.
And Eli Lilly isn’t alone: seven of Twitter’s top advertisers, such as Ford, Jeep, and Chevrolet, confirmed that they had halted Twitter ads. 50 of the top 100 advertisers are no longer advertising on Twitter, NPR revealed. Food companies like General Mills and Mondelez (the manufacturers of the Oreo Cookie), as well as pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have also temporarily paused Twitter advertising. While Musk may seek to shift Twitter to be less dependent on ad revenue and more on subscription revenue, the reduction of advertisers (and pressure from activist groups to stop brands from advertising) caused a “massive drop in revenue”, according to tweets from Musk.
Twitter could also be looking at legal problems along with the monetary and operating issues. A class-action lawsuit was filed against the company for failing to provide proper notice of the layoffs. For context, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) requires a sixty day notice before layoffs from employers with more than 100 employees. On the other hand, Musk tweeted that the company offered, “3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.” More legal issues could arise with the gaps in Twitter’s staffing, and with addressing misinformation and disinformation worldwide.
Another change follows the results of a Twitter poll. Musk stated that Twitter would “offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam” after receiving a majority “yes” vote. He has reinstated Donald Trump’s Twitter account (also the result of a Twitter poll), formerly permanently suspended for violating Twitter’s policies on glorifying violent acts, as well as other public figures, including rapper Kanye West and Andrew Tate. He also formed a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints” to review content decisions and account reinstatements.
In summary, since the Musk acquisition of Twitter, the platform has lost a majority of its staff from mass layoffs and resignations, including those in critical teams. It is facing issues with ad revenue as many advertisers halt advertising on Twitter, as well as with subscription revenue owing to the disastrous verification checkmark of Twitter Blue’s first launch. And formerly suspended accounts are coming back. To cap it all off, here’s another tweet from Musk himself: “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”
