chirrup employee are abandoningElon Musk , Twitter ’s owner and ego - described ‘ chief twit , ’ in droves after his mussy first few calendar week at the blue bird app .
Earlier this week , Musk presented his new employees withan ultimatum : commit to a fresh “ hardcore ” Twitter , which involved “ work long time of day at high strength ” and delivering only “ exceptional ” performance , or leave with three months of severance pay . The billionaire gave employees until Thursday at 5 p.m. ET to resolve , and received a rude awakening when a significant number of employees did , in fact , choose to result . He had already laid off half of them , after all .
Hundreds of Twitter employees decided to take Musk ’s offering of rift and ditch the company , accord tomultipleoutletsand tweets thatemployeesthemselvesposted on Twitter under the#LoveWhereYouWorkedhashtag . The Book of Exodus set off a disorderly scuffle inside the party , with Musk and his adviser holding meetings withcritical employeesto win over them to remain . It ’s undecipherable exactly how many employees have left , with Reuters count on it’smore than 600and the Washington Post state it could be between1,000 - 1,500 .
For weeks, people have wondered if Elon Musk wanted to break Twitter. It looks like he may succeed soon.Illustration: Sergei Elagin (Shutterstock)
As of Friday , Twitter had a mountain of problems and seemed to have an uncertain future . It is a very unlike company than it was three calendar week ago , when Musk begrudgingly completed his $ 44 billion skill softwood and get along into Twitter ’s headquarterscarrying a sink .
On Friday daybreak , # RIPTwitter , # GoodbyeTwitter , # Twitterdown , and # Twittershutdown were trending in the U.S.
The same day , Downdetector reporteda surge of Twitter outages on Thursday night . Gizmodo also witnessed outage while drop a line this clause , including some that said a tweet been delete only for it to reappear when opened in another window . Over at Downdetector , the outage reputation continued to steady increase .
Elon and his team don’t know who still works at Twitter
When Musk sent out his email announcing “ hardcore Twitter , ” he told employees who wanted to persist to penetrate “ yes ” and signalise an online shape by 5 p.m. ET on Thursday . Those who did n’t sign would be offer three month of severance .
“ Elon Musk and his squad have a tilt of Twitter employee who sign up the offer indicating they want to stay at Twitter 2.0 , ” Zoë Schiffer , Platformer ’s managing editor program , tweetedon Thursday . “ Those names are in a spreadsheet . Now they ’re trying to figure out who ’s NOT on the sheet , who is on parental leave , who ’s actively resigning in Slack … ”
Critical systems at Twitter have been left with zero engineers
engineer at Twitter and outside experts began monish about thepossibility of the program breakingshortly after Musk ’s coup . The Twitter proprietor ’s cuts to 50 % of the site ’s faculty significantly affectedengineers maintaining its code baseand leave skeleton crews to handle any problems and ply to Musk ’s “ secret plan - interchange ” ware thought .
However , as of Thursday , multiple vital system did n’t even have that . Some had zero engineers maintaining them .
“ I know of six vital system of rules ( like ‘ serving tweets ’ levels of decisive ) which no longer have any engineers , ” a former Twitter employee told theWashington Post . “ There is no longer even a skeleton crowd manning the system . It will stay to coast until it prevail into something , and then it will intercept . ”
The Vergereportedthat Twitter ’s traffic and front end engineering teams , which are in charge of direct engineering request to the right backend services , were either almost all gone or entirely give way . The team who do Twitter ’s core organization libraries , used by every engineer at the company , also release .
“ you could not bunk Twitter without this squad , ” an employee who quit evidence the outlet .
The Twitter Blue team has lost key staffers
Twitter Blue , one of Musk ’s big bet to transform the company that ’s set to berelaunched on Nov. 29 , receive yet another blow this week as primal staffers on its development team decide to leave the company . According to Schiffer fromPlatformer , the clothes designer leading the Blue assert task and its leash web engine driver were among the throngs of masses who quit on Thursday .
The $ 8 a calendar month subscription product has been chivvy by problems since Musk resolve to include the verified checkmark as a Twitter Blue perk . The decision led to multiple multitude using their Blue subscription to impersonatehigh - profile write up , causing pandemonium on the platform .
One of the most notable incident involvedpharmaceutical heavyweight Eli Lilly . After a Blue - control exploiter exchange their name to Eli Lilly and announce that insulin was now spare , which was not true . The tweet from the fake verified account wiped out an figure $ 15 billion from the company ’s marketplace cap . As a final result , Eli Lillypaused on its advertisingon Twitter , a move that ’s figure to cost the political platform millions .
Besides the Twitter Blue squad , reportsindicate that the troupe ’s entire payroll squad , fiscal reporting team , and U.S. tax teams are gone . Twitter no longer has a communication section to turn to for comment or confirmation .
It’s unclear how Twitter will comply with misinformation regulations and its FTC consent decree
Half of Twitter ’s trust and refuge insurance policy team throw in the towel on Thursday , grant to theWashington Post . This included the legal age of the masses in electric charge of identifying misinformation , junk e-mail , faux accounts , and impersonation . The troupe ’s content moderation squad , which relies hard on contractors , has alsopurportedlybeen attain hard . Last hebdomad , Musk fired about 4,400 of Twitter ’s 5,500 contract bridge employees .
These new gaps in its rank could make it difficult for Twitter to follow with dis- and misinformation regularization around the world . In Germany , for example , social media companies are required toquickly take down poststhat admit hate speech , phoney intelligence , and illegal cloth . Failure to do so can leave intens of millionsin mulct .
Also up in the zephyr is how Twitter will comply with the consent decree issued to it by the Federal Trade Commission . The 10 - twelvemonth - older decree bars the company from allowing deceit on its platform and requires it to asseverate a racy program to safeguard user info .
On Thursday , seven Democratic senator , including Richard Blumenthal , Ed Markey , Dianne Feinstein , and Elizabeth Warren , send off the FTC a letterover Twitter ’s “ serious , willful neglect for the safety and security of its users ” under Musk and encouraged it to “ smartly oversee its consent decree with Twitter . ”
Last workweek , the FTC say it was “ tracking the late developments at Twitter with thick concern ” after theresignations of key executivesin charge of cybersecurity , submission , and reliance and safety .
Public displays of discontent against Musk
Twitter ’s owner , who is also the world ’s rich human , is used to hearing only adulation from his follower and interior band ( although he ’s never one to turn away from a competitiveness with his hater . ) Nonetheless , he likely did n’t expect to have demonstratorsproject personal insultstowards him on Twitter ’s San Francisco headquarters on Thursday .
The insults included “ failure babe , ” “ petulant pimple , ” “ potentate ’s asskisser , ” “ lawless oligarch , ” “ insecure colonizer , ” “ cruel hoarder , ” and “ outer space Karen , ” among many others . It ’s indecipherable who was behind the demonstration .
Twitter ’s San Francisco headquarters has gone hardcore tonight.#TwitterTakeoverpic.twitter.com / DoG5pDD4AD
— StrictlyRockers 🇺 🇦 🌻 ( @christoq)November 18 , 2022
This probably did n’t assist Musk ’s paranoia . consort toPlatformer , Musk and his team have locked Twitter ’s office edifice and revoked badge access . Offices will reopen next Monday .
“ We ’re hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are go to sabotage the party . Also , they ’re still trying to cipher out which Twitter workers they need to cut accession for , ” Platformer ’s Schiffertweeted .
Meanwhile , on Twitter itself , the master twit endeavor to throw an paradigm of calm on Thursday night and Friday good morning . In his distinctive fashion , hemade funofpeople aghastoverTwitter dyingand say the people who quitdidn’t occupy him .
“ The in effect multitude are continue , so I ’m not exceedingly distressed , ” Musk tweet .
Eli LillyElon MuskHumansHyperloopOperating systemsRichard BlumenthalX ( Twitter )
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