Twitter is a social media platform that has been around since the early 2000’s. It’s been a place for users to share their immediate thoughts with other users through hashtags. But through its evolution, Twitter is now a source of news, entertainment, and business for many. In April, Elon Musk made an unsolicited bid to purchase Twitter for $44 billion with the intent of privatizing Twitter in the name of free speech. The purchase was officially completed on Oct. 27 and recently, the news has been talking nonstop about Musk’s purchase of Twitter with the intentional monetization of the platform and massive employee layoffs that have taken place.
One feature of Twitter is verification of artists and agencies. After the platform got in trouble in 2009, it made this feature as a way to verify authentic accounts and reduce the presence of fake or “impersonating accounts”. This is one of the platform’s major features and has been copied and implemented by other strong social media sites like Facebook and Instagram.
Elon Musk wants to change the way Twitter verification works, and the way Twitter works in general. He claims his new version will now require users to pay $8 a month to get or remain verified. His logic is as follows: by requiring payment for accounts, it would bar inauthentic users from attempting to make accounts on the app. This pay-to-play feature could prevent certain people from creating fake accounts, but it could also hinder others from getting verification they need. There is worry that Musk’s purchase of Twitter is part of his payments plan in which he wants to create a payments business like business X which was one of his first companies. This is also similar to Facebook’s plan to use Libra to provide crypto wallets to users. Where Facebook’s initiative failed under government scrutiny, Twitter can succeed because its payment backbone, Bitcoin Lightning, is a decentralized structure.
Musk also began laying off Twitter employees as soon as his purchase was complete. Employees were expecting the worst and anxiously waited to see what happened as they slowly lost access to Twitter systems and were instructed not to go into the office. Last Friday morning, the layoffs began as the company told employees via email that they had been laid off. Some departments were logged out of their work laptops and removed from Slack pages. Others were locked out of company email prior to receiving a notification that they had been laid off.
It appears that Musk has laid off almost half of Twitter’s employee base in a severe cost cutting measure. Musk even fired a number of Twitter’s top senior executives, including the CEO and CFO. Framing the layoffs as necessary for alleviating revenue challenges, Musk did not comment further on the number of employees that were laid off, or on the manner in which they were. Many employees moved quickly to sue Musk over a lack of notice for firings, filing a class action lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco. It is clear from the evidence that Musk failed to lay off staff with adequate notice.
The measures taken thus far by Elon Musk have not been popular with employees or the media. It is unclear what his real intentions behind his purchase of Twitter are. Is this a payment plan, or is he really trying to better the platform in the name of freedom of speech? What remains certain however, is that Musk failed to provide Twitter employees with proper notice of their termination. Employees are taking a stand with #StopToxicTwitter and class action lawsuits. While this is just the beginning, it certainly is not the end, and much more can be expected to unfold within the coming weeks.
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