Elon Musk, a billionaire previously known mostly as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been at the center of controversy since purchasing social media platform Twitter last month.
As of Friday, it appears that the company has lost most of its staff after Musk told them they would have to be “extremely hardcore” in a midnight email sent out this week.
“Earlier this month, I chose to leave my position leading trust and safety at Elon Musk’s Twitter,” said Yoel Roth in an opinion piece published Friday by The New York Times.
He said that Musk’s policies since taking over the company have been “sudden and alarming for employees and users alike,” including his “rapid-fire layoffs and an ill-fated foray into reinventing Twitter’s verification system.”
While blue check marks have been used to mark accounts that Twitter’s team agreed were notable (to prevent imitation) Musk’s plan was to offer the check marks for $8. In the wake of paid verification’s rollout, Satan was verified, as well as one claiming to be the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company.
In addition to layoffs, Twitter has also been bleeding staff through resignations, said Roth.
Musk has tweeted a lot about his intentions with Twitter, from making comedy “legal” to “like open-sourcing the news” and has stressed that he wants to change content moderation policies. Yet, he has not been able to change some elements of the existing system, in part due to laws and advertiser concerns.
“Mr. Musk has made clear that at the end of the day, he’ll be the one calling the shots,” said Roth. “It was for this reason that I ultimately chose to leave the company: A Twitter whose policies are defined by unilateral edict has little need for a trust and safety function dedicated to its principled development.”
Platformer managing editor Zoë Schiffer has been following the Musk fallout at Twitter closely over the past weeks.
She tweeted Friday that Musk has sent this email to Twitter’s engineering team: “Anyone who can actually write software, please report to the 10th floor at 2pm today. Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past 6 months.”
Schiffer noted that Twitter told employees Thursday that the offices were closed and badge access was suspended until Monday.
“Employees are extremely confused,” she said.
The New York Times also confirmed that the email went out. Apart from the 50% of Twitter’s 7,500 full-time employees laid off by Musk, and around 1,200 of the 3,700 that remained Thursday had quit, said the outlet.
One of them, Peter Clowes, explained why he left in a tweet thread.
“I left because I no longer knew what I was staying for,” he said. “Previously I was staying for the people, the vision, and of course the money (lets all be honest). All of those were radically changed or uncertain.”
Clowes also said that “Wednesday offered a clean exit and 80% of the remaining were gone. 3/75 engineers stayed.”
While he said that he hopes that Twitter succeeds, many users have been tweeting goodbyes to each other for weeks. Some are opening new accounts on proposed social media alternatives such as Mastodon and Post.
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