In news that surprises no one, Elon Musk has fired close to 4000 Twitter staff via email. And here is the thing, people knew ahead of time anyway.
Staff started to be locked out of systems and applications the night before the announcement, a prelude to the pending doom for half of Twitter's staff allegedly being laid off.
As Elon Musk tries to desperately claw back some money after paying $44 billion, it's hardly surprising that he is cutting costs, especially after some advertisers paused or suspended their Twitter advertisement spending because of the acquisition.
In the email allegedly not attributed to a name and just signed "Twitter", it gives the standard templated layoff methodology:
In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force
We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company's success moving forward.
Translation: the expensive purchase of Twitter we were forced to complete because of the court means we have to make some savings because we are bleeding cash.
On Friday morning after the layoffs, staff from departments including; ethical AI, marketing and communication, search, public policy, wellness and other teams began Tweeting about the layoffs. Many posting emojis and cookie-cutter messages.
It was evident to many before Elon even completed the purchase that teams centred on content moderation and restriction of speech on Twitter would be the first to experience layoffs. Musk has for a while stated where he stands on the bans of people like Donald Trump for a long time.
While the focus might be on Musk, all tech companies are feeling the impacts of global inflation and losses in the stock market. Many tech companies are down in value by upwards of 50%. And Twitter might be the first to announce mass layoffs, but it won't be the last. Expect to see mass layoffs throughout 2023 as the money cost continues to increase.
We should thank Elon, his swift destruction of Twitter means people will be looking for another platform and right now, no true Twitter competitor exists. Maybe it's time for Hive to step up and launch a Twitter competitor. Technically with Threads we've already got a Twitter on Hive.