Welp, it looks like Twitter is circling the drain, and most tech engineers are now saying that Twitter won’t exist in any functional form by the end of next week. It might become completely dysfunctional by the end of the weekend by the way things are going right now. So how did we get here? Three weeks of Space Karen’s leadership, basically. On Tuesday, Elon Musk sent an office-wide memo telling all remaining Twitter employees that they would need to sign a loyalty oath – promising to work 16-hour days and be “hardcore” – or else they would be let go and would receive three months’ compensation. As you can imagine, many employees refused to sign the oath of Space Karen. It was so bad that by the end of business Thursday, there was a mass exodus and Musk maybe locked himself out of the building too?
Hundreds of Twitter’s remaining employees have resigned ahead of Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” cultural reset of the company, according to internal Slack messages seen by The Verge and employee tweets.
The fresh purge of Twitter’s ranks comes after Musk recently fired dozens of employees who criticized or mocked him in tweets and internal messages. Musk then set a deadline of 5PM ET on Thursday for all employees to respond “yes” on a Google form if they want to stay for what he is calling “Twitter 2.0;” otherwise, today would be their final day of work and they would receive a severance package. After the deadline hit, hundreds of employees quickly started posting farewell messages and salute emojis in Twitter’s Slack, announcing that they had said no to Musk’s ultimatum.
Twitter had roughly 2,900 remaining employees before the deadline Thursday, thanks to Musk unceremoniously laying off about half of the 7,500-person workforce when he took over and the resignations that followed. Remaining and departing Twitter employees told The Verge that, given the scale of the resignations this week, they expect the platform to start breaking soon. One said that they’ve watched “legendary engineers” and others they look up to leave one by one.
“It feels like all the people who made this place incredible are leaving,” the Twitter staffer said. “It will be extremely hard for Twitter to recover from here, no matter how hardcore the people who remain try to be.”
Multiple “critical” teams inside Twitter have now either completely or near-completely resigned, said other employees who requested anonymity to speak without Musk’s permission. That includes Twitter’s traffic and front end teams that route engineering requests to the correct backend services. The team that maintains Twitter’s core system libraries that every engineer at the company uses is also gone. “You cannot run Twitter without this team,” a departing employee said.
Several members of Twitter’s “Command Center” team, a group of engineers that is on call 24/7 and acts as the clearing house for problems internally, also tweeted about their departures. “If they go down, there is no one to call when shit breaks,” said a person familiar with how the team operates. The team that manages Twitter API for developers has also been severely gutted.
Musk was seemingly surprised by just how many people resigned, and it’s rumored that he was trying to persuade many to stay on. He also suddenly softened on work-from-home options too, but then Musk ordered the Twitter HQ closed and disabled employees’ badges. There are rumors that Musk was/is worried about employee “sabotage,” which is pretty funny considering what he’s f–king done in the past three weeks.
Anyway, I haven’t figured out where I’m going next, social media-wise. I have an Insta but I never post anything there. I’ll still be on Twitter until the literal wheels come off and the platform becomes utterly unusable. After that, IDK! You can always find me here though.
A scrolling message outside Twitter's San Francisco headquarters has called @elonmusk a "lawless oligarch, space Karen, mediocre manchild, worthless billionaire" and more @6NewsAU pic.twitter.com/PyXz0YaZmF
— Leonardo Puglisi (@Leo_Puglisi6) November 18, 2022
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala in NYC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 2 MAY 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala in NYC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 2 MAY 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk sports $7500 Devil’s Champion – Leather Armor Set costume as he arrives with his mom Maye at Heidi Klum’s Halloween party in New York. Pictured: Elon Musk, Maye Musk BACKGRID USA 1 NOVEMBER 2022 BYLINE MUST READ: The Hapa Blonde / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Are you on mastodon already?
I love mastodon! It’s a really nice community/ies and I like the moderation. Took a minute to set up, but once I found some of my twitter chums I was flying. I’m under this handle there if you want to say hi… kaiser please join!
That’s good to hear. I signed up last night but can’t figure out how to find folks. Twitter was toxic but there were also amazing moments and I learned so much thanks to twitter folks. Watching twitter last night was hysterical but I’m going to be sad when it’s gone.
I feel so dumb but the first step on mastodon is to choose a server, how do you know which one to choose?
It’s not dumb! I stressed about it but apparently you can change later. The big ones might be a bit slow rn with all the uptake but your country should have one, or there’s ones for different interests. The main thing is to sign up and start following people you like or know, follow their followers, and everyone is feeling so enthusiastic they’ll follow you right back!
how did you figure out which server to join to be able to create an account?
I found someone else I was following on twitter and copied them lol but I honestly think it doesn’t matter at the beginning stages. More important is to use loads of hashtags when you post (“toot” lol) and in your bio and then people can find you who are interested in the same things.
thank you for your help! I struggle bussed my way to an account. I feel like it was created by someone my age who had myspace as a kid.
Yay! Well done! I’m going to toot #celebitchy so we can find each other…
For anyone interested in a lovely server, I’m on artisan.chat. It is really protective and cosy, this means they’d like you to use content warnings, annotate any attached images so that bind people are included and general not be horrible to people. There are lots of lovely images of crafts people are doing on the local timeline and the federated timeline that lists everyone is protected from the nazis, nasty porn etc….
I’m liking Mastodon myself. Just put your Mastodon handle out there and people can find you. I’m liking it much more than Twitter right now.
I really like twitter. As an introvert, I like to follow people I don’t know and get smart opinions about things… I know there are trolls and such on there but I’ve managed to curate a pretty good follow list in the past few years and am going to miss it. I don’t like following family members and friends because I don’t want to know about their lives LOL. It makes me depressed about mine. I also hate the ads and the superficiality of instagram.
That being said, I can’t find a search button for the life of me on mastodon… I’m on my mobile so maybe that’s the issue. I can’t find ANYONE because I dont even see where to type their handles.
I have no idea what Mastodon is but I’m disappointed that trends like #princeofpegging won’t exist anymore. Hope to find an equivalent on Mastodon
Talk about over playing your hand! Bye Bye.
I think Musk is pushing for bankruptcy so he can restructure all of his vast debt to more favorable terms for him.
YEP, he wants bankruptcy at this point. It’s not even a conspiracy story.
The new platform he’s created with his edgelord friends wouldn’t have the chance to compete with Twitter. So what do you do when you can’t let people choose what product to use? You don’t give them options. You make sure you monopolize the market.
Eliminating Twitter, gives him millions and millions of people missing a platform like it, and hey, what do you know, he made one!
But truth is, it’s been in the works for a long time already.
So he bought Twitter, now he runs it in the ground, takes the employees left and gives them a job on the new platform, and launch at a time where people are frustrated and sad Twitter is gone, and desperately need another space like it.
This is not a shock for anyone who knows business.
Watch for something BIG happening april-may next year with regards to his “new” platform.
He’s just executing his invasion.
He will not be happy with the discovery phase in bankruptcy. It’s going to get even nastier.
What a disaster.
I think Musk is trying to bankrupt Twitter so he can restructure his massive debt to terms more favorable to him.
I am no expert, but, from what I’ve read, the way that he bought twitter linked Tesla and Twitter, so if twitter crashes, Tesla will too. Since Tesla is tied to SpaceX, there’s a possibility that it will crash (heh) too.
This is why you have to stay active on multiple platforms. It is going to be SO HARD for some people to be without “The Twitter”. I wonder how many of his investors are going to sue him…
This is a good point, especially for those running a business. Instagram went down for a day or so a while back, and people were freaking out, as it was their sole platform for their work. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!
He is going to get SOOOOO sued.
I’m very curious about what will happen with the investors. What happens, for instance, when you make billions of Saudi cash vanish with nothing to show for it? I’d worry about more than lawsuits.
@Lizzie There is a theory Elon is doing exactly what the Saudis wanted, which is ending one of the free speech platforms their country has access to, look up Arab Spring.
@AlishaB’s comment reflects the only theory that makes any logical sense to me. Pure speculation: The Saudis funded Musk’s purchase of Twitter (and paid him who knows how much else on top of that), and in return Musk agreed to burn Twitter to the ground. Mission (almost) accomplished. Musk sold his soul, and his reputation, to the highest and most evil bidder. I hope another, even better Twitter replacement rises up in its place so that protestors, resisters, and supporters have a place to communicate freely, openly, and easily the next time some serious s&*t goes down. Maybe it’s Mastadon. I’m going to sign up today.
During the Arab Spring, many regimes simply blocked internet access. It’s easy enough, plus tanking Twitter won’t stop freedom of speech around the world. Moreover, why now? There’s no uprising in Saudi Arabia & the regime can easily police speech in its borders.
Elon separates fools from their money, then does whatever he wants. In this case, it just happened to be a lot of money & the fool happened to be a prince.
He’s broken beyond repair the one social media site that was worth anything. It was community. He’s such a dumpster 🔥.
This is how I feel. Twitter always made me laugh and it gave me insight into what was happening in the world in real time. RIP, Twitter. You were loved.
Twitter ain’t perfect but it is LOADS better than most social media sites. I’ve been gradually weaning myself off of the site for almost a year now due to life events that prevent me from emotionally investing in politics the way I usually do and the timing is pretty much perfect because this does seem like we’re standing on a precipice here. Space Karen can get f*cked.
Musk was so cartoonishly incompetent (!) it makes me wonder if he sort of did this on purpose? Genuine question, because I don’t know: à la Batgirl from WB which was never brought out after being completed, does EM get some kind of tax write off for destroying Twitter after buying it? Is he suppressing some kind of scandal (which considering his overall incompetence would have to be something major, and major is an understatement) by obliterating this social media platform?
He’s only doing it on purpose if he’s also trying to tank Tesla. He used a lot of Tesla stock to get control of Twitter, and in addition to it’s quality issues, Tesla stock is tanking. He must know how to get tax write offs since he never pays.
I also think Twitter was broken on purpose. Maybe it’s too powerful of a social movement tool and this stops grassroots organization, protesting and amplification of uprisings. This effectively silences a major voice of the people while we regroup on a new site. I don’t know, but it sure seems like he’s throwing gas on a fire while claiming to be trying to put it out.
I was wondering the same thing. Elon is a toddler but his incompetence throughout this has been on another level. I also wondered if there was more to it. Trump had 287million forgiven in debt one year that he was able to write off one year as losses and avoid paying taxes because of it for years. Maybe this gets Elon Musk that as the losses will be happening the year he made money selling Tesla stock? Then again, he’s still on the hook to investors?
I don’t think it’s on purpose because it makes him look ridiculous and moronic and since he fancies himself as a genius, its ego wouldn’t allow it. There must be more insidious and less public ways to tank a company.
I don’t think he did it on purpose, he’s dumb enough to believe himself the smartest of them all so I’m sure he thought he was going to “save” twitter. But I’m less sure than his investors, aka the people that gave him the money to buy twitter, didn’t have something like this in mind. They probably thought that either they would control twitter, or Musk would destroy it. They probably didn’t expect it to happen this soon, but Musk can only exceed expectations when he’s doing stupid shit.
It certainly seems deliberate to me. On another note, love the scroll they had on the Twitter building! Hoo boy, don’t make your engineers mad!
Came here to say the same thing.While I know he’s crazy, was he really THIS stupid??
I think he was guaranteed some kind of support/incentive/oil billions for squashing civil unrest in the Middle East, as well as all aggrieved oligarchs & kleptocrats in the US who also have a vested interest in killing such an efficient global platform and suppressing democracy everywhere. Fkn bastards. Pigs who cannot pull themselves away from the trough…more, more, more.
Who’d agree to work 16 hour days, and sometimes 7 of those per week for this egomaniac? Musk deserves to go down the drain.
People with visa issues can’t quit or they have 60 days to find a new job or gtfo. During Christmas. In a down economy.
As Bugs Bunny would say: What a maroon.
This insult does not get enough attention….THANK YOU!! He is, in fact, a MAROON! (I need to stop swearing at the computer & various idiots, this is a nice substitute.)
I don’t recommend embracing that term as an insult as that was a moment of WB using Bugs Bunny to dog whistle bigotry for the entertainment of white audiences.
Maroons were Black folks who escaped enslavement and set up communities away from slavery.
https://www.thoughtco.com/maroons-and-marronage-4155346
Musk is more overseer and cracker than the awesomeness that was the Maroons.
Thank you for that link! I always thought Bugs was mispronouncing “moron” which wasn’t a great term at the time either (although usage has changed, it was then a term meaning a person with an IQ btw 50-70).
Ooops, REALLY did not know this, at all! I hate that Bugs was a racist tool…people really are the worst, past and present. Thanks for the information!
Back to calling everyone a f**kwit. So hard to be insulting without the basic cusswords, isn’t it? I guess that’s why they are classics…
I, too, thought the word was a variation on the derogatory ‘moron’, I did not know of its racist implications as well. I love this site & its commenters! Always learning!
Yes, don’t call Musk a maroon, please don’t disrespect the Maroons. The Maroons I know intimately (as I am an American of Jamaican heritage) are a brave and fierce people who escaped the slave boats as the boats approached the island and managed to live as free people in the rugged mountains. Their captors could never regain control.
Space Karen 😀
To be honest, I didn’t expect it to become this messy this quickly.
Whether it’s true or a Twitter rumor, I thoroughly enjoyed the news that Musk, employees, others were either locked out or locked in at the end of the day. What a tool. He has literally set billions of dollars on fire every single day, let alone demolishing the platform. I’m staying to the bitter end, too, but have no idea what I’ll do with all that freed up time. Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel, is exploring the idea of launching a new SM platform, but without all the evil features that have allowed organized hate and disinformation to flourish. If he does, that’s where I’ll land.
Counter.social has movie nights! We could use the platform to create a real-time message board during the next Sussex interview 🙂
I’ll check it out!
Counter.social is my social media bolt hole. It’s generally more mellow over there.
C-Shell, I hope Christopher Bouzy does launch a new SM. That would be awesome and we know that he will do everything to keep bots and haters off of the site. I would LUV that.
If what some posters said above is true, it sounds like Musk is supposed to be launching a new SM. I would never join whatever he is behind. I wonder if he really thinks that will fly? Can you imagine the cesspool that will be?
He lasted less than one Truss. Lettuce triumphant again.
Touche..you just made me spit out my coffee! LMAO
Paraphrasing The Royal Report, “ Elon Musk will not romaine the head of Twitter, lettuce discuss next steps”.
Emily, how many Scaramuccis is that? I always get confused about the conversion. 😂
@ Roo – I think it’s two? I’m a little fuzzy on the conversion also, lol.
A scaramucci is 10 days, so Musk is just over 2 scaramuccis, or about half a Truss, in to his leadership of Twitter.
Haha Brilliant!
😂😂😂
Am loving that scrolling message to Musk on the front of Twitter HQ – the spirit of Twitter lives!!!!
Even thou I never really used Twitter per se – am a regular viewer of the content as it can be the best source of entertainment and truth out there. MSM can’t control SM and Twitter was one of the big platforms were people could be heard. RIP but I think that another platform will rise from its ashes without Musk and Dorsey. Let’s not forget Dorsey was all for Musk taking it over.
The news scroll on the Twitter HQ is the candy decor on the icing on this cake. 🍭🤣🍭🤣
And it’s all over tik tok lol
Ha-Ha
“Space Karen” is such an insult to women. Musk manages to be his own special breed of self-centered, unaware, in empathetic brand of white male, that most of us know runs rampant in society.
Super funny how middle-management white men don’t know how to respond to a global crisis and continue the stupid work rules that white men developed in the 50s, where everyone else stayed at the office, while management went out. got hammered, played golf and got paid.
Times are a’ changin’ fellas. Try to keep up
“Karen” is only an insult when it’s directed at the entitled, racist and aggressive white women who attack and belittle POC.
Mixed feelings. I love the Karen trope because it gives us a short hand for shaming white entitlement. The gendered nature of the trope is a bit sexist, but it stemmed from a rash of white women being absolutely horrible. And also Space Karen is a hilarious slam. Is it sexist? Like calling someone a pussy? Or is it a gender neutral insult with female undertones, like asshole is with male undertones?
Of course twitter isn’t going to last. It took me years to figure out how to really use it LOL and now it’s almost over and I have to learn a new SM platform. Not TikTok, please, can we not go to Tiktok? I tried it, I did, but I just can’t get it. I don’t know how Babs is so good at it and I’m not lol.
Babs is a gift. We don’t deserve her. Am terrified something will happen to her before she straightens me out on the homefront. She is a genius.
What an entitled inept stooge he is. All bluster no bite.
But…..why did he do this? It seems like totally deliberate destruction.
Agreed..does he have anything to gain if it goes down? Like who is going to sign up for 16 hour days? Chief Twit is an apt title.
I think people are looking for deeper meaning beyond the truth, which is that Elon is not a genius & not good at running businesses. Firing people who criticized him? He already did that at SpaceX. Micromanaging? He does that at Tesla, to the detriment of the business (then there’s the rampant racism & sexism he allows). He’ll be sued for the rest of his life for his ego-driven shenanigans.
He’s just a white man who’s just been allowed to fail up & has been given billions because he’s fooled other men into thinking he’s more than he is. It’s an emperor has no clothes situation.
100% Lizzie! There is a total cult of personality around Elon and he managed to fool everyone into thinking he’s a genius, when in fact it was all the smart people around him who propped him up. And since his ego was too big for him to walk away from the Twitter deal, he flailed his way into it and it was much too big for him to handle. I just had to snort at all the breathless articles about his nefarious plans to take over the world by tanking Twitter. Now he owes $1 billion interest on his Twitter purchase every year and he won’t be able to pay that without destroying all his other companies and bankrupting himself. And how is he going to take over the world with no money?
Isn’t it odd the way some people simply refuse to believe their own eyes. Instead, they insist that “he meant to do that” ridiculous thing. Elon Musk may just be incompetent at this, and when you couple that with his arrogance and a strong sense of entitlement bad outcomes usually follow. How about that?
I have many conflicting feelings. While I personally canceled my account months ago, I still click on numerous twitter links (usually meme, oh I will definitely miss the memes). Or use Twitter search (it still worked for me) to see what BTS of the Sussex Squad was up to.
Twitter was a mix of good and evil, but it was tilting more towards evil in recent years with QANon, MAGA, bots and smear campaigns. It was becoming a national security threat as far as I’m concerned.
Still, Twitter disappearing is going to cause a HUGE vacuum and Lord knows what is going to take its place. I will probably read every postmortem analysis that comes out in the next year.
Twitter is vastly important.
Immediate updates on emergencies, missing persons, hurricanes, etc.
Activists organizing, especially in countries where it’s not allowed (like SA, how convenient).
But also, for people who need help with ent, groceries, housing.
Disabled communities coming together in ways that they couldn’t before.
An awareness of the needs of others.
It will be missed.
That being said, if you still have Twitter, do your research before joining a new SM platform. Check out grassroots people, who post what’s really going on. Counter social is NOT it.
Be careful out there.
Good point. How can a company company that can amass up to $900M annually be ????
Plenty of people got by without ever engaging with Twitter. We would be fine even if another platform didn’t take its place.
@Ange I agree. Jeez, twitter or no twitter the world still turns. Never went on Twitter, and was still in the loop.
I don’t know if anyone at Celebitchy has the time or interest in running one, but I’d love to see a Celebitchy Discord Server.
I love Discord!
Think how much good that money could have done. Instead he has wasted $40 billion to tank a business. It is disgusting. That money could’ve saved a lot of lives.
Considering how heavily Twitter is used, not just be “regular” people but also by governments and politicians themselves, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Big Tech companies brought it – even if they literally only buy it for a dollar or something.
Might not happen *now now* but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens at all.
That’s some real HBO Silicon Valley energy there. Hooli, anyone?
Musk may have done this deliberately to tank Twitter, but the old Board of Twitter shares some blame in this Hot Mess Express. When Musk first backed out of the deal to purchase, his reasons were ridiculous and it was clear he had no idea what he was doing; instead they took legal action to force the sale to a moron of breathtaking proportions. They should have breathed a sigh of relief and moved on. Greed got the better of them and the demise of Twitter will forever be a part of their legacy now as well.
This. This this this.
Izzy, they had a duty to the shareholders to get the best deal possible. They got a nice premium on the stock price.
Space Karen! That’s great!
Does anyone know if there’s a way to download all your old tweets? I am not sure I want to do that, who wants to look at their social media in 2009? lol. But it makes me sad to lose that part of my internet life. I don’t spend much time tweeting these days, but I do scroll through looking at accounts I follow almost every day.
It’s bananas watching this ship go down so spectacularly. I feel for the employees caught in the ego of one rich man.
You can request your archive, but I’m not sure if you’ll get it this late in the game. I requested mine before the Great Twitter Lockout. We’ll see if I actually get it. Be prepared for a huge file. My friend’s came in at 17gb. She a heavy gif/video poster.
You can go to your settings and request an archive. The thing is, someone has to be working to process that request. I got mine last week, just in time. I hope you can get yours!
Like other people said you can request an archive of your tweets. It was working yesterday but things are going down fast, so it may not work. If you want to try it, you should make sure that any 2FA you have set up goes to your email and not your phone, because 2FA on phone definitely doesn’t work now.
Thanks y’all! I don’t know why I didn’t think to do it sooner.
I thought it would be tanking but NOT LIKE THIS!
Elon muskrat is still that kid who wants all the cool kids to like them and tries to buy the their friendship. He’s spent most of his life having people kiss his a$$ while probably talking sh@t about him behind his back. He’s a mediocre white man who steals others ideas and calls them his own. I’m sure he thought by buying Twitter every one would kiss up to him and I do think he’s surprised he couldn’t bullsh@t his way through this. I’m sure it hurt his fragile ego that people on Twitter and celebrities were mocking him and calling him out publicly. He’s such a thin skinned wanna be dictator who expected to trade on his name and return receive loyalty. I’m glad those employees are giving him a big f@ck you and they lock all the doors.
My favorite insult was Petulant Pimple. I’ll stay until the wheels fall off too. Twitter is my go to for news as everything was current and aggregated. I do feel Musk destroyed it on purpose, but I think he only meant to cripple it for the Saudis and Chinese. The full on destruction was not in his plans and is actually hurting Tesla. He and his Techbros will probably prop it up until he can beg, plead, order folks back. Until then, I’ll continue enjoying the site. I joined IG, but I’m not sure how much I’ll use it.
Did anyone see the viral thread about how his education claims are a big old lie? No physics degree. It came out in lawsuits. It might be why he bought twitter to suppress it coming out because someone was publishing his private messages.
He went to same university as trump. Very sketchy.
Musk also never went to Stanford.
It is very informative. There is nonexistent field of study in matriculation. He claimed to quality as a B.S. instead of a B.A etc.
It is the bookend of an earlier thread showing how much of a conman he is.
Therein lies the problem. The constant lies.
The notion that he is a “genius” based on these lies and then stealing other peoples ideas. What a POS.
If he weren’t the sort of mediocre asshole whose ego obviously requires made-up credentials to feel superior, and if he actually had a sense of humor, I might have thought that claiming to qualify as a B.S. was a jokey acknowledgement of the lie, rather than a particularly apt coincidence.
Could someone link the thread? Would love to go through it
https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1593307541932474368
You guys, I’m so bummed about this! Over time my Twitter feed has become a wonderful place, with lovely people on it. I didn’t block all the arseholes for the whole thing to be run into the ground… By an arsehole. Sigh. Digital detox for me, then.
I am super bummed as well. I’ve been on it forever and it’s the only social media I do. I also don’t think the average person realizes how important Twitter is for social cause coordinating, natural disaster information, crowd sourcing literally anything, etc, etc. Some (decent) billionaire needs to show up at Musk’s door with a handful of cash and buy the blue bird back.
I live in Northern California and Twitter fire reporting has saved lives. Live updates from these fire trackers was hours ahead of traditional media. It will be greatly missed.
F U Musk
All of this. Twitter is incredibly important for all those and more. In some countries with a compromised press it was vital for certain people. I will miss it for instant news and information.
Last night I couldn’t sleep and started to save my bookmarks and whatnot. Twitter was wild. People giving their whereabouts, people starting to post nudes (what if it’s saved at the last minute??!), Roxane Gay giving clues after all these years about her nemesis… a party while the house burns down.
Also the communities that formed, such as Black Twitter, Indigenous Twitter, Disability Twitter.
What a loss. I know everyone is blaming sad little Elon’s incompetence but you gotta think his Saudi investors are thrilled at this.
I’ve never seen someone set fire to so much money so quickly.
“If you want to know what God thinks about money, look who he gives it to.”- an old saying.
Case in point .
I used to follow the POTUS debates on Twitter. It was less stressful than watching them, and once I found some good commentators and funny, like-minded folks to follow I got plenty of information that way. This is a bummer. But my schadenfreude at his failure does make up for it some.
I am also in “The Saudis, Russians and Chinese gave him the money to buy twitter so that he would destroy it” camp. Twitter has been at the heart of many revolutions, Iran is one example where the mass of demonstrators coordinated themselves over twitter.
Also, California actually has a few decent labor laws and he must have known that you can’t force someone to work 16 hours a day – and it is nonsense that he would have you sign saying you agree to it – that is evidence of illegality.
I can see him taking money from dictators to destroy twitter, I can’t see him wanting to get sued for violating California labor laws.
Oh, wait, it is an LLC, they can’t sue him, they would have to sue twitter
They can (and I believe will) pierce the corporate veil and get to Elon personally. It wouldn’t be that hard – from a securities lawyer.
All the employees out of work if it goes under really pisses me off!
Between Musk tanking Twitter and Amazon announcing 10K layoffs a month before Christmas, WTH is going on with these tools?
If he loses Tesla also, even more people out of work. Plus, if you own a Tesla and need repairs you will be in trouble too.
I do agree that if it turns out he bought Twitter to run it out of business in record time, would anybody be surprised? Cult of personality = Musk. Trump. Because they certainly are not geniuses.
I hope this asshol@ was heavily invested in FTX. I am so sick of toxic rich men Nazis.
I’m now convinced that Elon and Jack worked together to put twitter to bed.
They’ll then go on to create blue-sky where they can set their own libertarian blue-sky dream. Elon was just willing to act as the bad cop to protect Jack’s so called ‘good guy’ image.
This is all part of the plan.
Will it work? Twitter was unique, due to the people, this will attract people who are libertarians.
Many of the people on Twitter avoid labels. It was ideas, politics, sports, hobbies, humour, animals, etc.
Nah, this wasn’t “the plan” — Saudi gave Musk billions so they could control a very popular social platform, so they and their ally, Russia, could flood it w disinfo. They didn’t intend to end up w cinders, ruins, in exchange for their billions. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s tragic-hilarious incompetence.
Ding ding ding!
It’s usually the simplest answer and this is it. I’d be surprised if there was a conspiracy to tank Twitter. Musk’s ego couldn’t handle it. Why would anyone sign up to lose 44 billion dollars? It was bought to control it but the Head Twit doesn’t actually know what he’s doing.
A likely scenario, but will add that it was further. There is an opportunity to replace western democracy and the dollar as the currency of choice. China may have number one, but is still done in dollars.
Disinformation will make citizens in these countries complicit in their subjugation via fascism due to their fears.
Musk reputation is now in tatters, but will it matter when he, the carnival barker, touts the next terrible investment scheme.
I don’t buy this, what was stopping the Saudis, Russians and Chinese from flooding twitter with disinformation before?
Twitter had been steadily increasing their security practices before Musk bought it. Users could report other users for a number of harmful actions including spreading false information, Twitter had a team that would investigate, and would deplatform users they found to be in violation of their policies (and their policies were evolving to align with new ideas about what hate speech, incitement to violence, threats and harassment, and misinfo/disinfo etc. are on social media). They deplatformed Trump in 2021 after he incited insurrection against the federal government. All of this — Twitter’s policies to up security and their enforcement of the policies, their growing responsiveness to user reports, were what Saudi wanted to stop. Their $44B investment and placement of their puppet Musk in leadership resulted, not only in a weakening of the platform’s security, but the death of the entire platform.
I left twitter when Musk bought it but I missed it so I went back. 🤷♀️ I didn’t realize how much I liked it. I’m sad.
Twitter is my absolute favorite. I rarely ever get on or use my instagram and facebook and tiktok is okay but I’m not tech savvy enough to do those fun videos. I guess once the curtains fall on twitter I’m back to boring facebook groups where Karens call the cops on teens for walking past their house smh.
Facebook is so f*cking boring. At least Twitter had some really funny people on it. Oh well. I am sure someone is working on a Twitter-like platform as we speak…it won’t be long.
A Twitter user made a hilarious observation about William’s purchases of
bots.
It has now be deemed as a terrible investment.
I am legit sad. I LOVE you on twitter 🙁
Wow imagine journalists doing their job instead of just reporting on what they see on twitter
I’m sad too. As Jackson posted upthread, Twitter is my only social medium and i’m already experiencing withdrawal. Where to next?
He is a narcissistic moron.
Well that escalated…..pretty much as anticipated, actually.
1. I don’t believe Elon is a genius. I think he’s a relatively smart person with good PR and has managed to get a bunch of people to want to hang out with him. But he hasn’t really invented anything, he’s not great at running businesses, and he has terrible social skills and no managerial skills at all.
2. I still wonder why he quit trying to get out of the Twitter buy – I have a feeling there’s a lot more story there, and his current babyman antics and trying to run it into the ground (because I don’t think he’s a genius but I don’t think he’s THAT dumb) are all part of that story playing out.
3. A lot of people seem to be very sad about Twitter failing, but take a longer view – Usenet was really great, and so were CompuServe forums, and we survived their passing. We’ll survive this too.
Social media is not actually necessary to sustain human life.
Unfortunately in a capitalist system, a job IS necessary, so I really feel for the H1B folks someone mentioned higher up who are taking the brunt of this.
I can’t wait for this asshole to have a movie about him. I nominate John Barrowman, he can be uglied up enough to be a passable Elon Musk, and I will watch.
1. I dumped Facebook in 2017, when everything came to light and all of the articles about what they knew and the role they played in the 2016 elections…or the role they didn’t play. Complete lack of monitoring of fake accounts and the amounts of disinformation that was allowed to thrive during that time. Reached out to all of my “friends” and told them of my plans to get off Facebook (not why, just getting of the site) and if they wish to stay in contact to send me a private message and we would exchange numbers to stay in touch. I had one person out of 800 reach out, aside from family. So much for those facebook “friends.”
Then to see Fuckerberg laying off 11,000 people the day after the elections and whining about he should have done better…boo-fing-hoo….how about you actually get business people involved and maybe use some of that ungodly amount of money you have to keep these people employed or set up some sort of hiring options/plan/training whatever for those 11,000 people to help get them new jobs.
2. I dumped instacrap about 3 months after facebook, because all of the stupid “reminders” to link my facebook account or to “join” facebook to find more people I might know. Also, it was just too dump for me, just couldn’t get into it. Like, I don’t care what you’re eating for breakfast whatever Jenner is popular now, so stop putting that crap in my feed!
3. I had Twitter for about 8 months in 2017, then realized just how dumb it was too….so dumped it too. Too much disinformation and misinformation, links to links to links to links for articles that no one actually read. So on and so on….it’s just echo chambers…so what’s the point?
Social Media is neither “social” nor “media”. Social is actually being around people and discussing things or just having fun together, in person. Media or at least what it used to, something that would report on a subject with some sort of a standard to follow. Of course I guess the term “media” has changed to mean a format in which information is displayed, which I guess then it would be media.
Regardless, I dumped all of those so called social media apps years ago, and much happier for it now.
I read the sites /articles I wish to and if so inclined to post a comment I do so. I typically remain civil as that’s how we should be.
Commitment oath of 16 hours a day? “For how long?” and “What is my pay increase to make doubling my workday worth it?” would be my email back to HR if it were me. Also, these people can’t work from home as per a previous mandate, so you’re telling me, the employees have to commute for however long their commute is, pack a breakfast, lunch, and dinner to take to their long ass work day, and then commute back? So this 16-hour work day is more like an 18-hour day with no pay increase, sleep disruption (cuz there is no way they can get a full 8 hours), and all for a company they don’t even own but just work for? Oh, and they can be let go at any time as they have seen because half of the workforce was fired immediately upon Elon’s entry? Boy bye.
Well it’s Saturday evening @ 6:01 PM PST. The orange shit gibbon’s account on twitter has been reinstated. I’m really sad about Twitter. I’ve enjoyed it. It’s just a toilet bowl now and everything is circling the drain I guess.
Why let Trump back in? WHY?
I hope Elon Musk goes broke! Just because he has now given that crooked, lying, vile, fascist Trump one more way to get attention.
Go on GTFO both of you!