A week after being bought by Elon Musk, Twitter has pledged to lay off half its workforce while launching major projects and fighting users, advertisers and associations worried about transforming the influential social network.
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According to a document sent to social network employees who were thanked and consulted by AFP on Friday, “approximately 50% of employees will be affected by the ongoing layoffs at Twitter”.
The California company, which employed nearly 7,500 people at the end of October, emailed thousands of people announcing the temporary closure of its offices.
“As announced earlier today, Twitter is reducing its workforce to improve the health of the company. These decisions are never easy and it is with regret that we are writing to let you know that your Twitter post has been affected. Today is your last day of work (…),” says one of the emails consulted by AFP.
On Thursday evening, Twitter wrote to all of its employees to warn them of the impending layoffs, telling them that offices would be “temporarily closed” and access to ID cards “suspended” to “protect the safety of all employees as well as those of to.” guarantee systems and data from Twitter”.
“Love by the Tweeps”
When Elon Musk took control of the company last Thursday, he had dissolved the board of directors, fired executives, taken over as CEO and taken the company private.
Shortly after the layoffs were announced, Twitter employees took to the social network to announce their job cuts, in part using the hashtags #LoveWhereYouWork and #OneTeam. ).
“All my thoughts, respect, energy and love today go to the tweeps (nickname of the Twitter staff, editor’s note) around the world. Together we have built the most incredible application in the world,” Damien Viel, general manager of Twitter France, wrote on Friday.
On Thursday night, five recently fired Twitter employees filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for failing to obtain the 60-day notice period required under US law for massive layoffs (the Warning Act), the text of those consulted by AFP said Legal action.
Executives, marketing and design departments appear to be particularly affected, according to an employee who wished to remain anonymous.
Elon Musk, who first renamed himself “Chief Twit” (“twit” means “cretin” in English) and then “Twitter hotline operator”, on Friday brought in Tesla developers to do the work of the Twitter employees check over.
“Destruction in Real Time”
He also initiated the overhaul of several products, including the paid subscription and account authenticity verification system, and set a sustained pace. Some engineers slept in the office for a few nights.
This confirms the change in corporate culture – several executives resigned of their own accord this week, more than 700 people have already resigned this summer of their own accord, according to one employee.
“We are witnessing the destruction of one of the most powerful communications systems in the world in real time. Elon Musk is an unpredictable and contradictory billionaire, he poses a threat to this platform that he is not qualified to lead,” responded Nicole Gill, co-founder of Accountable Tech, one of the NGOs urging advertisers to put pressure on the new boss .
According to his critics, because the libertarian entrepreneur promotes a vision of freedom of expression that requires a relaxation of moderation rules for the platform’s content, he risks opening the door to a resurgence of abuse (harassment, language hatred, misinformation, etc.). ).
Several groups have already decided to suspend advertising spending on Twitter, including American agribusiness giant General Mills, American automaker General Motors and its German competitor Volkswagen.
On Friday, Musk blamed Twitter’s revenue slump on “a group of activists who have been pressuring advertisers, despite the fact that content moderation hasn’t changed anything and we’ve done everything we can to appease activists.”
“This is complete rubbish! They’re trying to destroy freedom of speech in America,” added the bubbly 50-year-old.