In Leaked Audio, Musk Tells Staff Twitter’s ‘Not for You’ If They Don’t Want to Work in the Office
Twitter screenshot of a message for Elon Musk
The billionaire has taken heavy flak for his efforts to shake up the microblogging service after buying it two weeks ago, with Twitter firing 3,700 people around the world, including top executives responsible for ‘content moderation’ (i.e. censorship).Elon Musk has responded to naysayers of his new policy that Twitter employees come into the office instead of working from home, saying office attendance works well in his other companies, and that anyone who doesn’t like it can quit or be fired.
“Let me be crystal clear, if people do not return to the office when they are able to return to the office – they cannot remain at the company,” Musk told staff at a meeting this week, with audio of his remarks leaked to media.
After a rebuttal from one employee, who pointed out that Twitter’s offices are not all in one location, and that workers wouldn’t always be in one given location, Musk countered by comparing the social media company to Tesla, and ordered employees to “maximize the amount of in-person activity.”“Tesla is not one place either, but you know, it’s basically if you can show up at an office and you do not show up at the office, resignation accepted – end of story,” he said.“There are plenty of people at Tesla and SpaceX that do work remotely…but it is on an exception basis for exceptional people – and I totally understand if that doesn’t work for some people,” Musk added, noting that critics would just have to accept that “that’s the new philosophy for Twitter.”Twitter joined dozens of other tech companies in encouraging widespread work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, and has left the policy in place ever since. Multiple studies have found that work from home hurts productivity, although other research has challenged these assertions.
WorldUN Worried Over Elon Musk’s Moves to Make Twitter ‘Haven for Free Speech’ – OfficialYesterday, 02:14 GMT
Twitter Could Go Bankrupt
Musk also offered insights into his fiscal plans for the tech company in the leaked audio, telling staff Twitter would need to turn a profit or go under. “We can’t scale to a billion users and take massive losses along the way,” he said, referencing the microblogging site’s massive global reach, but underwhelming revenue streams.The South African-born billionaire bought Twitter on October 27, with the deal costing him $44 billion.His new broom has included the firing of multiple top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, as well as Vijaya Gadde, the legal policy and content moderation chief who banned President Donald Trump in January 2021, and about half of the company’s employees, including over 90 percent of staff in India.Musk has promised to make Twitter’s algorithms more transparent, and introduced a new $7.99 a month verification system allowing users to get the famous blue check. The latter gimmick has wreaked havoc, with hundreds of fake accounts created to post meme after dank meme, forcing the company to temporarily pause the program.
ViralElon Musk’s Blue Tick System Spawns Spoof Account GaloreYesterday, 16:54 GMTThe billionaire’s push to make Twitter a haven for free speech has sparked concern from some corners, with the UN voicing fears that Musk could allow more “disinformation” on the platform. US President Joe Biden suggested this week that Musk’s acquisition of the company should be “looked at” to see if it poses a security risk. However, free speech activists left, right and center have praised his promises to restore freedom to the platform, and criticized anti-disinformation measures as a way for its purveyors’ to ban viewpoints they happen to disagree with, or which challenge dominant narratives.So far though, the company has not lived up to Musk’s cocky promises to “free the bird,” with Trump yet to return to Twitter. Other officials, pundits and public figures also remain consigned to digital purgatory. Late last month, Scott Ritter, the US Marine Corps intelligence officer who got banned for challenging the US narrative on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, tried returning to the platform by tweeting “Bucha was a war crime. Ukraine did it,” but was quickly banned again.
AmericasDisinformation Crusaders: How Big Tech Became US Blob’s Executioner of Free Speech2 November, 15:06 GMT
