Musk reportedly told Twitter staff that bankruptcy isn't out of the question at all-hands meeting
During an emergency all-hands meeting with Twitter employees, Elon Musk reportedly shared that the threat of bankruptcy is looming.
As we trek through another day in Twitter’s Elon Musk-led era, things are reportedly a bit dire behind closed doors. Elon Musk and other management are said to have called an emergency meeting with all employees, and in said meeting, Musk took a number of questions and concerns by employees. In that conversation, the health of the company came up and Elon reportedly said that Twitter might be in threat of bankruptcy if things don’t improve.
This emergency all-hands meeting reportedly took place on November 10, 2022, with various sources reporting on the details, including Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer and NYT’s Mike Isaac. It was in the meeting that Elon Musk answered various questions about the state of the company, what comes next, and how certain Twitter’s future is. Specifically, Elon Musk made a grim prediction if the company should fail to shape up to his expectations.
“Bankruptcy isn’t out of the question,” Elon Musk reportedly told employees.
This comes after a number of important staff just resigned and left Twitter, including its CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer. This also comes on top of a highly controversial rollout of Twitter Blue, which included axing the new official Verification checkmark system on Twitter. The situation at Twitter certainly hasn't simplified much since Musk took over. In fact, in many cases, it now seems to be more complicated and Musk’s words today regarding bankruptcy may be seen as indicative of that chaos.
Nonetheless, Musk continues to steer the Twitter ship. Whether the company actually faces bankruptcy or not remains to be seen. That said, there’s likely plenty more activity coming from Elon’s Twitter as he tries to make the company profitable. Stay tuned for further updates.
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TJ Denzer posted a new article, Musk reportedly told Twitter staff that bankruptcy isn't out of the question at all-hands meeting
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Twitter is seriously spiralling at this point. /Grabs popcorn
https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1590744874483339264?t=xlbDgnvNXFG6rKwK3hFH3g&s=19
"A senior member of Twitter’s legal team just posted this message in Slack:“Everyone should know that our CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer ALL resigned last night. This news will be buried in the return-to-office drama. I believe that is intentional.”"-
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Yes, all those roles are critical, and they have large orgs of people under them doing important work.
So when people are like "lol why is Twitter 7,000 employees it should just be a couple cloud engineers and two tech support people" real companies need real headcount for all sorts of non-technical things.
Perhaps cutting the company in half with zero deep research and then exposing it to all sorts of legal jeopardy was the final straw for these folks.
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This article lays it out pretty well:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23451198/twitter-ftc-elon-musk-lawyer-changes-fine-warning
Here’s my favorite part:
“Musk’s new legal department is now asking engineers to “self-certify” compliance with FTC rules and other privacy laws, according to the lawyer’s note and another employee familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to speak without the company’s permission.“ -
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Nintendo of America and mario middle finger was pretty hilarious. And he wonders why advertisers are dropping?
Anyone can imitate anyone as of yesterday with the release of twitter blue.
https://twitter.com/themattprov/status/1590476929294946304?s=46&t=Ia7G4bZAEaB-tBU6PrOmyg -
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And Tesla basically canceled their solar division lol. Hope no one ordered that. https://electrek.co/2022/11/10/tesla-cancels-solar-projects-scales-back-division/amp/
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from what I understand, it's not "tesla tech" really at risk in the model 3 corner cutting, it's shit like zip ties and shit DIY corner cutting on the assembly like because they literally ran out of components to complete the cars. so your seats might fall apart and your bumper will come disconnected but the "tesla shit" should be OK. at least how I understand it.
now, the software behind autodrive is a whole separate matter... that's not related to build quality whatsoever but could be still under "corner cutting" but that would be a WHOOOOOLEEEE separate discussion because that's pioneering destination based super advanced shit that has not existed before, ever.
model 3 door hinges and windows not being installed with the proper components, yea that's pretty fucked for sure. that's corner cutting without question.
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Last night’s rollout of a new policy in which Twitter users could purchase “blue check” verifications for $8 a month uncorked a wave of bogus accounts, each bearing a blue “verified” check, impersonating a swath of public figures — Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden.
Many have been taken down, but with half its workforce laid off, the company has struggled to contain them.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/10/fake-account-chaos-engulfs-musks-twitter-00066217 -
Good read here about the risks he’s taking and the consequences at a cyber security level and others.
https://twitter.com/briannawu/status/1590754422929653761?s=46&t=Ia7G4bZAEaB-tBU6PrOmyg-
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Pretty sure Twitter is under a strict consent order from the FTC for new products, so...yep:
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/10/does-twitter-have-any-employees-left-who-remember-that-the-company-is-under-a-strict-consent-decree-with-the-ftc/ -
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This is fucked up - https://twitter.com/EliLiIlyandCo/status/1590775525487906857
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it will get so much worse https://imgur.com/gallery/z1JOB3Z
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Yeah, but if your "move fast" initiative is to introduce a new feature that will be rampantly abused, while at the same time making sweeping layoffs that will make moderation overly difficult (both algorithmic/engineering driven moderation and just warm body moderation) you aren't really embracing an agile design approach, you're just a complete fucking moron.
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no one even had time to ponder if it would be rampantly abused. this is a *perfect* case study from management/ownership saying DEPLOY THE THING, IMMEDIATELY, IT IS WHAT WE NEED and refusing to go through proper rollout procedures.
no one there even considered abuse
no one there even considered moderation
no one there even considered algorithm impacts
no one there even knows what agile design is
it boils down to that last part. complete fucking moron.
IT GETS US MONEY, SO DO IT NOW OR BE FIRED. that was the extent of the concept/development/testing/rollout scheme.-
I agree this is a great example of an ignorant and overly confident executive/manager pushing a feature too quickly. But it's ALSO an example of an ignorant and overly confident executive/manager not listening to the immediate pushback and criticism. Both failures are not mutually exclusive.
The problem is, I assume Musk is someone who is accustomed to surrounding himself with yes men and doesn't tolerate any type of pushback and wants people with a "can do" attitude.
I guarantee there were people who were telling him EXACLTY why this rollout of the monetized blue checkmarks was going to be prone to rampant abuse, and I'm sure his response was along the lines of "figure it out, I don't want problems, I want solutions".
There's many, many failures that seemingly all lie at the feet of Musk on this one.
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Gonna be interesting to watch.
https://i.imgur.com/AnmfhvR.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/jJgRwVA.jpeg
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He thinks the types of people who were previously verified (ie journalists) are corrupt https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1590796536220639232
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We apologize to those who were have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account about the cost of diabetic care. Humalog is now $400. We can do this whenever we want and there's nothing you can do about it. Suck it. Our official Twitter account is @LiIlyPadCo.
https://twitter.com/LiIlyPadCo/status/1590842239349293059
It is very funny watching Elon learn what happens when the trolls aren't on his side.
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I have a question? If he liked the product enough to buy it, why did he fire the people who made it and kept it running? Why so many changes, and why the warning of mistakes to come? Didn't you have an idea of what you were spending your money for? Or was this a bad joke you got trapped into? Do you think you're rich enough to survive the failure of Twitter now that you are it's sole owner and decision-maker?
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ELON is doing this to 🔥destroy🔥 Twitter on purpose, because it’s bad for humanity. You can’t just take something away that’s working, otherwise people would revolt. So he’s tanking it on purpose. He’s secretly a saint! 😇 👼 He’s our savior! ✝️✝️
Oh Elon, you absolute genius. Next up solving climate change! -
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If my boss/owner was threatening bankruptcy I would be spending my workdays lining up a new job.. And not giving a single fuck about the Twitter job.
Elon got away with being a fucking bully with his car company but not so much here. 44 BILLION dollars, what an absolute waste of an ungodly amount of money nobody on Earth should have in the first place.
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Keep in mind most of his big profile business achievements of the last decade have been built upon him buying new startups in emerging markets where it was easy to drum up a lot of hype and financial support because there wasn't much public insight and scrutiny on the companies until Musk put them in the spotlight to hype them up.
With Twitter, this was a well established brand and company that was arguably one of the biggest and most influence social networks out there, with plenty of past public scrutiny both from the media and governments.
To me it seems like he probably thought he could bullshit his way into hyping up revenue for Twitter like he has for his previous companies. But the issue is that it's such a huge company with massive expenditures and customer loyalty that he can't just "pitch job" his way into success. I mean, in a way I'm sure that was part of his ability to secure the additional funding he needed for the $44b initial purchase.
But he can't just say he's changing the world with his Twitter acquisition when arguably Twitter has already passed it's world-changing apex and was already a company struggling with how to monetize the momentum.
I love seeing Musk completely fuck this up. I think suggesting Musk had some grand plan in place is giving him way too much credit. He was overly confident and riding the wave of decades of venture capitalist fueled growth convincing himself that he was some business genius, and now he's failing in the spotlight. It's glorious. -
he's just doing the same thing lots of billionaires do when they buy a sports team and horribly mismanage it into decades of failure because their old business success doesn't translate to sports. The difference is sports has a free monopoly so even the worst management failures still net you billions in profit.
His perception of Twitter's problems were wildly warped by his personal experience as a celebrity (his mentions are a disaster of scammers) and his right wing circle of idiots (David Sacks et al) who think people on Twitter actually believe blue checks are status symbols and wokeness is destroying the country which can be stopped by Twitter.
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Community Notes is now open to US tweeters
https://twitter.github.io/communitynotes/signing-up/
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Well the new $8 deal was working out pretty good. https://gizmodo.com/twitter-elon-musk-verified-impersonators-checkmark-1849768462
https://www.engadget.com/twitter-blocks-new-accounts-twitter-blue-114446338.html
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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1590884973535711232?s=46&t=Z3R8m5wumuzIzxdf1GtSPQ
Just making up the rules as they go. Like it’s some playground game and not a company with 250m daily active users.-
I still don’t see how this stops intentional trolling/abuse? Twitter has already been banning accounts intentionally trolling even if they have parody in the bio. So is this just clarifying the rules for people who are trying to cry fowl about accounts being banned?
There’s still nothing to stop people from buying blue check marks and changing their names and trolling Twitter until however long it takes to get banned. This won’t stop the most common trolling going on right now.
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Grey checkmark is back
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23452625/twitter-verified-official-blue-gray-check -
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The whole Twitter purchase may be at stake if this investor lawsuit (which has survived an initial dispute) over Tesla shares actually goes through (The suit was filed back in 2019 so predated any hint of Twitter)
Basically, the suit challenges if Tesla actually met certain goals that would have allowed Musk to buy Tesla stock at a steep discount, which is estimated to now be worth $56b - that covers the $44b he paid for Twitter.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-braces-56-bln-battle-with-heavy-metal-drummer-2022-11-11/
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