Elon Musk's Ego Threatens To Drive Twitter off a Cliff

In late October, when Musk took over, Twitter had over 7,000 employees; at last count, they now have 2,750. The problem is, these were not all unnecessary positions; Twitter has even tried to hire some back. Many had to do with content moderation. Of course, Elon's talking point, is that he is about "free speech." But we are likely to see a growing portion of his own free speech, complaining about the businesses abandoning Twitter, due to the lack of any policing of harmful content. It is understandable, that businesses would not want their advertisements to be placed alongside content that is counter to their brand image. One business that has decided to walk away from Musk's now poorly moderated app, is Apple, which had been Twitter's largest advertiser. Musk has addressed this, by addressing a tweet directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook, accusing him of being against free speech. No doubt there are many who will "support" Musk's words; unfortunately for Twitter's new owner, all those people's plaudits, will not actually support his business. I wonder how happy with Musk, they will be, if they will eventually all need pay user fees, because of such a great loss of advertising.

The other allegation of Musk, was that Apple was threatening to remove Twitter from its App Store. We have no verification of this. According to Zoe Schiffer, a reporter for The Verge, who specializes in stories about these giant internet companies, it is possible that, because Apple has a policy, requiring that all the apps in its App Store police for harmful content, and Musk's recent decimating of Twitter's moderators, who handled that policing, they may have been sent a "boiler plate" warning, that they were in danger of being kicked out, if they did not fix the situation. This would be completely within Apple's rights, to require of apps, listed in its App Store. It would have nothing to do, with Tim Cook, not liking Elon Musk's opinions. Just as it is an understandable business decision, for advertisers to not want to feature their ads among content filled with hate speech, or promoting child sexual abuse-- oh yes, Musk halved the size of the group, who was guarding the Twitter-verse from that, as well:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/priva...ated-twitter-team-tackling-child-sexual-abuse



Here are some more stories, of Elon's Twitter exploits:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...e-than-90-of-india-staff-leaving-just-a-dozen

<Snip>
Twitter Inc. fired more than 90% of its staff in India over the weekend -- part of global reductions by new owner Elon Musk -- severely depleting its engineering and product staff in a potential growth market.

The company employed just over 200 people in India, and the cuts left it with just about a dozen staff, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

India is a key growth engine for global internet companies such as Twitter, Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which are relying on its large potential pool of new online users. Yet the companies are also facing increasingly strict content regulations aimed at reining in big tech firms in the country.

About 70% of the jobs cut in India were from the product and engineering team which worked on a global mandate, one of the people said. Positions were also slashed across functions including marketing, public policy and corporate communications, the people said.
<End>



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...talks-with-africa-staff-after-poor-exit-terms

<Snip>
Twitter Inc. agreed to engage with fired staff from its only African office after they were offered poorer-than-announced severance packages.

Affected employees in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, have secured talks with Twitter after a letter sent requesting that the company comply with local employment law, according to a lawyer representing the staff. Around 20 people worked in the West African country’s office...

Elon Musk, who acquired the company for $44 billion last month, fired nearly all of the African team as part of sweeping cuts -- eliminating a division that had been seen as part of Twitter’s future. President Nana Akufo-Addo had tweeted in April last year that the office marked “the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Twitter and Ghana.” Jack Dorsey, then chief executive officer of Twitter, also said he sought to move to the country “at some point.”
<End>


This sounds less, to me, like a "genius," at work, and more like someone desperately trying to cut expenses for a business that he really couldn't afford, and which he doesn't know how to run, in a professional way. He is clearly willing to sacrifice investment in the company's future growth which, he apparently does not realize, will adversely affect his company in present. Time to start short selling Twitter shares.



This next news item is in articles only available to subscribers, but the following Business Insider headline is confirmed by a Bloomberg story, also telling of Twitter's trying to get essential workers, who were "accidentally" fired, to come back:

Elon Musk has fired so many Twitter workers by mistake that HR created an 'accidental termination' category to re-onboard employees



https://www.npr.org/2022/11/17/1137265843/elon-musk-fires-employee-by-tweet
<Snip>
Eric Frohnhoefer thought his tweets to Twitter CEO (and his new boss) Elon Musk explaining why there was a problem with the platform's speed was innocuous enough.

Musk had tweeted, "I'd like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries," blaming it on "poorly batched RPCs" (remote process calls).

Frohnhoefer responded to the post and said the billionaire was mistaken on the cause of the app's slow speed. He also suggested potential solutions.

Frohnhoefer had been a staff software engineer at the company for eight years, with an expertise on Android systems. In other words, he knew a thing or two about how the site worked.

"I feel like I didn't cross the line. I feel like I answered it appropriately. And yeah, obviously they saw it differently," Frohnhoefer told NPR.

There were some on social media that watched Frohnhoefer's exchange with his boss and saw it as problematic, and a potential fireable offense. But Frohnhoefer noted part of Twitter's culture, at least prior to Musk, was about being able to flag problems and to disagree when the company's product was at issue.
<End>


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...layoffs-are-bad-example-of-how-to-fire-people
<Snip>
There may not be a good way to fire people. But there absolutely is a bad way. In fact, several bad ways. And Twitter Inc.’s self-appointed chief twit, Elon Musk, seems to have hit on most of them. Some employees were laid off by email. Others found they’d been locked out of their work laptops and messaging channels before they even had official word of their dismissal.

There was no mention by Musk of the most important reason the firings were necessary—namely that he needs to find some $1.2 billion to pay the interest on the debt he raised to fund the deal. Worse: He’s repeatedly seemed to blame employees for the company’s problems.

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, a 2014 broad how-to guide for startup founders, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz outlines five steps to do layoffs properly: Get your head right; don’t delay; be clear in your own mind why you’re firing people; train your managers; and address the whole company.
<End>


The article also points out the negative impact, on company morale, of mass E-mail firings. It seems that Elon has a lot, still, to learn.



I'll end with this article, from the Guardian, written by former Secretary of Labor, under President Clinton, Robert Reich.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...iring-frenzy-at-twitter-now-hes-paying-for-it

<Snip>
So when Musk fired half of Twitter’s workers, then threatened to fire any remaining dissenters and demanded that the rest pledge to accept “long hours at high intensity” – leading to the resignations last week of an estimated 1,200 additional Twitter employees – he began to destroy what he bought.

Now he’s panicking. Last week he tried to hire back some of the people he fired. On Friday he sent emails to Twitter employees asking that “anyone who actually writes software” report in, and that he wanted to learn about Twitter’s “tech stack” (its software and related systems).

But even if Musk gets this information, he probably won’t be able to save Twitter.

With most of Twitter’s employees gone, most of its know-how to prevent outages and failures during high-traffic events is also gone, as is most of its know-what is necessary to maintain and enhance computing architecture, most of its know-where to guard against cyber-attacks, and most of its know-why hate speech (and other awful stuff advertisers want to avoid) is getting through its filters and what to do about it.

Without this knowledge and talent, Twitter is a shell – an office building, some patents and a brand – without the capacity to improve or even sustain its service.

 

Here is one of the alternatives to Twitter, which has benefitted from Musk's chaotic first steps: Mastodon has effectively doubled it's user base, adding 500,000 new users, since October 27th, according to techcrunch (below). As someone who doesn't typically use this stuff, I have not yet investigated, to understand the differences between this, and Twitter, so these articles will be as useful to me, as to anyone. But it is one of the platforms which former Twitter users, have already begun to move to.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/amp/


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ne...tter-users-will-and-wont-find-on-mastodon/amp


https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...ch/mastodon-twitter-explainer-trnd/index.html


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ep-up-with-surge-of-new-users-fleeing-twitter


https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-guide-everything-you-need-to-know


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wi...don-eugen-rochko-built-it-for-this-moment/amp


https://time.com/6229230/mastodon-eugen-rochko-interview/


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)


https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortun...ocial-ceo-eugen-rochko-twitter-elon-musk/amp/


https://joinmastodon.org/q


https://mastodon.online/explore

 

Have you ever considered.... Musk is right, and you are the one that is wrong..... just sayin'...

 

musk is right, for musk. i suspect he will profit from the collapse of twitter or tesla, but i am glad not to be his employee or investor.

 

Musk is right, and you are the one that is wrong.... It is his business, not yours.... when you can cough up $44 billion, then buy the company and show him the errors of his ways......

 

I still don't know what his ultimate plan is, but he is working hard to appeal to certain segment of people, but he is not doing a very good job at it if he aims to get involved in politics. He is an engineer at heart, and not so much CEO / politician kind of guy.

Anyway, he spent $44 billion on Twitter. With that kind of money he could have expanded his other businesses by buying companies with real assets like:

- Honda / Acura (high quality cars, motorcycles, aircraft. aircraft engines, outboard engines, generators and many other high quality engineering products). It would have cost him $43.2B
- Hyundai (cars, trucks, buses etc) worth $29.3B
- KIA (mid-size cars) worth $19.7B

 

Have you considered...reading a post, before replying? I had not offered my own, personal opinion, on how Musk should run his business. I offered articles, explaining that the thing of value, he was buying, with his $44 billion, was the expertise & know how of his employees. Then the first thing he did was fire half of them. That firing employees by email is a poor method, which not only lacks empathy for the workers, but which is going to damage the morale of those who remain, is something for which I, again, quoted an article by those in the know, of what I think common sense should inform anyone (or almost anyone, I guess I need say), that this is common sense, and well understood, by most successful businesses.

Are you aware that Twitter's revenue comes through advertisers? Again, Musk's management, has caused the company to lose advertisers, including its biggest one, Apple. Is it your argument, that this might be good for Twitter's business? They also seem to be losing users which-- along with being now understaffed to deal with both technical issues, as well as with the editing of content-- will only give more incentive to advertisers, to jump ship. Do you think most advertisers want to pay, to place their products among tweets encouraging child pornography? If that's what you & Elon think, I do feel very confident, that you are wrong about that; and I don't feel it necessary to actually buy & run Twitter, to comprehend this.

Tell you what: I know I took a bunch of snips, for my OP; just read the last one, to see what a bonehead move Elon made. After he fired half the staff (3750 people), another 1200 quit, because of Musk's other "adjustments" in the management/employee relationship. Now Twitter has been forced to try to coax some of those employees to return, in a sign that even Elon knows that he F'd up. Did you notice the article title, about HR having created a new category, of people fired by mistake, because it has happened to so many? What part of this, sounds to you, like someone who knows what he's doing?

Granted, my thread only related to the business aspect of Twitter. If Musk bought the business as his own personal plaything, then it wouldn't matter how poorly it did, financially. But I do not believe that even the richest man in the world, could afford Twitter, as his toy: which is why he has embarked upon his panicked & ill-conceived, cost cutting measures. Whether these changes make the platform "better," or not, is purely a matter of opinion, and not part of my argument. Who knows, maybe Musk will succeed in making Twitter as good of a site, as Parlor. But if he turns his top-shelf investment, into another Parlor, I will feel my argument has been validated, in spades.

 

It's his company, his platform. If you don't like it, you are free to go start your own.

 

Prediction: Elon doesn't want Apple to take a cut of his 8$ blue checkmarks, so he will claim that Apple removed Twitter from the app store.

Obviously not a super risky prediction, since he's already started laying the groundwork for that claim.

 

Megalomania is a real thing.

 

How would he possibly profit from Twitter's implosion-- is he short-selling his own stock, like crazy?

 

Musk is right, and you are the one that is wrong... how laughable the lefties of the world are trying to judge this man.

 

Elon, is that you?

 

Lefties are just pissy because he reinstated Trump's account (nevermind that Trump is not using it)

 

Just curious, but why would Tesla need or want legacy manufacturers?

 

So you recognize the collusion, but you don't call it out? Interesting. So Apple says, the world does. is that your theory here? And just for curiosity, do you feel that when Apple chooses to censor others for political reasons, is that what you want your corporations engaging in?

 

Reminds me of that Cartman line, "You will respect my author i tie"....

 

It's always amazing that people who's capacity for success is perhaps 1/10 of 1% of someone like Musk, feel confident in telling him what he's doing right or wrong.
As "Dirty Harry" once said- a man's got to know his limitations....

 

Absolutely. Personally I never had a Twitter account, but I can't help but wonder if his $44B investment was a good business move, when even Honda/Acura Corporation would have cost him less money, but as you say its his company now and he can do as he pleases. I do not pretend to know his ultimate goal for Twitter, but getting rid business / tech knowledge and driving away 50% top advertisers makes people scratch their heads. Its not a share-holder owned company so he answers to no one.

 

LoL. The most successful businessman in human history doesn't know what he is doing. Partisan media hacks and bulletin board posters know far far more than him.

I am in awe of the man's balls. He is going against the MSM, NGOs, UN, WEF, the American government, silicon valley, the Democrat Party, etc.... I am pretty sure he will lose but if he wins he will be the greatest American hero.

 

Why wonder? It isn't your life, or investment, so why do you care? Don't you regularly tell us that folks like Twitter could act as crazy authoritarian as they wanted, and now, you've suddenly changed your mind?

 

It's actually less than 1% for most of us because we were born into families that had less than 1% of the wealth he was born into.

 

I'm not "pissy" at all-- obviously, you are another one, who finds reading an OP, too onerous of a chore. Why should I care if Trump got invited back by Musk, when Trump turned him down?

My OP was about Elon's business ineptitude, in trying to manage this company, which is a much different animal, a far different type of business, than Tesla. The OP is full of examples of this.

 

I said no such thing, as you are suggesting. Apple has-- as no doubt, have others will many more advertisers-- opted to advertise elsewhere, since Musk has so substantially altered the quality of his platform. He has let go, among others, most of those who had kept Twitter free of posts encouraging child sexual abuse-- did you not even read my first two paragraphs, to the OP's first link? Now, perhaps you would find such content unobjectionable, or even laudable, as "free speech," but can you not understand businesses which would not want to associate themselves, with that sort of content?

 

The thing with Apple is not only advertising, but Apple is considering pulling the Twitter app from their app store, which would make it difficult for iPhone users to use Twitter.