Elon Musk lays off extra Twitter workers, together with hard-core loyalists: ‘Appears like I’m let go’

The Data first reported on the layoffs, saying the corporate let go of at the least 50 workers on Saturday throughout completely different departments, together with engineers who assist maintain the social community working.

The layoffs additionally included “hardcore Musk loyalists,” tweeted Zoë Schiffer, who covers the corporate carefully for Platformer. She added that the layoffs included “a ton of surprises.” For example, she tweeted, among the many laid off was Esther Crawford, chief government of Twitter Funds.

One senior product supervisor, Martijn de Kuijper, tweeted that he’d been locked out of his e mail account. De Kuijper, who based Revue, an editorial e-newsletter software Twitter acquired in 2021, tweeted: “Waking as much as discover I’ve been locked out of my e mail. Appears like I’m let go. Now my Revue journey is de facto over.”

Since Musk took over the corporate in October final yr, Twitter’s headcount has fallen by over 70%, and its chief income, promoting, has fallen considerably. 

Musk has tried to generate income in different methods, however up to now these efforts have achieved little to enhance the corporate’s monetary place. Amongst these efforts has been Twitter Blue, a month-to-month subscription service that features a blue verification test mark. That service received off to a rocky begin when trolls used it to impersonate manufacturers and celebrities. In keeping with The Data, by the center of final month solely about 180,000 customers had signed up for the service.

Many advertisers have been cautious of the place Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” would take the platform. That didn’t cease Musk from wading into numerous sensitive subjects this weekend, even amid the layoffs.

Musk got here to the protection of Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert,” after newspapers throughout the nation canceled the sketch for feedback they referred to as “racist,” “hateful,” and “discriminatory.” Adams had described people who find themselves Black as members of “a hate group” from which white folks ought to “get away.”

Musk tweeted: “For a *very* very long time, US media was racist in opposition to non-white folks, now they’re racist in opposition to whites & Asians. Similar factor occurred with elite schools & excessive faculties in America. Perhaps they’ll strive not being racist.”

Musk additionally this weekend applauded a Saturday Evening Dwell opening monologue by Woody Harrelson referring to COVID vaccines and the pandemic. The actor talked about one of many “craziest scripts” he’s learn.

“So the film goes like this,” the actor defined. “The largest drug cartels on the planet get collectively and purchase up all of the media and all of the politicians and pressure all of the folks on the planet to remain locked of their properties. And folks can solely come out in the event that they take the cartel’s medicine and maintain taking them time and again.”

“I threw the script away,” he then joked. “I imply, who was going to imagine that loopy thought? Being compelled to do medicine? I do this voluntarily all day.”

Should tweeted in reply, “So primarily based. Good work @nbcsnl!” 

When one Twitter wrote, “Prepare for the meltdowns” in response to the monologue Musk replied: “Perhaps they [media outlets] don’t notice that their propaganda is mistaken?”

Musk additionally chimed in on the origins of the pandemic after the Wall Avenue Journal reported Sunday that the U.S. Vitality Division was leaning towards the lab-leak idea, becoming a member of the FBI in that regard.

When fellow PayPal alum David Sacks shared the article and tweeted that Anthony Fauci, former director of the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses, and others have been behind a disinformation marketing campaign in regards to the lab origins of the coronavirus, Musk replied, “Precisely.”