Is Twitter about to shut down for good? Latest from Musk’s social meltdown, LIVE

2022-11-18T11:30:57.015Z

The World Cup is this weekend, one of the biggest sporting events of the decade, will Twitter be able to cope with the surge in traffic and tweets?

2022-11-18T11:20:47.628Z

Please don’t leave me

According to one source, “far fewer than expected” developers have hit yes on Elon’s Twitter 2.0 call, causing him to relax his remote working policy. Gergely Orosz reports that Elon “having meetings w top engineers to convince them to stay.” 

2022-11-18T11:10:08.740Z

A very interesting development overnight saw Twitter alert employees that “all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended.” According to Zoe Schiffer, this is because “Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company” and because they need to know which Twitter workers they need to cut/keep access for because so many have been fired. The offices will reopen on Monday. 

“Please continue to comply with company policy by refraining from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere,” employees were warned. 

2022-11-18T10:56:53.676Z

Elon doesn’t seem too worried… 

2022-11-18T10:48:47.552Z

Someone is projecting slanders against Elon Musk onto Twitter’s San Francisco HQ, calling him a ‘Space Karen’ amongst other things. 

2022-11-18T10:42:49.017Z

According to The Verge “multiple” critical teams in Twitter “have now either completely or near-completely resigned.”

2022-11-18T10:40:44.338Z

How did we get here?

• April – Musk bought Twitter in April, with even his offer and subsequent negotiations proving rocky, as there was plenty of back and forth about how many users Twitter actually has. 
• May/June – the deal goes on hold over Musk’s concerns about how many fake and spam bot accounts are on the platform
• July/August/September – Twitter Sues Musk in court, Musk countersues
• October – Musk resubmits his bid and a deal is finally struck on October 28
• The first firings – Musk immediately removed CEO Parag Agrawal and director of policy Vijaya Gadde
• November – Musk arrives at Twitter HQ and posts his infamous “let that sink in meme”
• November 4 – Twitter begins mass layoffs
• November 9 – Twitter unveils its controversial new Twitter Blue service, which will charge $7.99 and give users a coveted blue verified checkmark
• November 10/11 – Twitter is riddled with paid accounts posing as high-profile brands, including Eli Lilly, with a parody account tweeting that it was making insulin free, wiping billions from the company’s stock value
• November 11 – Twitter suspends Twitter Blue rollout
• November 15 – Musk fires an engineer who publicly corrected him, and plenty of others who criticized him internally
• November 16 – Musk issues Twitter 2.0 email, calling on employees to commit to “long hours at high intensity” or else take three months of severance. 
• November 17 – Hundreds of employees start to leave the company, with 75% of its remaining 3,500 workers possibly choosing to leave, including some “legendary” engineers and coders
• November 17 – Twitter locks everyone out of its San Francisco headquarters

2022-11-18T10:01:03.932Z

Reuters reports that hundreds of employees have decided to leave Twitter, following an ultimatum from Musk that they sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave. 

Musk has already fired half the workforce, and there doesn’t seem to be much hope for the remaining 3,000. While Elon says “the best people are saying” and that Twitter usage is at an all-time high, at least 110 employees have said publicly they’ve had enough. 

According to the report, more than 500 employees have written farewell messages in Twitter’s internal messaging tool. 42% of workers on Blind, an anonymous employment network site, said they were leaving Twitter in response to Musk’s ultimatum.