Elon Musk, the CEO and founder of Twitter, announced that starting the next week, banned accounts that “have not breached the law or participated in severe spam” will be given a “universal amnesty.” He conducted a user survey asking if Twitter should provide the amnesty, seemingly oblivious to the fact that bots can readily manipulate such surveys. More than 3.2 million people voted in favor of Musk’s amnesty plan or over 72%.
Following a similar poll, Musk restored Donald Trump’s account over the last weekend. Trump has not tweeted since regaining access to his account, but he has continued to update his app, Truth Social. Late this week, Musk reinstated the accounts of the conservative satire website Babylon Bee, the right-wing provocateur Jordan Peterson, and the comedian Kathy Griffin (who had been teasing Musk before her account was blocked).
The newest development in the Twitter drama occurs a day after the business reportedly let go of another 50 or more employees without cause. They were fired shortly after the business implemented a code review program that requires engineers to submit samples of their work every week. According to Alex Heath of The Verge, dozens of engineers received termination notices via email the evening before Thanksgiving because their “code is not suitable.”
Others received a warning about their performance. “Note that not meeting expectations could result in your termination of employment…please use this opportunity to restore our confidence and demonstrate your contributions to the team and company,” that warning email read.
The fired engineers were reportedly offered four weeks of severance pay if they sign a separation agreement and waive any claims against Twitter. They had remained at the company after Musk laid off around half of the workforce. Last week, he asked the remaining employees to commit to working at his vision for an “extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0. Those who opted out (around 1,200 of the 3,900 who were still at the company as of early last week) were let go with the promise of three months of severance pay.
The latest batch of firings occurred just two days after Musk is said to have told employees that layoffs were done and that Twitter is hiring, with a focus on “people who are great at writing software.” One of the engineers Twitter turfed out on Wednesday is Ikuhiro Ihara, who led the drive to double the tweet character limit to 280 back in 2017. Twitter also let go of Ying Xiao, a senior staff machine learning research scientist who a colleague described to Platfomer‘s Zoë Schiffer as “the best ML modeler” around. It appears that some of the fired engineers were on H1B visas and now face a race to find a new job if they want to stay in the US.
Schiffer also reported that Twitter cut holiday pay for its remaining contractors right before a holiday weekend. That move came not even two weeks after the company culled thousands of its contractors. Musk is said to have slashed perks for employees this week too, including daycare allowances, home internet costs, and training — effectively cutting workers’ compensation packages.
These measures are part of Musk’s intense push to slash costs at Twitter, which owes at least $1 billion in annual interest payments on the loans he took out to help buy the company. Earlier this week, it was reported that Twitter has been stiffing vendors and contractors on payments, with some owed millions of dollars in back pay. Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment.
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