Friday, November 4, 2022 3:41 pm33 Comments

• News

Elon Musk began laying off Twitter employees on Friday, culling its 7,500-person work force nary a week after completing his acquisition of the troubled social media service.

Kate Conger and Ryan Mac for The New York Times:

Twitter employees were notified in a companywide email that the layoffs were set to begin, according to a copy of the message seen by The New York Times. Workers were instructed to go home and not go to the offices on Friday as the cuts proceeded. The message, which came from a generic address and was signed “Twitter,” did not detail the total number of layoffs.

About half of Twitter’s workers appeared set to lose their jobs, according to previous internal messages and an investor, though the final count may take time to become clear.

Early Friday morning, the company began to notify some employees that they had been laid off. The emails, some of which were seen by The Times, varied by an employee’s region or country. One New York-based worker received an email saying their job had been “impacted” but that they would remain employed through a separation date in early February.

“During this time, you will be on a Non-Working Notice period and your access to Twitter systems will be deactivated,” read the email, which was also signed “Twitter.” Employees would receive details on severance “within a week.”

Mr. Musk also brought in more than 50 engineers and employees from his other companies, including the electric carmaker Tesla, to review the layoff lists of Twitter workers and the social platform’s technology.

On Thursday, workers got other signals that their workplace was changing. Twitter’s “Days of Rest,” which are monthly days off so employees can rest and recharge, were removed from their calendars, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

MacDailyNews Take: Actions have consequences. Employees are paid to work.

Fully bastardized, corrupted, and utterly tarnished from within, Twitter is now a private company that deserves a very thorough cleaning (hence the sink). – MacDailyNews, November 1, 2022

Broken long ago, Twitter is a slanted, myopic joke as it is currently run. – MacDailyNews, April 14, 2022

Twitter can be made valuable, worth far in excess of $54.20 per share, if the platform is returned to an open “town square” marketplace of ideas, sans heavy-handed, one-sided censorship, shadow-banning, etc.

Hopefully Musk will be an agent of change for a platform that should, at this point, be considered a public utility that allows for all viewpoints to be openly discussed.

Elon Musk is a doer. — MacDailyNews, October 21, 2022

The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. – Steve Jobs

A few more quotes:

• Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. ― Benjamin Franklin

• To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy. ― Aung San Suu Kyi

• Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost. ― Neil Gaiman

• Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. – Potter Stewart

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. ― United Nations

• If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. ― George Washington

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