Twitter has officially entered its villain era as it sees employees leaving in droves following an ultimatum from Elon Musk on Wednesday. The CEO asked Twitter employees to either commit to an “extremely hardcore” culture at the company that involves “long hours at high intensity” or leave. Toxic much?
Hours before the curtain call, hundreds of resignations rolled in, and as waves of employees opted for the three months’ severance pay, Twitter announced via email that it would close its office buildings and disable employee badge access until Monday.
The Twitter mass exodus follows the growing list of changes that have fallen on the company since Musk’s takeover, including the introduction of a $8 blue tick verification ‘Twitter Blue’ rollout which caused chaos since its inception. Last week, Eli Lilly and Co, an American pharmaceutical company with products being sold in approximately 125 countries saw its stock price drop significantly after a fake account with a blue tick tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now”.
As word of the madness inside Twitter spread, #RIPTwitter and #GoodbyeTwitter were the top trending hashtags as users took a moment to reminisce on fond memories of the social media platform before the lights went out. Many also shared links to other services like Instagram, Twitch and Mastodon.
The future of how Twitter will maintain its ability to handle misinformation and operate day-to-day is uncertain following the loss of so many employees in such a short amount of time. The number of engineers operating Twitter’s critical systems are rumoured to be down to two or even zero according to The Gaurdian. Shortly after news of the latest departures, Elon Musk tweeted, “How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.”
Is this the beginning of the end of Twitter? Only time will tell. Until then, we’ll enjoy the memes.
