ITNTW: Will Twitter Survive Elon’s Reign?
If you’ve been on any form of social media in the past few weeks, you are bound to have seen the fall of Twitter happening in real time.
Last month, after the deal was made official, Elon Musk took over Twitter after purchasing the platform for $66 billion AUD. Initially, his offer to take over the company was met with varied reactions, especially after his claim to remove Donald Trump’s ban once he could. However, since the official handover on October 28, Musk’s reign has been labelled a PR nightmare.
Half of Twitter’s staff worldwide were immediately fired over email, including those in top management roles. Musk then laid out his demands to remaining staff, which required ‘hardcore’ work ethics, and requiring all staff to be in the office for at least 40 hours a week. And if they didn’t agree to these demands within his set 48-hour period? You guessed it- fired.
To add even more fuel to the fire, Twitter is facing a proposed class action in a San Francisco federal court, which claims that it violated the law by laying off around 3,700 employees (half the company’s workforce) after Musk took over, as well as being accused of laying off thousands of contract workers without giving the mandatory 60 days’ notice required by US federal law.
Outside of the office and into the Twitterverse, Musk had become the centre of great mockery. Following the change to allow users to purchase a verified status on Twitter, parody accounts with blue ticks began popping up and spreading misinformation in the form of memes. This is not necessarily a new concept for Twitter, but the blue tick makes a huge difference in what users consider to be reliable. This outraged Musk, who said all parody accounts must explicitly state their parody status, but he also made it so no one verified could change their Twitter handle or display name. Clear backfire and super embarrassing for a billionaire mogul if you ask us.
All we have to say is… big yikes. I’m not even convinced that Musk has kept his PR team either at this point.
The lead up to the Twitter handover should have been evidence enough that Musk is not qualified to be the CEO of a social media platform. But now people are unfortunately losing their jobs, Twitter is becoming even more of a realm for misinformation to spread, and Musk is not handling it well at all. If you ask me, sometimes people should just stay in their lanes. (Sorry Elon, but I deleted my twitter account ages ago so there’s nothing you can do to shut me up!)
By Clare Fitzgerald – PR & Influencer Assistant at InsideOut PR and #AsSeenOn
