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- NBC reporter Ben Collins, simply calling balls and strikes
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It’s been a little over one week since billionaire Elon Musk took over as CEO of Twitter, and things are not going well! Which is sort of funny, but mostly not!
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Mass layoffs began today as Musk paves the way for major changes at the company. (But I thought billionaires “create jobs”???) Workers were informed that they had been let go by email after the new management barred office entrances and cut off their access to internal systems. Musk tweeted that the company has “had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers,” and claimed that activists are “trying to destroy free speech in America.” Does Elon think “free speech” means companies are somehow blindly obligated to advertise on right-wing platforms that amplify bigotry and harassment? It seems that way. Twitter sent out an email to staff yesterday announcing what was to come, saying, “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce Friday.” Internal plans indicated that Musk was looking to cut about half of the company’s workforce.
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Even before Musk officially moved to buy the company, Twitter had been operating at a loss for eight of the past 10 years. Still, one would assume that the new CEO would do everything in his power to assuage the concerns of advertisers, which provide 90 percent of the company’s revenue. But then, it seems that Elon’s entire interest in buying the company was wrapped up in a combination of ego, pump-and-dump greed, and frustration that his right-wing pals kept getting booted from the platform for hate speech and incitement. Harvard University professor of management Sandra Sucher, who has studied layoffs for more than a decade, said Twitter’s were among the most poorly handled that she had ever seen, calling them, “a master class in how not to do it.” If a Harvard professor ever said that about how I was doing my job I would immediately resign in disgrace and maybe go into witness protection for the rest of my natural life.
- A new MediaRadar analysis shows that Twitter’s advertiser pool has their finger on the pulse of the company’s volatility. The numbers initially increased between April and May, the weeks immediately following the announcement of an impending deal, but in the intervening months, between the adversarial nature of the deal itself, which almost went to arbitration, and Musk’s expressed vision of what his Twitter would be, advertisers began getting cold feet and pulling out of the platform en masse. Other external factors such as larger downward macroeconomic trends may have played a role as well, but it’s clear that Musk personally is at the heart of the issue for many corporate advertisers. Twitter has also struggled to attract new brands to take the place of the ones that have left. Maybe if Musk wants to be seen as trustworthy to corporate peers, he shouldn’t share right-wing conspiracy theories all the time? Social-media spending freezes are not uncommon, but what makes Twitter different than Facebook or YouTube is neither of those companies have a chief executive at the helm who loves to poke his finger in the eye of anyone who questions him and openly supports bigotry in the name of being a “free-speech absolutist.”
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Ole’ Elon’s troubles won’t be ending anytime soon, nor will those of Twitter's millions of users.
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Even before the layoffs were officially announced, legal challenges began. Multiple lawsuits have now been filed against the company for failing to give advance notice of the cuts, in violation of California state and federal law. Employees who were laid off said they were mostly kept in the dark, including about severance packages, and were told they would receive more information in a week’s time. Labor attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan is one of the attorneys who filed a class-action lawsuit against Musk on behalf of Twitter employees, just as she did for workers at another of Musk’s companies, Tesla, back in June. Liss-Riordan said it appears Musk is complying and willing to adhere to the law (which requires companies to give workers 60 days notice before such mass layoffs) but it may be that he’s willing to pay the fine associated with violating it than endure 60 days of thousands of disgruntled employees.
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Although Musk claims that “nothing has changed with content moderation,” today’s cuts tell a different story. You cannot claim that content moderation is unchanged after outlining all the ways in which you plan to change content moderation then firing half the company. The layoffs included those in engineering, communications, product, content curation, safety, and machine learning ethics. Twitter’s acting head of human rights tweeted today that the entire human-rights team had been cut. By all accounts, chaos reigns right now, especially as Musk took on $13 billion in debt to complete the $44 billion buyout.
His hare-brained plans for trivial new revenue streams raise a question with an increasingly obvious answer: Is Elon Musk actually a genius executive? And another question: if someone can be the CEO of three companies simultaneously, how demanding of a position can CEO actually be?
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The Crooked Store just launched a bunch of new merch inspired by your favorite Crooked Media podcasts, reminding you to unplug, reconnect, and get festive for the holidays. New items include a “Log Off” ornament, a Nog Save America mug and so much more.
This holiday season, every order from the Crooked Store will support Vote Save America’s Every Last Vote fund to make sure every voice can be heard in the face of unprecedented voter suppression.
Head to Crooked.com/store to start holiday shopping.
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Gov. Glenn Younkin (R-VA) has been on the front lines of the conservative culture wars, rolling back rights for trans students in the state and fighting historically accurate curriculum in schools. To that end, Youngkin set up a so-called tip line for parents to report, in his words, “any instances where they feel their fundamental rights are being violated,” and “inherently divisive practices,” as part of a larger campaign to root out teaching of critical race theory. It bears repeating that critical race theory is a complex framework usually used in graduate schools and almost never taught in K-12 public school, but has become a catchall boogeyman for teaching history which accurately depicts the legacy of racism in America, thanks to a GOP propaganda blitz. But the tip line did not work the way Youngkin intended, and instead offered a pathway for parents to air grievances about real problems in Virginia public schools. Kandise Lucas is a special-education advocate and former special-education teacher, used the tip line to create a comprehensive record of alleged special-education and civil-rights violations. Almost half of the 350 emails obtained from the tip-line database came from Lucas. These incidents were, after all, ones in which parents were having their fundamental rights violated. There were also complaints from parents about curriculum, but none relating to critical race theory (again, maybe because it’s not taught to children?!). If anything, the sampling of emails from the tip line signal that Virginia parents are dissatisfied with Youngkin’s education record, and that could work in Democrats’ favor on Tuesday.
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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) advocated aggressively for the 2017 Trump tax cut provision that benefitted his (wife’s family’s) former plastics company. Conveniently, the tax cut for “pass-throughs” also came as his family was acquiring luxury properties so that it could take advantage of the law. “Pass-through” provisions allow companies whose profits are passed entirely to owners or investors and therefore not subject to corporate income tax, but its supposed purpose is to facilitate small family-owned companies. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Johnson’s three adult children are beneficiaries of a family trust and are listed as managers of about 10 companies with assets valued around $21 million. Several studies have found that the pass-through tax cut has primarily helped the already wealthy. Whether or not “Ron Johnson personally advocated for a tax break that would benefit himself then used that money to buy up a bunch of luxury properties for even more income” will be enough to push Johnson’s opponent Mandela Barnes over the edge on Tuesday remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: Johnson should never be able to leave his house without someone telling him he’s a soulless tufthunter.
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