Twitter board agrees to $44 billion sale to billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk

[bilateralrope]

Twitter loses payroll department, other financial employees as part of mass resignation under Elon Musk

Kali Hays 3 hours ago

• Elon Musk's ultimatum for Twitter workers did not go to plan.
• Several hundred workers and some entire departments resigned on Thursday.
• One department hit with a large wave of resignations is finance, including payroll.

A large portion of Twitter's financial organization, including its payroll department, left the company on Thursday in response to an ultimatum from Elon Musk that has seemingly backfired.

Along with the payroll department resigning, Twitter's US Tax team and its financial reporting team also resigned, two people familiar with the matter said, matching several internal messages seen by Insider. All three segments of the company were part of Twitter's finance and accounting organization. While accounting was "less impacted" by resignations on Thursday, that part of the organization is smaller now, too, one of the people said.

Employees are set to get paid again next week, one former worker said. While those payments are likely to have been already approved, the next round of payments will not have been, the person said.

"What happens in another two weeks?" the person asked. "When everyone who can approve something is gone."

"Now we'll never see our money," another former employee said. All the people who spoke with Insider asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters. An email seeking comment from Twitter last night was not returned.

The loss of payroll and other financial department employees happened as part of a mass resignation of Twitter workers who refused to sign up for Musk's proposed "Twitter 2.0." In a Tuesday email, the billionaire, who took over Twitter about three weeks ago, said the platform would now be an "extremely hardcore" and engineering forward place to work. He told the entire company to decide by Thursday at 5 pm ET if they wanted to continue working at this version of Twitter. Those who did were to click a link included in the email. Those who did not click the link, which only had a "yes" option, would be considered to have decided to be part of a voluntary layoff and would receive three months of pay as severance, Musk said.

As the deadline passed, less than 50% of Twitter's employees had signed up for Musk's Twitter 2.0, as Insider reported. Musk, members of his personal transition team and some leaders left at Twitter made personal calls and held meetings with several workers in an effort to get them to stay with the company. While a few did agree, most did not.

By the end of Thursday, Twitter was down several hundred more employees and an internal Slack channel was "flooded" with the salute emoji, used by Twitter workers to say goodbye to colleagues.

Earlier this month, Musk laid off close to 3,500 employees. Combined with Thursday's resignations, two workers estimated there are likely fewer than 2,000 employees left at the company.

Could someone in the US elaborate on what happens should Twitter fail to pay people on time because Musk laid off payroll ?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Meanwhile, at the Legion of Doom:

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
What should Twitter do next?

Elon Musk
@elonmusk

New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.

Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.

You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.

[Zaune]

Could someone in the US elaborate on what happens should Twitter fail to pay people on time because Musk laid off payroll?

I'm not in the US, but as I understand it, that would the point when it becomes legitimately possible that Musk and his sidekicks could go to jail. Wage theft is a pretty big deal over there.

[Broomstick]

Unfortunately, he didn't make sure everyone had gone home for the day before revoking their security passes, so about fifty staff have been locked in because the gate to the car park won't open for them. Someone from Facilities has been sent to fetch a saw.

So.... Musk shit on the few employees who actually WERE working hardcore/staying late....?

This is becoming a case study in how NOT to run a business. If this were a novel or a movie no one would believe it because it's so wild and unrealistic. Surely this is dark satire! And yet again we have proof truth is stranger than fiction.

[Broomstick]

Could someone in the US elaborate on what happens should Twitter fail to pay people on time because Musk laid off payroll ?

Failure to pay people for work they have already done is called "wage theft". There is a link in my sig to a thread describing my experience with such an employer. It was on a much smaller scale than what's happening at Twitter, of course, but the upshot was that in the end I was awarded 7 times the amount I was originally owed.

Wage theft is taken very seriously by the US courts, even on a low-level involving an obscure and impoverished individual such as myself. One of the options we were offered for compensation was to take the court order into the bank(s) where the former employer's accounts were and drain them until I had all my legally entitled compensation or the balance(s) hit zero. I could have put a lien on her house. Garnished her wages. Marched into her store and emptied out the cash register. Repeatedly. As I said, there's a thread about it.

Failure to withhold/pay taxes on payroll will attract the wrong sort of interest from the IRS and the state level department(s) of revenue with jurisdiction. Which is why I didn't wind up exercising any of the above options - the government gets first dibs. But in this instance they let some of the non-government people with legal awards in at the table to work out payment options and plans.

"My payroll department quit on me" is not likely to be viewed sympathetically by the courts. Ditto for "my tax department quit on me."

That's not even getting into the issues around failing to pay promised (or legally required) severance.

[bilateralrope]

"My payroll department quit on me" is not likely to be viewed sympathetically by the courts. Ditto for "my tax department quit on me."

Especially when the severance offer makes this look a lot like a redundancy/firing, not resignations.


Elon Musk calls for 'anyone' left at Twitter who can write software to meet him, or fly in, to help him 'better understand' Twitter's tech

Kali Hays 3 hours ago

• Twitter employees resigned en masse on Thursday in response to an earlier ultimatum from Musk.
• The company's ranks have been hollowed out, with senior staff and some entire departments gone.
• Musk is now calling for "anyone who actually writes software" at the company to meet him on Friday.

Elon Musk is looking for help from any employees left at Twitter who may be able to do technical work, even asking people to fly to San Francisco in order to meet with him.

In a set of emails sent around Friday midnight PT, Musk asked to meet with "anyone who actually writes software" on Friday afternoon. He told people to line up on the 10th floor of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters, where he's been working since taking over the company about three weeks ago, at 2 pm PT. Employees were asked to first send Musk a "bullet point summary" by email of their code for the past six months, along with "up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code."

His notes came after a mass resignation on Thursday saw hundreds of Twitter employees leave in response to an ultimatum Musk offered earlier in the week. The billionaire told workers to click a link to accept working for his "extremely hardcore" version of "Twitter 2.0" or resign. More than half of people remaining at the company since a mass layoff earlier this month, or over 2,000 employees, took the latter option of resigning.

In a follow up email sent overnight, Musk directed anyone planning to work from home to email him the same code information and screenshots. "I will try to speak with you via video," he said. Still, he demanded that anyone who is able to come into the office to meet with him.

Then, Musk requested any employees who may be outside San Francisco he would to "fly to SF to be present in person" for meetings with him. Managers at Twitter told remaining employees who needed to fly in to meet with Musk they could expense the cost.

The emails underlie the degree to which Twitter's ranks have been hollowed out by the combination of Musk's layoff action and "so many people calling his bluff," as one former engineer put it.

Some parts of the company no longer have any employees, three people told Insider. Finance and accounting was hit hard by Thursday's resignations, with all employees working in payroll, US tax and its financial reporting department now gone, as Insider reported. Twitter's communications department is also effectively shut down and its information security personnel, so those responsible for protecting co many and user data, is now "basically no one," a former worker said.

Below are complete copies of Musk's Friday emails to Twitter staff:

Email one

Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 pm today.

Before doing so, please email a bullet point summary of what your code commands have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code.

Thanks,
Elon

Email two

If you're working remotely, please email the request below nonetheless and I will try to speak you via video. Only those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ or have a family emergency are excused.

These will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack.

Thanks,
Elon

Email three

If possible, I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be present in person. I will be at Twitter HQ until midnight and then back again tomorrow morning.

Are you a Twitter employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.

Maybe he's starting to realize that these mass layoffs were a bad idea. Maybe.

[bilateralrope]

Also, pay a lot of attention to the fact that Musk asked for screenshots of code. Making it much harder for him to see if the submitted code is even in Twitter's codebase.

[Solauren]

"I'll fire everyone that knows how my new business actually works!"
"Help, Help, I don't understand how my new business actually works!"

Also, with so much of his financial people leaving, the odds of financial document leaks just sky rocketed.
Not to mention the chances of financial theft occurring.

Really, there is a reason any firing situation has security show up to escort the individual out. It's to prevent them from grabbing documents, or screwing with stuff, before they are tossed out.

For all intents and purposes, everyone that left because they didn't agree to Hardcore Twitter Work was fired. "This or else."

I hope he finds all of Twitters bank accounts were put into Crypto currency, and all it's financial records get posted online over every social media there is.

[Solauren]

Also, pay a lot of attention to the fact that Musk asked for screenshots of code. Making it much harder for him to see if the submitted code is even in Twitter's codebase.

Unless he they also include where it is (which seems like a reasonable thing to do), and he understands the search functions.

Which I seriously doubt.....

[bilateralrope]

Also, pay a lot of attention to the fact that Musk asked for screenshots of code. Making it much harder for him to see if the submitted code is even in Twitter's codebase.

Unless he they also include where it is (which seems like a reasonable thing to do), and he understands the search functions.

Which I seriously doubt.....

If the codes location was provided to Musk, and he knew how to look it up, then the screenshot wouldn't tell him anything that he couldn't find from looking up the code.

[Elfdart]

Phil "Thunderf00t" Mason compared Elon Musk unfavorably to the dipshit who ran a fake blood-testing scheme and was just sentenced to 11 years in the federal hoosegow for her trouble.

[bilateralrope]

Two interesting tweet threads.

The first is someone listing the kinds of ways the Twitter servers could fall over.

The second is a collection of tweets about how things went for Twitter employees in Europe. They ignored the "agree to abuse or your fired" email because it wasn't legally binding in Europe. Twitter cut off access to their systems and sent them an email saying their voluntary resignation was accepted. But they never volunteered to resign, they just ignored an email that made no sense in terms of employment conditions.
Musk is about to learn about EU employment laws.

[LadyTevar]

Two interesting tweet threads.

The first is someone listing the kinds of ways the Twitter servers could fall over.

The second is a collection of tweets about how things went for Twitter employees in Europe. They ignored the "agree to abuse or your fired" email because it wasn't legally binding in Europe. Twitter cut off access to their systems and sent them an email saying their voluntary resignation was accepted. But they never volunteered to resign, they just ignored an email that made no sense in terms of employment conditions.
Musk is about to learn about EU employment laws.

Oh, THAT is going to be a shitshow for Musk.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Reinstate former President Trump
Yes
51.9%
No
48.1%

He deserves to return to Twitter given the state it's in now

[bilateralrope]

CBS has stopped using Twitter. The first major news organisation to suspend their Twitter feeds.

[LadyTevar]

CBS has stopped using Twitter. The first major news organisation to suspend their Twitter feeds.

And the dominos will fall from there.

[bilateralrope]

There is a rumor that Twitters copyright detection and enforcement system isn't working. People are uploading full movies split across multiple tweets. I'm not sure if Twitter has any lawyers who can tell Musk how important it is to get that system back online.

Also, Trump's been unbanned:
Twitter lifts Donald Trump ban after Elon Musk’s poll

Staff and agencies
Sun 20 Nov 2022 01.29 GMT

‘The people have spoken’ says Twitter owner, having acknowledged during online poll that automated ‘bots’ were voting too[/url]

Donald Trump’s Twitter account appeared to be back online after a slim majority of votes were cast, in a Twitter poll organised by Elon Musk, in favour of reinstating the former US president, who was banned from the social media service for inciting violence.

Slightly more than 15 million votes were counted in the poll with 51.8% votes in favour of reinstatement.

“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted. During the poll, Musk acknowledged the vote numbers were being affected by automated “bots”, which are not people, and suggested there was a need to “clean up” Twitter polls from being influenced by bots and “trolls”.

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
·
Follow
Replying to @elonmusk and @Nomad_1x
Bot & troll armies might be running out of steam soon. Some interesting lessons to clean up future polls.
2:02 AM · Nov 20, 2022

Trump had appeared less than keen earlier in the day to return to Twitter. “I don’t see any reason for it,” the former president said via video when asked about it by a panel at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting.

He said he would stick with his new platform Truth Social, the app developed by his Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) startup.

Twitter took the extraordinary decision to ban Trump after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, saying his posts were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol”.

Trump on Tuesday launched a bid to regain the White House in 2024, and praised Musk saying he had always liked him. But Trump also said Twitter suffered from bots, fake accounts and that the problems it faced were “incredible”.

Even as Musk was still completing his acquisition of Twitter, his self-avowed status as a “free speech absolutist” raised the possibility he would lift the ban on people whose Twitter accounts have been permanently suspended from the platform. Hate speech and misinformation experts have been bracing for the return of Trump, who in his time on the platform amassed more than 88 million followers.

Musk first said in May he planned to reverse the ban on Trump, and the timing of any return by Trump was also closely watched – and feared – by many of Twitter’s advertisers.

Musk has since sought to reassure users and advertisers that such a decision would be made with consideration by a content moderation council composed of people with “widely diverse viewpoints” and no account reinstatements would happen before the council convened.

He also said Twitter would not reinstate any banned users until there was a “clear process for doing so”.

But this week, Musk reinstated comedian Kathy Griffin, who had been banned for changing her profile name to “Elon Musk” which violated his new rule against impersonation without indicating it was a parody account. There has been no new information about process or the moderation council.

[Khaat]

But this week, Musk reinstated comedian Kathy Griffin, who had been banned for changing her profile name to “Elon Musk” which violated his new rule against impersonation without indicating it was a parody account.

That would be the new rule he published after he banned her for breaking it, right?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

There is a rumor that Twitters copyright detection and enforcement system isn't working. People are uploading full movies split across multiple tweets. I'm not sure if Twitter has any lawyers who can tell Musk how important it is to get that system back online.

Excellent suggestion, assuming they had any lawyers left

[bilateralrope]

It's not a rumor. It's worse than the rumor suggested.

Twitter’s Broken Its Copyright Strike System, Users Are Uploading Full Movies

While Twitter, the website, remains online and has not simply collapsed after the vast majority of workers were fired or resigned under Elon Musk, we are already starting to see the cracks spreading through the walls.

Last night, it became apparent that Twitter’s automated copyright strike/takedown system was no longer functional. A user went viral for uploading the entirety of The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift in two minute chunks over a 50 tweet thread. While it’s offline this morning, here’s where things get weirder still:

• The media itself was never taken down. Usually, you used to see a “this media cannot be displayed” message when a takedown happens. The tweet and account will be up, but the media is stripped. In this case, it appears someone at Twitter had to manually suspend the entire account.
• And as evidence of a further bug, right now, on mobile, I can still see the tweets from the suspended account. As in, the movie is literally playing in a tweet I am watching on my phone right now, some lingering artifact of account suspension. I can’t see it on desktop, but the tweets I favorited last night to write this article this morning are still actively viewable.

And again, fundamentally the copyright system does seem broken. Yes, this specific account was suspended, but only because it went viral and was spotted by someone working there, I think. A separate user has uploaded another full movie, 1995’s Hackers, two minutes at a time in a similar thread, and that remains online at the time of this writing:

It should be fairly obvious to anyone what kind of liability it opens Twitter up to if their copyright system is non-functional, and its newly limited pool of workers are going to need to manually hunt down infringers. Once media companies get wind of this, we could see Twitter hit with all sort of DMCA claims and potential legal issues if they can’t get a handle on this quickly. I’m picturing Disney content starting to be uploaded here and them going nuclear.

Also, it should be noted that one of Elon Musk’s big ideas for Twitter Blue is to allow users to upload long, 40+ minute videos. That would be a nightmare if they can’t fix their copyright enforcement system, but it’s not clear that anyone there is working on this issue in any meaningful capacity barring suspending that one specific Tokyo Drift account.

A drama a day at Twitter these days, with no signs of slowing down.

My understanding is that the DMCA gives a website a week to remove infringing content before they lose safe harbour protection. So I'd bet the likes of Disney have filed the takedown notices and are just waiting until that clock runs down.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well I was wondering which would last longer- Twitter or a lettuce. Looks like the lettuce is going to win.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Twitter fails to delete 99% of racist tweets aimed at footballers in run-up to World Cup.

Tweets hurling racist abuse at footballers, including the N-word, monkey emojis and calls for them to be deported, are not being removed by Twitter.

New research shows the platform failed to act on 99 out of 100 racist tweets reported to it in the week before the World Cup.

Only one was removed after being flagged on Wednesday, a tweet that repeated a racial slur 16 times. All the others remained live this weekend.

The abuse was aimed at 43 players including England stars Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka, who were among several players targeted after the Euro 2020 final.

The analysis, conducted by researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and seen by the Observer, included 100 tweets reported to Twitter. Of those, 11 used the N-word to describe footballers, 25 used monkey or banana emojis directed at players, 13 called for players to be deported, and 25 attacked players by telling them to “go back to” other countries. Thirteen tweets targeted footballers over their English skills.

The findings come at a turbulent time for Twitter and will fuel concerns about players possibly being targeted during the World Cup.

Thousands of staff have left the company since Elon Musk’s take-over on 27 October. Musk has insisted that moderation capabilities remain strong and that he is committed to preventing the platform from becoming a “free-for-all hellscape”.

In an update to the platform’s rules on hate speech last week, however, Musk said “negative/hate tweets” would be “deboosted & demonetized”, but not necessarily removed. He added that users “won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from the rest of [the] internet”.

It is unclear how this will be applied to abuse that tags individuals or mentions them by name, who are likely to see the post without seeking it out.

Passersby attach messages of support for Marcus Rashford after a mural of him in Manchester was defaced.

All the tweets identified in the CCDH’s analysis mentioned footballers by name or tagged their Twitter handle. Many were posts beneath official tweets from football clubs or news sites.

They included tweets telling footballers to “go back to Africa”, likening players to apes and chimps and calling for them to be deported. The tweets were flagged through Twitter’s in-app reporting tool.

Twitter was contacted for comment but did not respond. It has laid off much of its communications team.

The content policy currently on its website says it prohibits “targeting others with repeated slurs” and that in cases of “severe, repetitive usage of slurs, where the primary intent is to harass”, tweets may be removed.

It also prohibits “dehumanisation” of a group of people based on characteristics including race.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

CBS has stopped using Twitter. The first major news organisation to suspend their Twitter feeds.

And the dominos will fall from there.

Which lasted less than two days.

[Solauren]

Also, pay a lot of attention to the fact that Musk asked for screenshots of code. Making it much harder for him to see if the submitted code is even in Twitter's codebase.

Unless he they also include where it is (which seems like a reasonable thing to do), and he understands the search functions.

Which I seriously doubt.....

If the codes location was provided to Musk, and he knew how to look it up, then the screenshot wouldn't tell him anything that he couldn't find from looking up the code.

Besides who was actually still with the company and willing to talk to him.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

‘It’s over’: Twitter France’s head quits amid layoffs.

Twitter Inc’s head of French operations, Damien Viel, said he was quitting the social media platform, whose new owner Elon Musk recently fired top executives and enforced steep job cuts at the company.

“It’s over,” Viel tweeted on Sunday, thanking his team in France, which he led for the last seven years.

Viel confirmed he was leaving Twitter in a separate message to Reuters.

He didn’t elaborate on the circumstances of his departure and declined to say how many people Twitter employed in France either before or after Musk’s takeover of the company last month.

Labour laws in France prevent companies from firing permanent employees overnight. France-based companies have to formally tell staff they aim to dismiss about their plans ahead of time, typically via a letter with acknowledgement of receipt.

They also have to respect certain notice periods, depending on the nature of the dismissal and the seniority of the staff.

For dismissals affecting several employees within 30 days, companies must also follow certain procedures, which entail informing staff, staff representatives and the ministry of labour.

This means the whole process takes at least several weeks and up to several months.

A spokesperson for Twitter in France hasn’t replied to messages seeking comment since Musk’s takeover in October.

Twitter has had a bumpy ride since the world’s richest person took charge. It has cut staff globally by about half, while Musk has raised the possibility of the social media platform going bankrupt.

He recently told employees to consider whether they wanted to stay on “working long hours at high intensity” or take a severance package of three months pay.