Elon Musk made a lasting impression in his first week as Twitter’s owner by unexpectedly disconnecting access to computers and work systems for employees, according to some calculations, up to half of the workforce.
According to reports, Twitter lost 40% of its earnings from the past year due to many advertisers leaving the network.
Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, seemed to confirm rumors that half of the company’s 7,500 global employees had been let go. Since Elon Musk acquired control of Twitter in October of last year, advertisers have eventually stopped using the service in response to the billionaire’s weeklong firing of thousands of staff members. After Twitter discovered they were required to run the business, some employees were summoned back.
Here are the facts about where Twitter’s Trust & Safety and moderation capacity stands today:
tl;dr: While we said goodbye to incredibly talented friends and colleagues yesterday, our core moderation capabilities remain in place.
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022
The site also rushed the adoption of a new verification method, which allowed fraudsters to pose as companies and cause millions of dollars in losses. This method allowed almost anyone to impersonate a well-known person or business for only $8 in verification fees. Additionally, Twitter lifted its 2019 restriction on political advertisements, asserting that it would loosen its “cause-based ads” policy in the US.
For Twitter, the losses come at a crucial time because it was banking for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the World Cup to all coincide with boosting quarterly revenue. One former Twitter executive told us, “It’s catastrophic.”
Additionally, this would mirror the company’s TV and other media advertisements. Twitter almost lost over half of its revenue due to the massive drop in revenue.
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022