Twitter loses three more senior employees ahead of musk's takeover
Summary
Departures of executives come less than a week after product reorganization
Staff remains in state of uncertainty while awaiting Musk deal
Elon Musk halts Twitter deal
Donald Trump unbanned from twitter?
Implications on political freedoms under Musk takeover
Today's article is sourced from yesterdays Bloomberg research by Edward Ludlow and Kurt Wagner.
Background Information
Three more senior employees, including two vice presidents, have been lost at Twitter Inc.
A reflection of the uncertainty inside the companies staffers as they await the acquisition of Elon Musk's $44 billion dollar takeover.
A Twitter spokeswoman confirmed the executives confirmed the executives' departures to Bloomberg.
Less than a week ago, Twitter shook up its product organization, including firing two top product executives by Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal.
Twitter also instituted budget cuts and implemented a hiring freeze last week, and while the company said it was not planning layoffs, Agrawal told employees in an email, “Leaders will continue making changes to their organizations to improve efficiencies as needed.”
Twitter Employees are in a State Of Limbo
Twitter has been facing questions about stock compensation and job security.
One meeting leadership tried to motivate employees by reminding them why they should bother showing up for work in the first place.
Elon Musk's provocative tweeting and public comments criticizing Twitter executives by stating that the company may be misleading the public about how many bots and spam accounts are included in Twitter's calculations for total users.
Musk said the deal is on hold until he gets more information but Twitter said they're committed to completing the sale.
The Numbers
Musk is buying shares of Twitter for $54.20 a share.
"The shares, which had dropped for seven straight days, rose 2.9% to $38.47 in the late afternoon New York time on Tuesday."
Twitters Response
The Twitter spokeswoman said about the departing employees: “We are thankful for all of their hard work and leadership,” according to her emailed statement.
“We continue to be focused on providing the very best experience to the people on Twitter.”
Donald Trump unbanned from Twitter because of Elon Musk?
In January 2021, Twitter said Mr Trump's account was "permanently suspended... due to the risk of further incitement of violence" following the storming of the Capitol.
But the Tesla owner said: "I would reverse the permanent ban but I don't own Twitter yet so this is not a thing that will definitely happen."
He said the ban had not silenced Mr Trump, but by making him move onto his own Truth Social site, it had amplified his voice among the far right.
He pointed out that Mr Trump had previously said he would not return to Twitter even if his account was reinstated.
This comes from a BBC article written by Jennifer Meierhans.
What does this mean for political freedoms on Twitter?
Elon Musk said Twitter needed to build more trust by sharing its algorithm and asking people to make suggestions on how to improve it.
He said the company had a strong left bias because of its origins in the San Francisco tech community and needed to be "more even-handed".
"Victory would be the far right 10% and the far left 10% are equally upset," he said.
What the Experts are Saying…
Dr Catherine Flick, an expert in computing and social responsibility at De Montfort University, told the BBC's Today's programme her team had "very strong evidence to suggest [Mr Musk] is completely wrong" about the impact of Mr Trump being removed from Twitter.
"Removing Donald Trump from Twitter actually decreased the amount of polarisation," she said. "It removed a platform for him to stoke animosity and division between people within the platform."
Ms Flick added there were a "lot of people" who were worried about Mr Musk "essentially having the keys to this...
social media platform to reign over it like a king or an emperor like he seems to want to do at the moment".
In the US, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the Biden administration wants online platforms to protect freedom of speech but also ensure they are not forums for disinformation.