The day of Musk’s mass shooting on Twitter – the most important things in 5 points

Neo owner Elon Musk fired numerous Twitter employees on Friday. By 5 p.m. Swiss time, all people whose time was up with the social media service received an email informing them of their release. Many of them then reported the dismissal – an overview.

Probably half fired actually

According to an internal document available to the AFP agency, half of its approximately 7,500 employees had to leave Twitter. A message to the layoffs should read that you should have lost your job “like about 50 percent of your co-workers”.

Elon Musk has not explicitly confirmed this number. According to CNN, when asked in an interview that 50 percent of employees had been laid off, he nodded.

Several teams disbanded

As several employees announced – on Twitter or all places – entire teams were disbanded on Friday. The team responsible for combating disinformation, among others, is said to have caught it. This was written by Richie Assaly, an employee of Toronto Star Canada, who once worked for this team herself. He fears that this could make Twitter a “louder, more dangerous and less interesting place”.

According to other former employees, the HR team and a team for ethics, transparency and accountability have also been disbanded. Twitter has not yet responded to this.

A Swiss manager was also affected

As the “Handelzeitung” reports, a Swiss manager is also among the layoffs. This is Michaël Jarjour, who previously worked for SRF and NZZ. According to the 38-year-old, he learned of his dismissal that night: “I woke up in the middle of the night, got up to get more water, looked at my phone and found that I had been fired,” he said. to announce.

Jarjour also said he had repeatedly checked his emails the night before. He is also said to have regularly checked spam – according to media reports, this would also have been an explicit instruction from the new leadership around Elon Musk.

Various safety measures on Friday

As Twitter announced in advance, all of the company’s branches and systems were temporarily blocked on Friday. Officially, the justification was that they wanted to “ensure the safety of every employee”. Management feared that fired employees could steal or manipulate data in retaliation. Access to their business email and company computers would be immediately blocked.

The reactions

The reactions of the dismissed employees were mixed. While some thanked the company for a great time, many others expressed sadness or harsh criticism.

(dab)