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What is Elon Musk smoking these days?Must be of very high quality; seems he is very high now-a-days

November has been pretty harsh on Twitter under Elon Musk’s reign. Many decisions were taken in response to the declining revenue, but not much could be implemented, and if it was implemented, it could not e followed for a long time. What’s precisely in Elon Musk’s mind about the future of Twitter, or what is he smoking these days?

Musk’s ownership of the social media platform led to the letting go of the critical players of Twitter. He changed the product communications but rolled it back again without much apparent discussion with the employees.

Now, FTC is critical as Twitter must ignore its obligations under a previous settlement.

Despite such a chaotic situation, Musk is not worried that his 44 billion USD investment will blow up in his face.

What is going on on Twitter? What is Musk smoking?

Elon musk acquired the social media platform on October 27, and it did not take a week for things to turn out to be interesting.

Musk’s beginning in the company started with a layoff at Twitter on Friday, November 4. The overall process was chaotic. Reports have mentioned that people were removed from their work accounts and Twitter systems in the middle of the meeting. By Friday, half of the 7500 employees were let go from the company.

Elon musk

This contradicts the statement of Elon Musk, who mentioned that while job cuts are unavoidable, he would not let go of the majority of the employees in the company. In the first round of layoffs, he handed pink slips to 50 percent of the workforce.

As severe as the layoffs sound, they violated the federal and California state WARN acts that make it mandatory for a 60-day notice period for the employees who have been laid off. All companies, including Twitter, have to abide by the policy.

Musk has fired prominent members of the workforce including the CEO of Twitter, Parag Aggarwal. The hastening layoffs have yet to be received well by the advertisers as they quickly began to freeze the advertisement spending on Twitter until things cooled off at the company.

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But things were yet to cool down. Elon Musk regained his senses when he realized firing the majority was not a good idea. As a result, he called back several dozen employees to return to the company. They were mainly two reasons: Some were laid off by accident. While others were laid off earlier than they were handed main projects to realize the true potential of the employees.

This suggests that the entire process of layoffs was hastened, and the major reason was to cut jobs so that it does not affect the total revenue of the company. But can one expect to let go of employees without deep thought from a sober owner?

Many reports state that most of the employees who were asked to rejoin Twitter declined the offer while only the one working on visas joined and had the chance to be forced out of the US without a job.

Elon Musk has become a poor sport in taking up jokes stating that any accounts parodying him would be banned on Twitter. Isn’t it ironic for someone who has always been unfiltered about his opinions?

One week after his reign, as many as one million Twitter users deactivated their accounts. At the same time, the misinformation increase related to the US midterm elections could have been avoided if Musk was not in charge of the platform. 

Musk had to let go of 19.5 million Tesla shares worth 3.95 billion USD, which he claimed was essential to save the company.

 Elon Musk’s madness was continuing. His grand plans for earning big on Twitter initiated a new feature Twitter Blue which allows the users to earn a blue tick while paying an 8 USD subscription every month. This will allow the paid accounts with a verification checkmark. In addition to that, their posts and tweets will gain more traffic and replies. This feature would turn out Twitter into a fee-speech platform.

The paid mark would not come with an actual verification process which is the biggest drawback, and the action could blow back because of impersonation issues.

While the feature was necessary to increase revenue, it did not go as planned by Elon Musk.

The thing which feared took place.

Twitter started using the blue tick subscription to differentiate between paid and unpaid subscribers. Musk has even mentioned his idea of turning twitter completely into a payment platform.

His decisions defied the security or compliance of the leadership leading tithe prominent players of the company, including twitter’s Chief Compliance Officer Lea Kishner from backing down from the company.

The main reason was that Twitter was found to be involved in shady privacy and security reforms. This has gained major attention from the FTC. Previously, the latter had fined twitter 150 million USD for using account security data to sell targeted ads to users.

Twitter has signed an agreement with the FTC and apart states that the social media platform has to inform the regulator if it tries to make any product changes.

The agreement has been defied by Elon Musk when he took over the company.

The first formal meeting of Elon Musk with Twitter laid out a worsening situation where he informed the remaining employees that Twitter was on the verge of bankruptcy while ending remote working for the employees.

He has further mentioned that the Employees have to work at least forty hours a week.

Rigid decisions and Elon Musk goes the opposite way:

blue tick

Twitter’s blue tick subscription followed chaos as the brands were impersonated, politicians were being mimicked as cannibals, and frauds were on the surge as what was predicted before the introduction of the feature. This has resulted in the disappearance of the Official label and the rollout of the blue subscription, which charged users 8 USD every month.

On the same day, he had built extensive pressure on his employees while mentioning that Twitter will adhere to the FTC consent decree while the lawyers working for the company have reassured that everything is under control by the FTC.

Reports state that around 140,000 accounts turned for the blue tick verification, which accounts for 13.4 million USD a year. 

One of the other reasons behind the unwanted pressure on Twitter could be the debt of 13 billion USD while the banks are charging 1 billion USD annually as interest. 

A growing risk of insolvency would not calm him down anytime soon as he would continue to take hastening decisions. 

It is a matter of time to see if the situation in Twitter unfolds to be Elon Musk’s downfall or if he turns out to be a dark horse.

edited and proofread by nikita sharma

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