DEATH SPIRAL? Twitter faces 75% workforce reduction under Elon Musk

DEATH SPIRAL? Twitter faces 75% workforce reduction under Elon Musk

Elon Musk told potential investors of plans to eliminate up to 75% of the workforce of Twitter when he takes over, spelling trouble for both the social media platform’s employees and most loyal users.

Reports that the app has been battling financial trouble behind the scenes add insight into the board’s insistence on closing the deal with Musk more interesting – going so far as to sue him to force the deal’s closure.

Twitter currently has approximately 7,500 employees. Projected cuts will leave just a little over 2,000, meaning quality control and content moderation will undoubtedly suffer.

But as The Washington Post reports, the bluebird app had plans to trim the fat whether or not the deal with Musk was completed. The Post wrote:

Even if Musk’s Twitter deal falls through — and there’s little indication now that it will — big cuts are expected: Twitter’s current management planned to pare the company’s payroll by about $800 million by the end of next year, a number that would mean the departure of nearly a quarter of the workforce, according to corporate documents and interviews with people familiar with the company’s deliberations. The company also planned to make major cuts to its infrastructure, including data centers that keep the site functioning for more than 200 million users that log on each day.

In the six months since Musk announced he was buying Twitter, a grab bag of emotions swept through the Twitter community.

Users on the left cringed at the thought of The Former Guy returning to the platform, bringing his lies, vitriol, vendettas and victimhood with him.

There has been constant speculation as to what will happen: Will Musk? Won’t he? And if so, what happens to those enjoying a less abusive social media existence with the banning of hateful bile tweeting trolls, from celebrities to bots?

The deal is expected to be finalized as early as next Friday.

If it does go through, hopefully disgruntled Twitter employees will band together and save social media by creating a better and more welcoming platform than one owned by a petulant billionaire man boy.

Original reporting by Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui, Derrit de Vynck and Jeremy B. Merrill at The Washington Post.

Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick

Ty Ross

News journalist for Washington Press and Occupy Democrats.