Inside Elon Musk’s “extraordinarily hardcore” Twitter

This text is a collaboration between New York Journal and The Verge. It was reported by Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton, who write Platformer, and Alex Heath, who writes Command Line.

In April 2022, Elon Musk acquired a 9.2 ­p.c stake in Twitter, making him the corporate’s largest shareholder, and was supplied a seat on the board. Luke Simon, a senior engineering director at Twitter, was ecstatic. “Elon Musk is an excellent engineer and scientist, and he has a observe document of getting a Midas contact, relating to rising the businesses he’s helped lead,” he wrote in Slack.

Twitter had been outlined by the catatonic management of Jack Dorsey, a co-founder who concurrently served as CEO of the funds enterprise Block (previously Sq.). Dorsey, who was identified for occurring lengthy meditation retreats, fasting 22 hours a day, and strolling 5 miles to the workplace, acted as an absentee landlord, leaving Twitter’s technique and every day operations to a handful of trusted deputies. When he spoke about Twitter, it was usually as if another person have been operating the corporate. To Simon and people like him, it was onerous to see Twitter as something aside from wasted potential. 

In its early days, when Twitter was at its most Twittery, circa 2012, executives known as the corporate “the free-speech wing of the free-speech social gathering.” That was the period when the platform was credited for amplifying the Occupy Wall Avenue motion and the Arab Spring, when it appeared like ­giving everybody a microphone would possibly ­truly convey down dictatorships and proper the wrongs of neoliberal capitalism. That second, which coincided with the rise of Fb and YouTube, impressed ­utopian visions of how social networks might ­promote democracy and human rights all over the world.

Twitter rode this momentum to develop into some of the necessary firms in tech: an all-consuming obsession for these working or merely curious about politics, sports activities, and journalism all over the world. Steadily, the platform set the information agenda and reworked nobodies into Essential Characters. What it lacked in earnings it greater than made up for in affect.

Nobody understood how you can weaponize that affect higher than Donald Trump, who in 2016 propelled himself into the White Home partially by harnessing hate and vitriol by way of his @realDonaldTrump feed. A brand new consensus that the positioning was a sewer made it price loads much less cash. ­Disney CEO Bob Iger pulled out of a bid to accumulate Twitter, saying the “nastiness” on the platform was extraordinary.

After the election and the blown deal, Twitter overhauled its ­content-moderation insurance policies, staffed up its belief and security group, and dedicated itself to ­fostering “wholesome conversations.” By no means once more wouldn’t it let itself be utilized by a tyrant to sow discord and enhance polarization. Two days after the January 6 rebel, the platform banned Trump; the corporate had seen the toll of unfettered speech and determined it wasn’t price it.

This was the Twitter that irked Elon Musk a lot that he grew to become satisfied he had to purchase it. In his view, by 2022 the corporate had been corrupted — beholden to the whims of governments and the ­liberal media elite. It shadow-banned ­conservatives, suppressed respectable discourse about covid, and selectively kicked elected officers off the platform. Who higher to revive Twitter to its former glory than its wealthiest poster? 

Like Trump, Musk knew how you can use Twitter to make himself the middle of the dialog. His incessant, irreverent tweeting violated each norm of company America, endearing his followers, pissing off his haters, and making him the second-most-followed lively account on the positioning. “At the least 50% of my tweets have been made on a porcelain throne,” he tweeted one night in late 2021. “It provides me solace.”

Musk supplied to purchase the corporate for the absurdly inflated value of $44 billion. The transfer thrilled workers like Simon who chafed at Twitter’s laid-back environment and fame for delivery new options at a glacial tempo. Simon, who owned a ­portrait of himself dressed as a Nineteenth-century French common, informed his group, which managed promoting companies, that he needed to construct an “impact-focused, egalitarian and empirical tradition, the place any group member, with a robust data-driven justification, will get the metaphorical heart stage.”

Different workers famous the darker motifs of Musk’s profession — the disregard he delivered to labor relations, the various lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and racial discrimination at his firms — and located his curiosity in Twitter ominous. On Slack, a product supervisor responded to Simon’s enthusiasm for Musk with skepticism: “I take your level, however as a childhood Greek mythology nerd, I really feel you will need to level out that story behind the concept of the Midas contact shouldn’t be a optimistic one. It’s a cautionary story about what’s misplaced if you solely concentrate on wealth.”

The remark would show to be ­prophetic. In line with greater than two dozen present and former Twitter staffers, since shopping for the corporate in October 2022, Musk has proven a exceptional lack of curiosity within the folks and processes that make his new toy tick. He has purged hundreds of workers, carried out ill-advised insurance policies, and angered even a few of his most loyal supporters. Those that stay on the firm largely fall into two camps: folks trapped by the necessity for well being care and visas or cold-eyed mercenaries hoping to ascend by an influence vacuum.

Right this moment, Musk has develop into infamous for the speech he suppresses, reasonably than the speech he permits, from ­suspending ­journalists for tweeting hyperlinks to his jet tracker to briefly proscribing customers from linking to their accounts on Instagram and Mastodon.

In three months, Musk has additionally largely destroyed the fairness worth of Twitter and far of his private wealth. He has ­indicated that the corporate might declare chapter, and the distraction of operating it has brought on Tesla inventory to ­crater, costing him $200 billion.

If “free speech” was his mandate for ­Twitter the platform, it has been the alternative for Twitter the office. Dissenting opinion or criticism has led to swift dismissals. Musk changed Twitter’s previous tradition with one in every of his personal, nevertheless it’s unclear, with so few employees and plummeting revenues, if this new model will survive. As one worker mentioned in December, “Place is finished for.”

On October 26, an engineer and mom of two — let’s name her Alicia — sat in a glass convention room in San Francisco attempting to clarify the main points of Twitter’s tech stack to Elon Musk. He was imagined to formally purchase the corporate in two days, and Alicia and a small group of trusted colleagues have been tasked with outlining how its core infrastructure labored. However Musk, who was sitting two seats away from Alicia together with his elbows propped on the desk, appeared sleepy. When he did discuss, it was to ask questions on value. How a lot does Twitter spend on knowledge facilities? Why was every part so costly?

Alicia was already uninterested in Musk’s antics. For months, he had gone forwards and backwards about shopping for the corporate the place she had labored for greater than a decade. He’d tried to again out of the deal, however Twitter sued, and the chief decide of Delaware’s Chancery Court docket mentioned a trial would transfer ahead if the acquisition wasn’t full by October 28. Dealing with what many authorized observers known as a simple case for Twitter, Musk caved. So right here they have been, attempting to indicate Musk what he was about to purchase, and all he needed to speak about was cash. 

High-quality, she thought. If Musk needs to learn about cash, I’ll inform him. She launched right into a technical rationalization of the ­firm’s data-center effectivity, curious to see if he would observe alongside. As a substitute, he interrupted. “I used to be writing C applications within the ’90s,” he mentioned dismissively. “I perceive how ­computer systems work.”

Alicia knew Twitter had issues; when potential workers requested her why she’d stayed there so lengthy, she would inform them, truthfully, that the corporate was extremely inefficient. It took a very long time to get buy-in on initiatives, and communication throughout groups was usually poor. However it operated with a “benevolent anarchy” by which anybody might affect the path of the product. “You didn’t want somebody ready of energy to explicitly grant you permission,” Alicia says. “It was very a lot a bottom-up group.”

In contrast to a few of her colleagues, Alicia wasn’t reflexively anti-Musk. She revered what he had carried out at his firms and felt hopeful that, as somebody who considered himself as an engineer, he would help her extremely technical work. However Musk had a unique curiosity that day. Twitter, he mentioned, ought to instantly get into video.

“We actually ought to be capable of do longform video and entice one of the best content material creators by giving them a greater minimize than YouTube,” he mentioned, in accordance with Alicia’s recollection. The infrastructure engineers within the room agreed that including help for longform video was technically potential, however their job was constructing stuff — not technique or advertising and marketing. It appeared as if Musk didn’t perceive the essential organizational construction of a social-media firm; it was as if a wealthy man had purchased a restaurant and began telling the cooks he needed so as to add a brand new eating room. Would possibly he need to converse with the media product group as a substitute? 

Simply then, David Sacks, a enterprise capitalist and good friend of Musk’s who had suggested him on the acquisition, walked into the room. A fellow native of South Africa, Sacks had labored with Musk at PayPal and later led the enterprise social-networking firm Yammer to a $1.2 billion sale to Microsoft.

“David, this assembly is just too technical for you,” Musk mentioned, waving his hand to ­dismiss Sacks. Wordlessly, Sacks turned and walked out, leaving the engineers — who had gotten ­little engagement from Musk on something technical — slack-jawed. His imperiousness in the course of a session he seemed to be botching was one thing to behold. (Musk didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.)

The following day, Alicia and her colleagues gathered within the cafeteria of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters for a long-planned Halloween social gathering. The room was embellished with miniature pumpkins and faux spider­webs. Workers tried to get within the vacation spirit, however rumors have been swirling that Musk deliberate to chop 75 p.c of the corporate. Folks have been audibly sobbing within the loos. One firm chief recalled the surreal second of crying in regards to the finish of Twitter as they knew it, solely to search for and see an individual in a Jack Sparrow costume amble by. Exterior on the balcony, one entertainer blew bubbles for staffers’ kids. One other determine, dressed as a scarecrow, appeared to have a handler ­following him. There have been whispers: Might it’s Musk himself in costume? It turned out to be a employed performer.

As Alicia walked out of the workplace that night, she handed Twitter’s head of ­product, Jay Sullivan, who was standing alone, trying solemn. “It’s carried out,” he mentioned. The deal had closed through the social gathering. 

It took just a few hours earlier than information broke that Twitter’s govt group had walked the plank. Parag Agrawal, the CEO, was out, together with Vijaya Gadde, the top of coverage, and Ned Segal, the chief finance officer. That they had identified what was ­coming and stayed away from the workplace. Sean Edgett, the final counsel, was additionally fired; he had been current for the handover and was unceremoniously escorted out of the constructing through the Halloween social gathering. 

The times surrounding the acquisition handed in a blur of ominous, unlikely scenes. Musk posing because the world’s richest prop comedian, asserting his takeover by lugging a kitchen sink into the workplace: “Coming into ­Twitter HQ—let that sink in!” (181.2K retweets, 43.6K quote tweets, 1.3M likes.) A fleet of Teslas within the car parking zone. Musk’s intimidating safety element standing exterior his glass convention room as if guarding the chief of a growing nation. Musk’s 2-year-old son, X Æ A-Xii, toddling across the second flooring, sometimes crying. 

Workers braced for layoffs, however no phrase got here from Musk. Folks hunted for data on their unofficial Slacks, Discords, and Sign chats whereas glued to Musk’s Twitter feed for information like everybody else. “Hey all don’t neglect to finish your q3 targets!” one worker wrote darkly on Slack. “Writes, ‘keep employed,’ ” responded a colleague. 

Even Twitter executives have been clueless. Chief advertising and marketing officer Leslie Berland despatched an e-mail encouraging workers to say hello to Musk in the event that they noticed him within the workplace and promised an all-hands assembly would occur that Friday. An invite for a corporation­broad meeting appeared on folks’s calendars, then disappeared. When workers {followed} up on Slack, the top of inner communications cryptically mentioned she would “ship out a communication when there are additional particulars.” 

Musk introduced in a cadre of shut ­advisers, together with Sacks and his fellow enterprise capitalist and podcast co-host Jason ­Calacanis; Musk’s celeb lawyer, Alex Spiro; Steve Davis, the top of his ­tunneling start-up, the Boring Firm; and Sriram ­Krishnan, who had beforehand been a consumer-­product director at Twitter. To workers, this crew can be identified by just one identify: the Goons.

On Musk’s first full day in cost, October 28, the manager assistants despatched Twitter engineers a Slack message on the behest of the Goons: The boss needed to see their code. Workers have been instructed to “print out 50 pages of code you’ve carried out within the final 30 days” and prepare to indicate it to Musk in particular person. Panicked engineers began ­looking across the workplace for printers. Most of the gadgets weren’t purposeful, having sat unused for 2 years through the pandemic. Ultimately, a bunch of govt assistants supplied to print some engineers’ code for them if they’d ship the file as a PDF.

Inside a few hours, the Goons’ assistants despatched out a brand new missive to the group: “replace: Cease printing,” it learn. “Please be prepared to indicate your latest code (inside final 30-60 ideally) in your pc. You probably have already printed, please shred within the bins on SF-Tenth. Thanks!”

Alicia was scheduled to satisfy with Musk round 11 a.m. She felt unhealthy in regards to the anxiousness coursing by the workplace, even when she was sanguine in regards to the course of. As a back-end engineer, she was used to being woken up in the course of the evening as a result of one thing on the platform was breaking — a ­disaster that would affect thousands and thousands of Twitter customers. It took greater than a code evaluate to faze her. 

She had printed out just a few strains of Python reasonably than her precise code repository. (“Python is extra at Musk’s stage,” she says.) The mandate had felt like a stunt, and she or he’d doubted he would actually have interaction: “I’m not gonna clarify the venture I’ve spent ten years engaged on in a fraction of an hour competing with ten different folks — I’m simply not.” 

She by no means needed to. The assembly was pushed again, then canceled. “We didn’t truly get to indicate our code to Elon,” she says, laughing. “Which is a disgrace. I used to be very a lot trying ahead to it.”

The botched code evaluate did little to discourage the Goons, who nonetheless wanted to determine which of Twitter’s 7,500 workers have been wanted to maintain the positioning operating — and who may very well be jettisoned. At ten that very same evening, they informed managers they need to “stack rank” their groups, a standard however chilly technique of analysis that forces managers to designate their lowest performers.

Amir Shevat, who managed Twitter’s developer platform and had led giant groups at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, was perplexed. Each firm did stack ­rating in a different way. Ought to they kind ­employees by seniority? Impression? Income generated? Nobody had a solution. “They mentioned, ‘We don’t know. Elon needs a stack rank,’ ” Shevat says. 

The venture succeeded in producing giant lists of names, however as a result of completely different managers had ranked workers ­in accordance with their very own strategies, the outcomes have been incoherent. “If I have been to get that listing, I’d most likely throw it within the rubbish as a result of it’s utterly ineffective,” Shevat says.

Within the meantime, managers and different senior workers started receiving calls late at evening from the Goons. “Who’re one of the best folks in your group?” they’d ask. “Who’s essential? Who’s technical?”

The questions mirrored Musk’s certainty that Twitter may very well be run with a comparatively small variety of high ­engineers — and virtually nobody else. In the meantime, ­managers have been fielding anxious questions from ­employees, however the one one which mattered — “Will I nonetheless have a job right here?” — nobody might reply. The New York Occasions reported that one engineering supervisor puked in a trash can after being informed to chop ­lots of of employees. Even Shevat didn’t know if his place was secure.

Quickly one other new directive got here from above: Massive conferences have been banned. Musk and the Goons have been cautious of sabotage from soon-to-be-fired employees and didn’t need to danger any of them getting a ­warning earlier than they have been minimize. The ­message was “group conferences are now not a factor,” Shevat recollects. “And in the event you try this, you danger getting fired.”

Shevat had been scheduled to satisfy with Sacks at 1 p.m. to stroll him by the developer platform’s product highway map. (Musk was technically Shevat’s direct supervisor, however the two by no means met one-on-one.) Each hour, an assistant messaged Shevat to say the assembly was delayed. When it lastly started, round 8 p.m., ­Shevat defined what his group did — they ran the companies that allowed exterior builders to create apps that related to Twitter, a characteristic of any main platform. It will be an important part if Musk pursued his publicly acknowledged aspiration to make Twitter a “super-app” like WeChat, which has a thriving economic system of mini-apps made by exterior engineers.

Shevat thought Sacks appeared bored — he spent a lot of the assembly checking his cellphone. “He didn’t need to perceive something,” Shevat says. It made him need to cry, particularly since he had truly been desperate to work with Musk. “I’d have labored actually onerous for him,” he says.

Related conferences have been going down throughout the corporate. Musk had imported dozens of engineers from his different ­organizations — together with Tesla, ­Neuralink, and the Boring Firm — to assist run Twitter and cull its workers. Two of his cousins, Andrew and James Musk, have been added to the worker listing.

Twitter workers have been quickly both ­sitting round ready to be fired or positioned on Musk initiatives, pulling all-nighters on the workplace and attempting to satisfy arbitrary deadlines, at the same time as product plans modified by the day (and have been usually introduced on Musk’s Twitter feed). In the event that they didn’t meet their deadlines, they have been informed, they’d be fired — a destiny that, to some, appeared ­more and more fascinating.

The next week, on November 3, workers acquired an unsigned e-mail from “Twitter” relaying that the time for layoffs had began. By 9 a.m. the next day, everybody would obtain a notice telling them whether or not they nonetheless had a job.

“From ‘Twitter’ looool what fucking cowards,” a former worker mentioned by textual content. “Your persons are Twitter you shits.” 

That evening, lots of of workers gathered in a Slack channel known as #social-watercooler, which had develop into the corporate’s de facto city sq. since Musk took over. They posted salute emoji and blue hearts — solidarity for many who have been being minimize and for many who deeply needed to be proven the door however have been someway requested to remain. One particular person posted a meme of Thanos from Avengers: Infinity Conflict, the tremendous­villain who exterminates half the ­dwelling beings within the universe with a snap.

By morning, 50 p.c of the workforce had misplaced their jobs, nicely over 3,000 folks. “The alternation between reduction about being carried out, disappointment about [waves at gaps and fires where there was cool people / hope], anxiousness that Musk would possibly fuck with severance, and exhaustion at considered interviewing is a bit a lot,” wrote the identical former worker, “however veering in the direction of reduction.”

The employee left a message for Twitter management in a primary Slack channel earlier than their entry was minimize: “information articles aren’t comms. Tweets from an account related to half-baked rants, copy pasted memes, and the occasional misinfo aren’t comms. Secondhand inner sharing and worker sleuthing aren’t comms … I additionally hope failure of this previous week hangs heavy on you to remind you to do higher.”

To keep away from violating federal labor regulation, Musk mentioned workers can be paid for the subsequent two months, although they’d lose entry to Twitter’s programs instantly. However even this performed out haphazardly; some employees misplaced entry on schedule, whereas others lingered in Twitter’s essential programs for months. 

The layoffs worn out Shevat and his total group. Alicia stored her place, as she’d anticipated, however was left with survivor’s guilt. She began quietly encouraging her employees to arrange an exit technique.

Moments of institutional chaos are at all times somebody’s alternative, and at Twitter, that particular person was a product supervisor named Esther Crawford. Earlier than the takeover, Crawford had been targeted on merchandise that permit creators generate profits from their Twitter accounts and one which allowed customers to indicate NFTs on their profiles. When Musk arrived, she started angling for a much bigger position. She launched herself to him on the primary day as he mingled with workers at headquarters and shortly was pitching him on varied methods Twitter may very well be improved.

It labored: Crawford was tasked with relaunching Twitter’s subscription ­product, Twitter Blue. The characteristic would permit customers to pay $8 to get verified and, Musk hoped, wean the corporate off its dependency on advertisers. The 2 individuals who as soon as led the subscription effort have been ousted, making Crawford one of many firm’s most distinguished product leaders. In early November, she posted an image of herself in a watch masks and sleeping bag on the workplace: “When your group is pushing around the clock to make deadlines generally you #SleepWhereYouWork,” she mentioned. 

Even the mass layoffs didn’t deter her. “I really feel heartbroken that this course of has required many good folks to go away ­Twitter, however the enterprise was not worthwhile and drastic cuts have been going to be required to outlive, irrespective of who owned the corporate,” she wrote on Slack, additional alienating herself from colleagues. (Crawford declined to remark.)

Musk had made it clear he needed to put off Twitter’s previous verification technique, which he known as a “lords & ­peasants system.” To be verified — an emblem that an account had been vetted as genuine — a consumer needed to be accepted by somebody at Twitter. Blue test marks largely went to manufacturers, celebrities, and journalists, reinforcing Musk’s perception that the platform was tilted in favor of media elites.

To right this imbalance, Musk needed to implement a crude pay-to-play scheme. After initially proposing to cost $20 a month for verification, he was talked right down to $8 after Stephen King tweeted at his 7 million followers, “$20 a month to maintain my blue test? Fuck that, they need to pay me. If that will get instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

Twitter’s belief and security group compiled a seven-page doc outlining the hazards related to paid verification. What would cease folks from ­impersonating politicians or manufacturers? They ranked the danger a “P0,” the very best potential. However Musk and his group refused to take any suggestions that might delay the launch.

Twitter Blue’s paid verification system was unveiled on November 5. Nearly instantly, pretend verified accounts flooded the platform. A picture of Mario giving the center finger from what appeared just like the official Nintendo account stayed up for greater than a day. An account masquerading because the drug producer Eli Lilly tweeted that insulin would now be free; firm executives begged Twitter to take down the tweet. The advertising and marketing group tried to do injury management. “You construct belief by being clear, predictable, and considerate,” one former worker says. “We have been none of these with this launch.”

Days after the subscription service debuted, Twitter canned it. Yoel Roth, the top of the group whose warnings had been ignored, resigned. In an all-hands assembly, Musk vowed to not relaunch Twitter Blue till the corporate had gotten a deal with on impersonators. (Shortly after he did, in mid-December, ostensibly with defenses in place, a columnist for the Washington Publish managed to get a pretend account for a U.S. senator verified.) 

Musk’s blundering left a deep scar. ­Twitter Blue was meant to start shifting Twitter’s gross sales away from adverts towards subscriptions. However whereas chasing a comparatively paltry new money stream, Musk torched the corporate’s advert enterprise — the supply of the overwhelming majority of its billions in income. The Blue catastrophe accelerated a rush of advertisers abandoning the platform, together with Eli Lilly, and by December, what was left of Twitter’s gross sales group started providing lots of of hundreds of {dollars} in free advert spend to lure again ­entrepreneurs. (It didn’t work.) 

In a sequence of tweets, Musk blamed the corporate’s “huge drop in income” on “activist teams pressuring advertisers.” To Musk, it was anybody’s fault however his personal.

The layoffs had left groups in command of ­Twitter’s most important infrastructure and consumer expertise with a skeletal workers. Many managers hadn’t been consulted about which of their workers can be fired; after the rapture, they used Google Docs to create lists of employees who nonetheless appeared to be lively. Then they began angling to rehire some individuals who had been minimize.

A debate broke out within the firm’s Slack channels. Luke Simon didn’t like the concept of bringing engineers again. Then he did an about-face, angling to convey 4 just lately fired employees onto his group, however not with out reservations he aired on Slack. “That is going to be the problem,” he wrote. “The engineers I’m bringing again are weak, lazy, unmotivated, they usually could even be in opposition to an Elon Twitter. They have been minimize for a purpose.” Ella Irwin, a vice-president, mentioned she had mentioned the difficulty with Musk and reported that he was a “onerous no” on rehiring. 

The weekend after the layoffs, Musk reversed himself. Twitter’s remaining workers have been informed they may ask anybody who was fired to return again — with approval from management. The directive was given on Saturday, and managers got until Sunday afternoon to share their lists of whom they needed to un–lay off.

Irwin herself had been fired, however Musk introduced her again after Roth resigned. When she’d talked to Musk about taking the job, she introduced up her issues that Twitter executives had traditionally displayed a relentless concentrate on juicing the numbers that mattered to Wall Avenue, usually on the expense of creating Twitter safer. Musk reassured her that belief and security can be high priorities and later informed her group he didn’t “care in regards to the affect on income.” “He’s like, ‘I would like you to make the platform secure,’ ” she mentioned. “ ‘If there’s ten different issues that come earlier than belief and security, you’re actually not going to be efficient as a group.’ ” Irwin believed him. “In my dialog with Elon, what grew to become very clear was he truly actually, actually, actually cares about this, extra so than different executives have.”

That dedication was instantly examined by being pitted in opposition to his different purpose of “releasing” speech on Twitter. Within the weeks after Musk took over, hate speech spiked throughout the platform. Slurs in opposition to homosexual males rose 58 p.c, antisemitic language was up by 61 p.c, and anti-Black slurs greater than tripled, in accordance with some estimates. Twitter claimed the rise in hate speech was momentary, however the fundamental state of affairs was clear: Trolls have been testing the boundaries of Musk’s dedication to open discourse.

Musk mentioned repeatedly that Twitter’s content-­moderation method ought to “hew near the regulation,” but speech legal guidelines are completely different in each nation. Within the U.S., many types of hate speech and harassment are authorized. However Germany has well-known legal guidelines in opposition to Nazism and Holocaust denial, and the federal government of India has broad latitude to request the takedown of speech they don’t like. Musk promised he would go away main selections, equivalent to whether or not to reinstate Trump’s account, to a council of specialists. Then, on November 19, he reneged and made the choice by way of public Twitter ballot.

“The velocity at which he strikes and expects folks to maneuver might be dizzying, for certain,” Irwin says. She nonetheless helps Musk. “It’s most likely the fastest-moving group proper now that I’ve ever seen in my life.”

A former worker noticed the Trump ­choice in a different way: “It shattered the naïve phantasm that moderation can be something greater than dancing to the whims of 1 man’s inflated ego.”

On November 10, with simply 20 minutes discover, Musk gathered his remaining workers to deal with them immediately for the primary time. He spoke frankly in regards to the state of the enterprise and advised much more layoffs have been to return. He additionally revoked a coverage that had promised your entire workers the liberty to work remotely, without end, in the event that they wished. “Mainly, in the event you can present up in an workplace and you don’t present up on the workplace, resignation accepted. Finish of story,” he mentioned.

Slack and Sign erupted. A lawyer identified that this might be a basic change to their employment contracts, and workers didn’t have “an obligation to return to workplace.” One particular person mentioned, “That’s so low.” And later, “Okay I’m quitting tomorrow 😂”

Alicia determined she too had had sufficient. She loved working from the workplace however felt that forcing workers to take action, and on such quick discover, was immoral. She informed colleagues, first publicly in Slack, then on Twitter, to not resign. “Let him fireplace you,” she mentioned. Why give Musk what he needed? 5 days later, she was fired. In her termination e-mail, the HR division mentioned her habits had violated firm coverage. The following day, she went to the workplace to retrieve her belongings, sneaking in by the service elevator. She was shocked to really feel extra relieved than upset. She was free.

Twitter may need had a fame as a left-leaning workforce, however there had at all times been a faction that disapproved of its progressive beliefs. On Slack, a few of these employees had fashioned a channel known as #i-dissent, the place they requested questions like why deadnaming a trans colleague was thought-about “unhealthy.” When Musk introduced he was shopping for the corporate, one of many extra lively i-­dissenters was thrilled. “Elon’s my new boss and I’m stoked!” he wrote on Linked­In. “I made a decision to ship him a slack message. I figured you miss 100% of the photographs you don’t make 😅 🚀 🌕”

This worker was minimize through the first spherical of layoffs. Quickly, all of the distinguished members of the #i-dissent Slack channel can be gone. The channel itself was archived, whereas greater social channels like #social-watercooler have been deserted.

On November 16, Musk emailed his remaining 2,900 workers an ultimatum. He was constructing Twitter 2.0, he mentioned, and employees would must be “extraordinarily hardcore,” logging “lengthy hours at excessive depth.” The previous manner of doing enterprise was out. Now, “solely distinctive efficiency will represent a passing grade.” He requested workers to signal a pledge by Google Varieties committing to the brand new commonplace by the tip of the subsequent workday.

However who needed that? Workers have been nonetheless ready to be given a coherent imaginative and prescient for what Twitter 2.0 may very well be. They lacked fundamental details about the brand new firm, like how they’d be compensated now that Twitter was now not a public firm with simply sellable inventory. Workers knew what Musk didn’t need — content material moderation, free connoisseur lunches, folks working from dwelling — however had few clues as to what he did need. In addition to, was being fired for not checking a field on a Google Type even authorized?

Phrase shortly unfold {that a} vital variety of workers have been going to say no to being “extraordinarily hardcore.” After weeks of attempting to eliminate as many workers as potential, Musk and his advisers have been all of the sudden within the awkward place of needing to persuade a subset of them to remain. They met with small teams of senior engineers to listen to their issues. However to many, Musk’s dealing with of the preliminary layoffs, coupled with the dearth of particulars about what staying for Twitter 2.0 would entail, had soured them for good. As one once-loyal engineer put it, “Fuck Elon Musk.”

Lots of of workers determined to not signal the pledge, successfully resigning. In Slack, they once more posted the salute emoji, the unofficial image of Twitter 1.0: 🫡

4 days later, Musk took the stage at Twitter headquarters. He was wearing black denims and black boots with a black T-shirt that learn “I Love Twitter” in just legible black writing. Flanked by two bodyguards, he tried to articulate his imaginative and prescient for the corporate. “This isn’t a right-wing takeover of Twitter,” he informed workers. “It’s a ­moderate-wing takeover of Twitter.”

As workers peppered him with questions, the billionaire free-associated, answering their issues with smug dismissals and grandiose guarantees. What about his plan to show Twitter from a mere social community right into a super-app? “You’re not getting it, you’re not understanding,” he mentioned, sounding pissed off. “I simply used WeChat for instance. We are able to’t freakin’ clone WeChat; that might be absurd.” What about rival social platforms? “I don’t take into consideration opponents … I don’t care what Fb, YouTube, or what anybody else is doing. Couldn’t give a rattling. We simply have to make Twitter as goddamn wonderful as potential.” What about rebuilding Twitter’s management group that he’d decimated in his first week? “Initially, there might be a number of modifications, after which over time you’ll see far fewer modifications.” 

Twitter workers have been used to ­grilling their bosses about each element of how the corporate ran, an openness that was frequent at main tech firms round Silicon Valley. Even workers who nonetheless believed in Musk’s imaginative and prescient of Twitter hoped for the same dialogue with their chief. Some anticipated it, now that the slackers have been gone. However over the course of half an hour, Musk made it clear that the two-way avenue between the CEO and staffers was now closed.

By December, greater than half the workers was gone, together with all of Twitter’s main perks, together with reimbursements for wellness, courses, and day care. Remaining workers have been warned to not take lengthy Christmas holidays. Simply when morale appeared to be bottoming out, Musk started doxxing their­ colleagues. 

Solely a small interior circle knew Musk had invited the journalist Matt Taibbi to comb by inner paperwork and publish what he known as “the Twitter Information.” The intention appeared to be to provide ­credence to the notion that Twitter is in mattress with the deep state, beholden to the clandestine conspiracies of Democrats. “Twitter is each a social media firm and a criminal offense scene,” Musk tweeted.

In an impossible-to-follow tweet thread that unfolded over a number of hours, Taibbi revealed the names and emails of rank-and-file ex-employees concerned in communications with authorities officers, insinuating that Twitter had suppressed the New York Publish story about Hunter Biden’s laptop computer. After it was identified that Taibbi had revealed the non-public e-mail of Jack Dorsey, that tweet was deleted, however not the tweets naming low-level workers or the non-public e-mail of a sitting congressman. 

“What a shitty factor to do,” one employee wrote in a big Slack channel of former workers. “The names of rank and file members being revealed is fucked,” wrote one other. Workers rushed to warn a Twitter operations analyst whom Taibbi had doxxed to denationalise her social-media accounts, figuring out she was about to face a deluge of abuse.

Quickly after, Musk granted entry to ­others, together with Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger, two influential writers who had gained the approval of his social circle, together with David Sacks. They revealed Twitter threads on the corporate’s dealing with of covid misinformation and shadow-banning. Whereas the framing was supposed to stoke outrage, the interior ­correspondence that was revealed was extra banal. It largely confirmed workers having nuanced discussions about difficult, thorny moderation subjects and infrequently resisting requests by authorities businesses to take motion. What Musk noticed as damning types of censorship have been truly considerate conversations about consumer security.

Musk {followed} this with a private assault on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of belief and security. After Musk advised that Roth was sympathetic to pedophilia — a canine whistle reminiscent of QAnon and Pizzagate — Roth fled his dwelling and went into hiding. 

Similtaneously he was placing Roth in danger, Musk bent the corporate’s free-speech insurance policies to guard himself. After one in every of his kids was allegedly stalked by a fan in South Pasadena, Musk blamed a Twitter account that tracked ­public knowledge in regards to the whereabouts of his ­non-public jet — his “assassination coordinates,” Musk mentioned. He then had Irwin droop the @ElonJet account, the account of its proprietor, and dozens of others that tracked celebrities’ planes. A number of journalists from CNN, the New York Occasions, and elsewhere have been suspended for tweeting the information. After she was publicly related with the @ElonJet ban, a former worker says Irwin started insisting that directions to revive accounts solely be delivered verbally, in order that the strikes wouldn’t be linked again to her in Twitter’s programs. (Irwin denies this.)

Even Musk’s new ally Weiss denounced the crackdown: “The previous regime at Twitter ruled by its personal whims and biases and it certain seems to be like the brand new regime has the identical downside. I oppose it in each circumstances.” Musk responded by unfollowing her.

Twitter continues to hemorrhage cash, a lot in order that Musk has stopped paying its payments. The landlords of one in every of its areas in San Francisco are suing, ­in search of damages and threatening eviction ­proceedings. Twitter plans to public sale off workplace furnishings in January.

On Christmas Eve, Twitter abruptly shut down a knowledge heart in Sacramento, one of many firm’s three serving areas; it additionally introduced it might considerably downsize a knowledge heart in Atlanta. Inside hours, Twitter needed to redirect a considerable amount of site visitors to its remaining knowledge facilities, ­threatening the steadiness of the platform. Engineers struggled to maintain the service operating. Outages would occur sporadically, the worst one in January, when the positioning was down for over 12 hours for customers in Australia and New Zealand. However it was nothing close to the disaster Musk’s critics had predicted. Principally, Twitter stored buzzing alongside.

In the meantime, extra workers deemed non­important have been let go. In London, receptionists have been fired simply earlier than the ­vacation. In San Francisco, the janitorial workers was laid off with out severance. At one level, the San Francisco workplace acquired so low on workplace provides that workers started bringing their very own rest room paper. 

Late in December, Twitter workers seen a distinguished face was gone from Slack: Luke Simon had left the corporate. Nobody knew why. Some joked darkly that kissing Musk’s ring wasn’t sufficient to maintain anybody secure anymore. Simon’s ­Twitter account now not exists. (He didn’t reply to a request for remark.)

The repercussions for Musk’s dealing with of Twitter are actually coming. In line with his public-merger settlement and inner Twitter paperwork, Musk agreed to a minimum of match the corporate’s current severance package deal, which supplied two months of pay in addition to different beneficial advantages. As a substitute, he laid off workers with the minimal discover required by federal and state regulation and refused to pay out sure awards. Now greater than 500 workers, with Shevat among the many highest rating, are pursuing authorized motion in opposition to Musk for what they’re owed, along with his alleged discrimination in opposition to minority teams in his dealing with of the layoffs.

“I feel management doesn’t finish after you get fired,” says Shevat, including that he was already paid out for the acquisition of his start-up and isn’t doing this for the cash. “I nonetheless really feel chargeable for my group and for my PMs and for my engineers. So I feel that that is my manner of displaying them what’s the proper factor to do.”

Initially, laid-off workers got a 60-day discover. Now that it’s up, they’re receiving severance agreements asking them to signal away their proper to sue Twitter or say something adverse in regards to the firm or Musk for all times. In change, they get one month of pay earlier than they should discover one other job throughout what’s the most troublesome hiring market in tech in years.

It’s an open secret that many workers who stay at Musk’s “hardcore” Twitter are actively on the lookout for different jobs. Even essentially the most publicly cheerful Twitter employees can’t absolutely masks the despair. On December 29, one tweeted a selfie, smiling in entrance of an empty workplace, with the hashtags #solowork, #productiveness, and #findingperspective.

Musk himself is beginning to seem defeated. Tesla shares began 2022 buying and selling at almost $400. By September, Tesla’s inventory value had dropped by 25 p.c. It plummeted once more after Musk purchased Twitter and ended the yr at $123. Buyers are begging Musk to step away; Tesla workers are too. As one particular person on Musk’s transition group put it, “What the fuck does this need to do with vehicles?”

Musk claims he at all times supposed to be Twitter’s CEO solely quickly. With the injury he has carried out in three months — to the corporate and to his personal wealth — these watching the nosedive, whether or not with ­horror or Schadenfreude, can’t assist however surprise how for much longer he can wait. His failures at Twitter have already broken his fame as a genius. How good might he actually be, the man who bought an organization for excess of it was price, then drove what remained of it into the earth?

Whereas each firms flail, Musk stays glued to his feed. It was an end result Alicia predicted again in April when Musk first floated the concept of shopping for the corporate. “He’s too curious about in search of consideration,” she mentioned. “Twitter is a really, a really harmful drug for anyone who has that character.”

Because the yr got here to a detailed, Musk’s public statements about Twitter veered from pleasure within the web site’s utilization metrics (all-time highs, he commonly assured followers) to what may need been extra sober self-assessments of his predicament. “Don’t be the clown on the clown automotive!” he tweeted on December 27. “Too late haha.”

If he appeared sure of something, it was the steadily bettering technical structure of Twitter itself. The workers may be vastly diminished, however what it lacked in measurement it greater than made up for in rising technical competence. Little by little, Musk mentioned, Twitter’s notoriously fragile infrastructure was bettering. 

In some methods, Musk was vindicated. Twitter was much less steady now, however the platform survived and largely functioned even with the vast majority of workers gone. He had promised to rightsize a bloated firm, and now it operated on minimal head depend.

However Musk seems unaware of what he’s truly damaged: the corporate tradition that constructed Twitter into one of many world’s most influential social networks, the insurance policies that tried to maintain that platform secure, and the belief of customers who populate it daily with their conversations, breaking information, and peculiar jokes — Twitter’s true worth and contributions to the world.

“Fractal of Rube Goldberg machines … is what it looks like understanding how ­Twitter works,” Musk wrote in a brief thread on Christmas Eve. “And but work it does … Even after I disconnected one of many extra delicate server racks.”

4 days later, Twitter crashed. Greater than 10,000 customers, a lot of them worldwide, submitted stories of issues accessing the positioning. Some acquired an error message studying, “One thing went unsuitable, however don’t fret — it’s not your fault.”

“Can anybody see this or is Twitter damaged,” one consumer tweeted into the obvious void.

However in that second, Musk discovered that no matter may be occurring on this planet at giant — to his web site, his different firms, his fame and legacy — that tweet, a minimum of, appeared on his display as supposed.

“Works for me,” he replied.

Elon internet worth-o-meter supply: Bloomberg Billionaires Index