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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#651
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few years, if not sooner, Twitter will be right there with Tesla/SpaceX in terms of resume cachet. Everyone will see their culture has been transformed to one of rigor and performance. The "A" players will surface and they will do more with half the staff (or less even) than they ever did with 7500 people... and it will be noteworthy. Musk will be in the mix heavy for about 6 months. He'll make executive hires t…

Bahaha. Rigor and performance?? Teslas kill people. SpaceX is cool, but pays fuck all because it’s cool. I once watched the YouTube video of musk talking about battery prices and buying raw materials on the London exchange, and I thought, wow this guy is so insightful, no wonder his companies do well. It’s not till later that I found out that everything he says is someone else’s idea that he takes credit for.

This is true of every CEO and corporate leader. They coordinate profound talent around them. That alone is a talent, and a very valuable one.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#652
post #522

A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted an image of "staff members... flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow", but that tweet is deleted on twitter itself because "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." This is ironic if you consider all…

I will send a request to archive a copy of a tweet in the Wayback Machine just in case, especially if the tweet is critical of Twitter from now on.

Wayback Machine will remove archived tweets. For example, Taylor Lorenz’s tweets were erased after she requested it.[1] Other archives get removed if the people running the Internet Archive dislike the content. Similar to how Paypal isn’t a bank and eBay isn’t an auction site, The Internet Archive isn’t an archive.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://twitter....

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now. I somehow have a feeling that this is not the first time in history that an embedded Tweet in a news story has been removed, either by Twitter or the author.

Yes, but it is probably (one of) the first times it was done so blatantly in Twitter's own interest.

How many other company internal communications tweets have there been that stay up?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) Freedom of speech is not the first amendment and vice versa. Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces, public and private, while the First Amendment only applies in America and to the government. People think they sound smart when they say freedom of speech onl…

The concept outside the context of legal sanctions is an odd one though. It's much like the anti-cancel culture argument. It seems some want freedom of speech with absolutely no chance of any consequence whatsoever. I think there's a reason why the more broad sense of freedom of speech has never been codified.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#655

Musk and friends compare Twitter to other tech companies and see that it's ratio of employees to revenue is lowest. He therefore thinks he must halve the number employees and/or increase revenue to get this ratio up. From the chat log exhibits from the Twitter vs Musk case: https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/#47 A VC (Jason Calacanis) does back of the envelope calculations: Twitter revenue per employee: $5B rev /…

It would be nice if revenue and employee count were completely independent. Heck, you could fire everyone except one person and have an incredibly high ratio! (Don’t fire that last person or else you’ll get a divide by zero error.) Interestingly, he’s already tweeting out complaints about a massive drop in revenue. His theory is that this is caused not by his erratic behavior, but instead by activists who hate free s…

I don't understand how anyone could not blame activists for this? They themselves are taking credit for it.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#656
post #646
post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be violating "twitter rules", but it's likely violating company policy not to expose internal dealings (even as trivial as screenshots of slack emojis).

So Twitter's corporate interests can trump the free speech ideology. What a surprise. Leaking a private slack can be political activism for worker's rights. I'm not saying these particular heart emojis are, but here Twitter is still in position of judging whether particular tweet was acceptable or not.

> Leaking a private slack can be political activism for worker's rights.

Unless she's acting as a "whistleblower", then that argument carries zero weight.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#657

A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted an image of "staff members... flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow", but that tweet is deleted on twitter itself because "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." This is ironic if you consider all…

> This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" Another ironic thing is the number of people who lectured anyone disagreeing with twitter's content moderation decisions that twitter is a commercial enterprise that can do whatever it pleases (usually this means yielding to activist pressure) and who are now acting indignant when Musk acts like he owns…

Is that fair? The criticism about these deleted posts seems to be pointing out the contradiction between the claim of widening the speech available and the way that it is being limited here, not that Twitter has no right to do it.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) It’s not ironic or remotely unexpected if you’ve taken notice of any of his actual actions involving freedom of speech.

It's starting to feel like Musk is playing this political game to me. Pretending he is championing the little guy, that he/twitter/everyone is somehow being repressed and they/he is fighting against it. His recent tweet on how 'activists' are the cause of twitters recent revenue drop for example. Even with the blue check marks, he is framing it as it being open to all and the little guy taking the power back, all you…

Or maybe he is just a dumb guy who believes his own bullshit but ultimately doesn't know what he is doing. How much do we have to hear about the chaos behind the scenes at his companies before people start to realize this whole thing possibly isn't a well orchestrated plan?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) It’s not ironic or remotely unexpected if you’ve taken notice of any of his actual actions involving freedom of speech.

Everything Musk does in the public sphere is a performance. He's putting on a show, and the show is always crafted according to whatever he thinks will sway the public in the direction he wants them to go.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#660

A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted an image of "staff members... flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow", but that tweet is deleted on twitter itself because "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." This is ironic if you consider all…

Just looking at her account, her tweet about being fired/laid off is still there. I don't know what it originally was, but it seems like a picture was posted and depending on what it was might have been the issue. Like if it was a bunch of her coworkers in the office maybe that was against the rules for whatever reason.
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