"Things are wild over at Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform. The company is laying off up to half of its workforce, which would amount to around 3,700 people. As layoffs started, former Twitter employees wasted no time filing a class action lawsuit in a San Francisco federal court. Meanwhile, Musk continues to troll and whine all over the platform he is rapidly tanking.
This is very bad for Twitter as huge amounts of institutional
knowledge and capacity are eliminated immediately before a plan goes
into effect allowing users to buy blue checkmarks without any
verification process other than their willingness to pay. That symbol
will become a marker of people willing to fork over their money to Musk,
but it will also be a big opportunity for scammers to make themselves
look legit. Oh, and this scammer-enabling feature is set to roll out the
day before Election Day.
The layoffs are also illegal. The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act,
as well as a California WARN Act, require that workers get 60
days notice before mass layoffs. That obviously did not happen here.
Four workers—one terminated on Nov. 1 and three terminated on
Nov. 3—initiated the class action suit, represented by well-known
workers’ rights attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan. Presumably that class
will grow as layoff notices go out.
The workers are seeking financial judgments including wages owed, but
they also want the court to block Twitter from getting laid-off
employees to sign away their right to join the class action. The latter
is a significant concern since under Musk, Tesla did exactly that,
getting workers to sign documents releasing the company from its WARN
Act requirements in exchange for much smaller severance payments. A
federal judge later called that “misleading,” requiring Tesla to inform
workers they could join a class action suit.
“Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has made clear that
he believes complying with federal labor laws is
‘trivial,’” Liss-Riordan said in a statement
to CNN, quoting Musk on the earlier lawsuit against Tesla. “We have
filed this federal complaint to ensure that Twitter be held accountable
to our laws and to prevent Twitter employees from unknowingly signing
away their rights.”
On Friday Musk went onto his new toy to whine that “Twitter
has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring
advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and
we did everything we could to appease the activists.” He added,
“Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
Awww, someone made his bed and is unhappy lying in it. Multiple companies have confirmed that
they are pausing their Twitter advertising while they wait to see where
things go. But activist pressure takes time to build and this happened
almost immediately, pointing to other causes. Like, say, the flood of racist slurs that
swept over Twitter as soon as Musk took control of the company. Or the
plan to replace a blue-check system that let users know they were
reading tweets from verified public figures or journalists with one that
lets users know they are reading tweets from people willing to pay Elon
Musk a monthly fee. Or the mass layoffs that erode confidence that the
site will be secure.
One possibility is that Musk thinks he’s being clever here with
regard to that class action suit, but if so … it’s not going to work:
While Musk’s whine drew plenty of vocal support from his right-wing
fanbase, there were plenty of people willing to set him straight about
what’s going on, including noted tech commentator Mike Masnick:
And tech journalist Charlie Warzel:
And CNN international correspondent Larry Madowo:
And Leverage co-creator John Rogers:
And you know what? I know all those people are really who their
handles say they are because they have blue checks under a system that
requires identity verification.
Elon Musk took over Twitter and immediately use of the N-word spiked. He personally spread a
conspiracy theory about an attempted assassination of the speaker of
the House that left her 82-year-old husband hospitalized. He announced a
series of ill-considered plans for the company and laid off thousands
of workers in violation of the law. But sure, it’s activist groups
causing advertising revenue to drop off.
If nothing else, at least we probably won’t have to hear so much hype about the brilliance of Elon Musk from now on."
~~~~
And at the end of the weekend, it is getting wilder: when I went to clock out and say adios people were talking about how members changed and used Musk's name as a handle. Their fates have been sealed, they will all be banned according to Musk.
Meanwhile, I know I'm behind. I don't have to cook tomorrow so I'll be back, I hope. Just click Kos for the latest on the Ukraine. Here, we are at already this early date 50 - yes I said 50 executions in TIJ and it is cold, big storm coming in. Bigger election coming up, say prayers. If the GOP takes the midterms, they say Portugal is a nice place to live.
Getting away from Elon Mushhead was liberating, and yes, I feel free !😊😊😊
Sadly, Cream's 'I Feel Free' was not a favorite, so I changed it:
