Twitter Quickly Imploding?

Really wondering how much longer Twitter is going to last with Musk at the helm. Advertisers are leaving, sign-up for the new $8 USD a month Twitter Blue (his grand idea to bring Twitter back into the black) are halted due to rampant fraud and imposter accounts (not to mention it was only available on iOS). Of course, he can not say he wasn’t warned the (paid) Blue ‘Verification’ checkmark with the new Twitter Blue was going to have major issues. He can’t say he wasn’t warned what we saw with all the fake accounts wasn’t going to happen.

“Motivated scammers/bad actors could be willing to pay… to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost,” the document said. This warning was “labeled ‘P0’ to denote a concern in the highest risk category,” the Platformer/Verge article said.

Detailing another P0 risk, the trust and safety team warned the paid checkmarks could lead to “impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials, and other high-profile individuals… Legacy verification provides a critical signal in enforcing impersonation rules, the loss of which is likely to lead to an increase in impersonation of high-profile accounts on Twitter.”

The problems Twitter employees warned of arose quickly after the Twitter Blue rollout, as scammers eagerly paid $8 for checkmarks that made it easy to impersonate prominent accounts. Musk halted the paid verification scheme after only two days, although Musk said it would “probably” be reinstated by the end of next week.

– Ars Technica

It is bad enough he is forcing Twitter employees to return to the office, but it seems he does not trust his employees either….especially his engineers….or anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

Workers told The Verge that under Musk, Twitter has transformed into an “openly hostile” environment. And Musk—who already told employees that he would be relying on his paranoia to push through this difficult time—has possibly become so paranoid about Twitter engineers messing with Twitter code, he’s taken the drastic step of freezing them out from altering it. This happened during an “emergency meeting” held at 1:45 am on Monday, and Musk has provided no other explanation for the code freeze, The Verge reported.

Most visibly, Twitter engineer Eric Frohnhoefer became the first Twitter employee that Musk fired by tweet when he responded to Musk’s incorrect tweet explaining why Twitter was slow on Android.

Frohnhoefer wasn’t the only Twitter engineer who seemed to have reached his limit of patience with Musk’s leadership style. Another engineer who worked at Twitter for a decade, Ben Leib, told Bloomberg that he was fired on Sunday after also responding to the same Musk tweet. The tone of Leib’s tweet reflects what The Verge reported is a growing solidarity between Twitter’s frustrated remaining staff against the hostility of Musk’s management style.

If this keeps up not only with Musk not having any revenue coming in from advertisers (of course Twitter can not be dependent on advertisers alone), he is not going to get revenue from Twitter Blue either as there are not going to be any engineers or employees left to implement the new Twitter Blue features and ‘other plans’ to bring in badly needed revenue. He could always ask more laid-off employees to come back to take the place of those he fired or left due to the toxicity. It is clearly a bad sign when four Security and Compliance Executives quit last week over concerns Musk with violate the 2011 consent decree issued by the FTC. It is no wonder Twitter is on the verge of bankruptcy (and a pending Class Action Lawsuit and possibly multiple Wrongful Termination suits are not going to help). Of course we shouldn’t really be surprised after all Elon tweeted it himself last week…

Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.

We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022