According to a Bloomberg story, Elon Musk “floated” the notion of reducing employment at Twitter to enhance its bottom line as part of his presentation to seek funding to acquire the company. “While nothing is set in stone — and Musk himself did not have access to Twitter’s non-public financials at the time,” according to the report, “he specifically suggested employment cutbacks” during negotiations with banks. Musk mentioned “efficiencies” at the company in meetings with financiers, according to the Washington Post, “which might involve job cutbacks.”
If the $44 billion transaction announced Monday goes through, there are still a lot of unknowns about what Twitter will look like under Musk’s ownership. So far, his own words in a press release provide the best indication of what he plans to do with the platform:
Free speech is the foundation of any functional democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where important issues affecting humanity’s future are discussed. I also want to make Twitter better than it has ever been by adding new features, opening up the algorithms to increase trust, combating spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has enormous potential, and I’m excited to work with the company and the Twitter community to realize it.
However, there has been no public discussion of possible job losses. A request for comment from Twitter was not immediately returned.
One area where Musk may make cuts is the company’s policy department, given Musk’s many tweets about opening up free speech on the platform — including ones criticizing past judgments by Twitter that have garnered bad attention to staff. Musk recently disbanded Tesla’s public relations department, so Twitter’s communications teams may be scrutinized as well.
Musk may have discussed methods to enhance the bottom line with bankers, but he has stated publicly that he is not interested in Twitter for the money. “This is not a method to earn money,” Musk declared on April 14th at TED 2022. “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is tremendously important to the continuation of civilization, in my opinion.” I don’t give a damn about economics.”
