Strap in, friends, and prepare for another bumpy day in the life of a social Muskwork. What happened to Twitter yesterday? Well…
New owner Elon Musk emailed staff warning that “the economic picture ahead is dire, especially for a company like ours that is so dependent on advertising in a challenging economic climate… Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn”.
He also told all staff that they are expected to be “in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week”. What happened next? Twitter’s chief information security officer, chief privacy officer and chief compliance officer all resigned.
Then a lawyer from the company’s privacy team published a blunt warning on Twitter’s internal Slack (which was swiftly leaked) warning that engineers “will be pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents” (as in privacy / security incidents).
Then Musk held a meeting with staff which included the warning that “bankruptcy is not out of the question” [for a company bought in a $44bn acquisition two weeks ago].
Platformer has helpfully summarised the timeline in its ‘Inside the Twitter meltdown’ report, including the very-real prospect of “billions of dollars” in fines from US regulator the FTC if Twitter violates an existing consent decree focused on new products and services, and security.
Which is why those resignations of key execs in charge of privacy, security and compliance are not a good sign at all…
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