Twitter will not be sued by Elon Musk in the upcoming September 17 deposition of the 61-year-old physicist
Elon Musk will no longer be deposed by Twitter’s lawyers on Thursday morning, after both sides agreed to a delay as they worked to close the $44 billion purchase of the social media network, the Financial Times and Bloomberg report. Musk was scheduled to be deposed for two days in Tesla’s home of Austin, Texas starting at 9:30AM, ahead of the trial’s scheduled start on October 17th. His deposition was previously pushed back from its original September 28th date due to COVID-19 exposure concerns.
He did not mention the fact that the company’s stock price has dropped 50 percent from a year ago to about $150 per share this week. Musk recently dropped to number two on Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people.
As it stands, the trial is still scheduled to proceed on October 17th. “The parties have not filed a stipulation to stay this action, nor has any party moved for a stay,” the Delaware Chancery Court judge overseeing the case, Kathaleen McCormick, wrote on Wednesday as reported by the Wall Street Journal. I will continue to work toward our trial scheduled to begin on October 17 in this regard. The trial is almost definitely going to be put on hold because of the current negotiations.
Twitter CEO Craig Musk: The Challenges for the Company, the Chief Operating Officer and the Chairman of WeChat, after he left Twitter
CNBC reported Tuesday that Musk is “actively searching” for a new Twitter CEO, citing anonymous sources. Twitter, which recently cut most of its public relations team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk responded to the story on Twitter with two crying laughing emojis.
Many Twitter employees have recently noted the absence of Parag Argawal, their current CEO, who Musk soured on after the two initially started talking about Musk joining Twitter’s board. An employee with aTrademarkiaTrademarkias, who requested anonymity to speak without company permission, said that he had been completely absent for weeks. “He has ghosted us,” said another. There are similar comments in the employee section of Blind and the employee section of slack, according to a report by The Verge.
If Musk picks another person, it could allow him to give up some of the day-to-day responsibility for running the company. One thing that would most likely remain the same is Musk’s control of the company. As the company’s owner and sole board director, Musk will eventually have the power to fire whoever he likes at the company’s helm.
According to Insider, the execs got a lot of money because of their troubles, namely Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million and Personette got $11.2 million.
Twitter faces challenges to its free speech stance in court, as the Supreme Court agreed to take up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content.
More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create “X, the everything app.” This is a reference to China’s WeChat app which started life as a messaging platform but has since evolved into multiple businesses, from shopping to payments and gaming. “You basically live on WeChat in China,” Musk told Twitter employees in June. We will be a great success if we can recreate that.
After taking over Twitter, Musk dissolved the company’s board and its C-Suite emptied out. Musk is the sole board directors and owner of the company, meaning he can tell the next CEO what to do in the role.
Twitter Takes Control of Twitter And Immediately ousts Top Executives: The Case of Musk and the Company’s Bidding
The departures are happening hours before a Delaware judge sets a deadline for the deal to be finalized. If no agreement was reached, she was going to schedule a trial.
The major personnel moves were expected, and will be the first of many changes the CEO will make.
Musk privately clashed with Agrawal in April, immediately before deciding to make a bid for the company, according to text messages later revealed in court filings.
About the same time, he used Twitter to criticize Gadde, the company’s top lawyer. The harassment of Gadde came in waves from other accounts on the social networking site. The harassment of Gadde included racist and misogynistic attacks, as well as calls for Musk to fire her. The harassment went up once again after she was fired.
Advertisers worry that Musk’s plans to promote free speech and cut back on moderation will open the door for more online toxicity, and that’s why they sent the message.
He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
The note is a shift from Musk’s position that Twitter is unfairly infringing on free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content, said Pinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
“Even slightly loosening content moderation on the platform is sure to spook advertisers, many of whom already find Twitter’s brand safety tools to be lacking compared with other social platforms,” Enberg said.
“You do not want a place that consumers are bombarded with stuff they don’t want to hear about, and the platform doesn’t take responsibility for that,” Yildirim said.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/27/1132153277/elon-musk-takes-control-of-twitter-and-immediately-ousts-top-executives
Elon Musk’s Social Media Disruption After he Has Come to Power: How to Avoid a Big Shakeup of the Social Media Landscape
In anticipation of the company going private under Musk, the New York Stock Exchange will suspend trading in the company’s shares before Friday’s opening bell.
Top sales executive Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer, said she had a “great discussion” with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.
Musk’s enthusiasm about visiting the building this week was very different to his earlier suggestion that the building be turned into a homeless shelter.
As of press time, though, no such message has been delivered to the company’s 7,500 or so employees. And with Musk reportedly intent on making cuts before Tuesday, when many employees are set to receive new stock grants, it appears that any such decisions will come down to the wire.
The weakness of the economy, uncertainty surrounding Musk’s proposed takeover, and changing consumer behavior give him good reason to avoid a big shakeup of the social network’s ad business.
After haphazardly establishing a ban on links out that put his site at odds with both The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz and his own supporters, like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Paul Graham, Elon Musk’s doxxing, banning, and moderation outburst ended — predictably — with an apology and a promise it “won’t happen again.”
The first version of this article appeared in the newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.
In fact, not only has Musk himself contaminated the information environment he now reigns over, but he is apparently working to dismantle the little infrastructure erected to help users sift through the daily chaos. Recent news reports, including from CNN, indicate that he plans to strip public figures and institutions of their blue verified badges if they do not pay.
Charging for verified badges might appear at first glance as a business story. The move will have an impact on the information landscape. Most notably, it will make it much more difficult for users to distinguish from authentic and inauthentic accounts.
The right has for years lashed out at “blue checks,” whom in their eyes represent elitist gatekeepers who control the conversation, even though many conservatives also don blue badges. The air of authority they give upon the profile they are appended to, will certainly delight some conservatives when taking away those free blue checks.
Twitter Shutdown: An Assessment of Musk and the Organization of Staff Layoffs in the Heterogeneous era of Silicon Valley
Musk’s authorized biographer, Walter Isaacson, tweeted in 2018 that “the best thing” one could do to “save social networks, the internet, civil discourse, democracy, email, and reduce hacking would be authenticating users.”
The process has been frightening and disorienting, according to conversations with eight employees today and over the weekend. In the absence of official communications, workers have been hunting for clues in Slack and gathering in private Discords to share the latest rumors.
The Washington Post said that 25% of the staff would be laid off, with teams affected like sales, engineering, legal and trust and safety.
The turmoil has divided the company into roughly two camps: those waiting nervously to see whether they still have a job after those cuts land, and those who are frantically working to ship new features under a threat of being fired if they don’t.
The order on Friday toprint out the last 30 to 60 days of code was a cause of concern for a lot of people. It was part of a set of measures Musk and his team have undertaken in an effort to identify Twitter’s highest and lowest performing employees as a precursor to layoffs.
More than 50 employees of Musk’s company have been brought into Twitter to help with the transition, CNBC reported. One employee told us that they received a midnight call from an engineer from the company who inquired about their team and which engineers at the company were most respected.
Why Do You Need to Code, Ship, or Drop? Axios, Twitter, and the Vine Project Are Open Problems
If you are feeling depressed and dismayed right now, just want to know that you are not alone, since no leadershippy type seems interested in filling the void. It sucks.
In other communication channels, employees are sharing their contact information if they suddenly lose access, an employee told us.
Engineers are told to work on at least two major projects in a matter of days or weeks. The verification badges would have to be retained and users could be required to pay as much as $20 a month. The second, which Axios first reported today and which we can confirm, is a plan to revive the short-form video app Vine, either as a standalone product or part of the core Twitter app. Alex Heath reported that in the event of changes to Blue, the features must be delivered by November 7th or the team will be fired.
The Vine project has generated moderate enthusiasm so far, we’re told. After Musk granted the go-ahead Sunday night, more than a dozen engineers volunteered to help with the project.
Other employees are being encouraged to go build something — anything — and show it off to Musk. In one Slack message we saw, an engineering director urged his team to come up with new products and features and share them directly with their new CEO. “At best: you will get some feedback. You may be asked to ship it asap,” the director wrote. You will be asked to stop and work on something else. At least you did something that you love.
Similarly, on Monday, Behnam Rezaei, senior director of software engineering at Twitter, sent a note to his team acknowledging “big changes” were coming. The email was obtained by Platformer and states that he believes cultural change will be the most important change. Some good and some bad.
Do good engineering work, if I am asked what I should do now. Tell the code to be written. Fix bugs, keep the site up. I know the criteria for being at Twitter is that. It’s not working on a fancy project for Elon. Shipping and delivering is a good example of a culture change. I encourage you to rotate more on coding and shipping, and less on documentation, planning, strategy etc. If you want to be in a “special” group this week, code and ship 5x as [much as] before. Building what Elon asks or thinks sexy is not the criteria. Being impactful and changing product and helping our users is the criteria. You do not need commands from me. You are all software engineers. You know what needs to be changed. Do it. You’re in charge.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/31/23434002/twitter-layoffs-internal-messaging-uncertainty-elon-musk
Twitter Politics: An Insight into the Problem of Musk’s Toy, and the Challenges It Takes to Ensure that Musk is Happy with his New Job
But Musk’s attention can be unnerving, too. One employee we spoke with said they had mixed feelings about working on a project Musk is known to be focused on, such as Vine.
Musk remained silent after most users voted for him to step down from his position as CEO of the short-lived messaging service. He appears to believe that the problem is who gets to vote in the polls.
In reply to a person who said he would take the CEO job, Musk said he wasn’t happy with his new job.
Now that he has been accused of making bad decisions and putting his overpriced toy in someone else’s hands, Musk might want to consider putting his toy in someone else’s hands.
If his time at the company ended the same way as his time at the company began, then the $44 billion takeover would be appropriate and timely.
The status of the new policies, in the meantime, remains unclear, with Musk claiming that Paul Graham will be restored and Lorenz will be unbanned, but also claiming the link policy will be adjusted to suspending accounts only when that account’s primary purpose is promotion.
More than 17 million votes were cast in the informal referendum on his chaotic leadership of Twitter, which has been marked by mass layoffs, the replatforming of suspended accounts that had violated Twitter’s rules, the suspension of journalists who cover him and whiplash policy changes made and reversed in real time.
At a time when the business faces renewed challenges, the results of the poll are interesting. Many brands have halted advertising on the platform since October, when Musk completed his acquisition. Musk has frequently stated that Twitter’s finances are dire. Twitter is on pace to lose $4 billion a year after the advertiser exodus, estimates Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities.
The electric automaker bore the brunt of more bad news related to Musk’s Twitter obsession on Monday. Colin Rusch of the firm wrote that he thought Mr. Musk was becoming isolated as the steward of the finances with the users on the platform. We can see a negative feedback loop from the departure of advertisers and users.
The lieutenants who are working on the company since Musk’s takeover are the most likely candidates to become the new CEO. The short list likely includes investor Jason Calacanis, Craft Ventures partner David Sacks and Sriram Krishnan, an Andreessen Horowitz general partner focused on crypto and Twitter’s former consumer teams lead.
Calacanis, who emerged in the tech world as a reporter during the dot com boom, is an early-stage investor who has backed well-known companies such as Uber and Robinhood. He has also launched several media properties and hosts two podcasts (one in partnership with Sacks).
On Sunday, Calacanis asked who would prefer to work in tech and media. Who is insane enough to have a verified account on the social networking site? Calacanis asked his followers whether Sacks or someone else should take over the company, or whether they should run it separately or together. The majority of respondents voted for “other.”
Sacks has some experience with managing a social network, having been a part of the original team at PayPal. He founded and ran enterprise communications platform Yammer, before selling it to Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion.
Sacks has been particularly unflinching in echoing Musks’ talking points, whether it’s justifying a feud with Apple or attempting to stir up outrage about a Twitter account that posted publicly available information about the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet. Sacks responded to a user’s question with a single word: “Chess.”
He has invested in a few of the new coin startups, which could help him fulfill Musk’s goal of building payment capabilities for the micro-messaging service.
Krishnan is arguably the least well-known — and therefore perhaps the least controversial — of Musk’s current Twitter leadership team, which could help deflect some of the recent negative attention the company has received.
Some users have suggested that Trump’s son-in-law, who was spotted watching the World Cup with Musk, is possible leader of the social media company.
Saudi Royal Family is one of the biggest investors in Twitter. Prior to working as an advisor in the White House, he was a real estate developer for his family. Last year, he said he would leave politics and start an investment firm. The weekly New York Observer was previously owned by Kushner.
Elon Musk is the Elephant in the Room: How to Stop the Covid-19 Abuse of Twitter and Ensure that the C.E.O. is Responsible
As a result of Musk’s penchant for using social networking sites and his rapid decisions after previous polls, it was expected that he would address the elephant in the room by now. However, he has not. Musk was out of the public eye most of Monday except for an 18-hour period.
“We believe banning journalists without consistent defensible standards or clear communication in an environment where many people believe free speech is at risk is too much for a majority of consumers to continue supporting Mr. Musk/TSLA, particularly people ideologically aligned with climate change mitigation,” Rusch wrote.
When Elon Musk polled Twitter users about whether to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account, he quickly followed through on the majority’s wish to do so. He pronounced it in Latin: “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
He went ahead and did it when people voted on a poll to give general amnesty to suspended accounts. He also heeded user votes in a poll to restore the accounts of tech journalists that he had suspended on Friday.
While it’s unclear how he would restrict voting to only those who pay for the company’s subscription service, such a change could dramatically reduce the number of Twitter users who could vote in polls. It would also skew those who can vote to the users who are willing to pay up for Twitter Blue, which includes the controversial paid verification feature Musk pushed to introduce. Compared to poll taxes, Musk’s Monday letter immediately prompted comparisons.
Musk forced remaining employees to take a pledge to become “extremely hardcore” in their work, and stopped enforcing Twitter’s policy against Covid-19 misinformation.
A paid verification feature that was to be used to vouch for verified brands and athletes was instead manipulated by fake accounts on the platform in a matter of days.
The policy of the platform doesn’t make sense, according to Jack Draymo, who previously voiced his support for Musk’s takeover.
Mr. Musk clarified on Tuesday that he still planned to oversee Twitter’s software and server teams, which, The Verge notes, is basically a lot of the company. It’s possible that the C.E.O. would end up in control of the business aspects of the site.
Mr. Musk also openly questioned the quality of anyone applying for the role. Beyond the “foolish” crack in Tuesday’s tweet, he previously wrote, “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.”
As reported by Forbes, Musk stated via video link that he needed to stabilize the organization and make sure it was in a financially healthy place. “I’m guessing probably towards the end of the year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company.”
Despite Musk’s comments about potentially leaving his CEO position by year end, he has a well documented habit of misestimating future plans. The Tesla Cybertruck will now enter production in 2024, over two years later than the original late 2021 date given during its 2019 launch. Musk also previously said that a Tesla should be able to drive itself across the country by the end of 2017. The feat is yet to be achieved half a decade later.
The World Government Summit also covered Musk’s plans for Twitter more generally, including his ambitions to reduce misinformation on the platform. You can watch the whole interview below, or skip ahead to Musk’s response about stepping down as CEO, which starts at around the 15 minute mark.