Elon Musk took control of Twitter and fired its top executives. The line between freedom of speech and hate speech is slowly disappearing. Photo: AFP/Olivier Douliery
Business magnet, Elon Musk – who fired around 3 700 staff after acquiring Twitter in a major lay-off frenzy – has made a U-turn on his decision and is now on a mission to ask many of them to return.
According to media reports, Musk has realised that a number of the employees whom he asked to leave via a rather curt email, actually possess the skill-set he needs to help him build in the new features he has outlined for the social media platform.
It was also said that some staff were laid off in error due to how rushed and chaotic the process of change in ownership was.
Musk officially acquired Twitter earlier this month, after purchasing the company for $44 billion. Twitter has a new, consolidated debt of $18.5 billion. Banks lent $12.7 billion to Musk for the takeover.
He recently proposed the idea of charging users $8 a month to verify their account with the famous blue tick – something many of the users, including the likes of famous author Stephan King – have hit back at.
Musk has also recently proposed that the platform will be banning impersonators who do not state on their profiles the word ‘parody’.
He said: “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended”.
In a tweet, he also said: “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission”.
Musk is running out of time to put forward a game-plan to make Twitter profitable again. Experts say that charging users for the blue tick will not really bring enough revenue to make a sizable dent in the company’s debt.
Twitter currently has 400 000 users boasting blue check marks free of charge. At $8 a month, that would likely only bring in around $3 200 000. The company still faces the nearly $1 billion in annual interest expense, due to at least $18 billion of debt. That means that Twitter is generating less money per year than what it owes its lenders.
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