Musk Cuts Hundreds of Contract Employees, Hints at Further Verification Components

Severely, each day Elon is throwing out new concepts for what’s coming subsequent at Twitter, a few of which in all probability will eventuate, and others that’ll get misplaced within the shuffle. And there’s actually a variety of shuffling happening at Twitter HQ.

Right here’s the Elon Musk/Twitter replace for at present:

Extra Job Cuts

Over the weekend, Musk’s transition workforce reportedly cut 4,400 of the company’s 5,500 contract staff.

Twitter customers native contractors for varied duties, together with content material moderation and website administration, however these aren’t workers, as such, in order that they weren’t included within the original staff cull, which noticed Musk reduce half of Twitter’s workers final week (earlier than asking some of them to come back).

In line with experiences, many of those contractors weren’t advised that their contracts can be canceled, they came upon after discovering that their entry to Twitter’s programs had been shut off.

The impacts that these newest cuts could have isn’t clear, but it surely appears as if Twitter’s moderation, and even day-to-day maintenance, might begin to deteriorate because of this.

Musk has been up-front about the necessity to reduce prices, with Twitter, apparently, losing $4 million a day when he initially took over on the app. Job cuts will definitely tackle this, at the very least partly, however you would need to additionally count on that dropping so many employees and contractors (now as much as round 8k roles in whole) should have some affect on the service.

If issues begin falling aside within the subsequent few weeks, this might be why.

On the similar time, Musk is now additionally participating in public back-and-forth with former Twitter staff, who’ve questioned his claims about mismanagement on the firm.

In abstract, employees relations at Twitter are seemingly not going nice in the mean time.

Delayed Verification

As has been nicely documented, Elon’s $8 checkmark program has, this far, been pretty messy, resulting in a variety of impersonations, misrepresentations, and probably defamation, amid confusion over the brand new blue ticks, and what they really imply.

The following chaos has even resulting in major stock impacts for some big-name companies.

In consequence, Twitter’s now taken a step again, with the brand new program faraway from stay deployment late final week. Musk has admitted that it ‘needs some tweaks’, however he does count on the $8 checkmarks to be made accessible once more by the end of this week.

Although seemingly with one vital replace:

So the brand new course of, which is seemingly designed to deal with the aforementioned points with impersonation, will allow Twitter to offer an official linkage between, say, a media group and their precise employees within the app, with perhaps a brand new variation of the ‘official’ gray tick, that might be displayed along with the blue checkmark.

How precisely that may work isn’t clear, however the concept is that this can present extra granularity to verification – so the blue checkmark isn’t seen as a sign of authority, as such, however as a marker of verified identification in affiliation with a model.

In different phrases, imposters gained’t so simply have the ability to dupe individuals with parody accounts, as a result of they gained’t have this additional seal of approval – no matter it could be – which might verify that this can be a consultant of mentioned group.

Which makes some sense, however in all probability simply sticking with the unique blue tick system, and reviewing the rules for that, would have been simpler.

However then, I assume, you wouldn’t have the ability to cost $8 to usher in some fast money – and for context, 140,000 people reportedly signed up to the new $8 checkmark program within the days that it was accessible final week.

We’ll little question hear extra concerning the subsequent iteration of Twitter verification quickly.

Twitter x LinkedIn

It is a extra left-field choice, however Elon Musk additionally says that individuals will quickly have the ability to record their employment and training historical past on Twitter, increasing Twitter search into an entire new ingredient.

Musk famous this in response to a consumer query about employment historical past and resumes, which Musk mentioned can be ‘coming soon’ to the app.

That might add extra credibility, or not, to what a consumer is saying. For instance, if anyone’s commenting on local weather change, and also you examine their Twitter resume and discover that they haven’t any historical past of local weather analysis expertise, perhaps that lessens the worth of their enter.

Or perhaps they only make it up. I don’t know, but it surely appears to be like like Musk is making an attempt to department out into new areas, which can be aligned together with his broader view of identification verification. Or it might be one other alternative to earn cash by way of job listings within the app.

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These are the massive notes from Musk’s varied feedback and updates over the weekend, apart from his ongoing provocation of battle between ‘the individuals’ and the ‘media elite’.

I’m not precisely positive the place this stems from, because the destructive protection round Musk’s Twitter takeover up to now has associated to employees cuts, and the way in which wherein they have been dealt with, verification modifications, and the rushed nature of the brand new $8 checkmark program, and issues on the app, which Musk himself mentioned simply final week could go bankrupt at some stage.

It looks like these points have all been reported fairly precisely, even when they’re not flattering to Musk. However perhaps I’m lacking one thing – or perhaps, Musk simply advantages from inciting class warfare that pits his supporters towards his perceived enemies.