Posted by Vincent Nappi.
Last week Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. Since he made his intention known more than a year ago to purchase the social media site there has been controversy surrounding it. Musk has promised to make the social media platform the town square of websites that will not discriminate viewpoints of any individuals. Several high-profile users have been banned by the site including former president Donald Trump leading many republicans to claim that Twitter and sister sites like Facebook have an anti-Republican bias.
Musk’s first order of business when taking over was to fire several individuals that he felt were responsible for suppressing freedom of speech, and censoring individuals who they disagreed with. This has led to a significant loss of ad revenue as several socially conscious company now feel that Twitter will become a haven for hate speech and disinformation. Musk has assured the world that this will not happen and that content filters are still in place.
With the loss of ad dollars though Twitter revenue has dropped massively according to Elon Musk. Forms like General Mills, and Audi are among those who have paused advertising on the platform. With that Musk has made a statement that he is planning on laying off roughly half of the companies to promote cost savings. Employees of Twitter have filed a lawsuit looking to enforce regulations that layoffs must be announced two months in advance. Musk has already stated that employees will be given more than the required severance and benefits.
It remains to be seen how this will play out. Mr. Musk is doing what he feels is in the best interest of the company; however, he is harming the stakeholders of the company (the employees) by cutting them loose with little or no notice. I see how that could be unfair for the employees; however, the companies who have stopped advertising without giving Musk an opportunity to show how he will run the company seem to be bowing to pressure from the liberal side of the country. Some of these companies are the same ones who have significant revenue coming from countries like China who history of human rights abuse are well noted.
If both sides would settle down and monitor how Mr. Musk runs the company instead of a quick knee-jerk reaction, I believe these cuts could have been avoided and with it the harm to the stakeholders involved.
Vincent is a sports management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2024.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/twitter-employees-file-lawsuit-claiming-mass-layoffs-violate-federal-law-requiring-notice