Elon Musk’s ultimatum—that Twitter employees either go “extremely hardcore” or get lost—appears to have backfired. Instead of motivating the social media company’s remaining employees to stay on (he already laid off about half of the staff when he took over), Musk’s edict for workers to commit to this “new Twitter” by 5 p.m. Thursday reportedly pushed hundreds of employees—possibly thousands—to leave the company. “I’m not pressing the button,” one employee wrote in Slack, according to The Verge. “My watch ends with Twitter 1.0. I do not wish to be part of Twitter 2.0.”
Overnight, Musk seemingly flung the company into a new tier of chaos: Twitter reportedly told employees that it was immediately closing down Twitter’s offices, and suspending access to the buildings—which one employee said was to “prevent physical sabotage,” according to Insider. It’s unclear how many people still plan to work at the company, though Insider reported it could be fewer than 2,000, raising new questions about the company’s ability to even stay afloat, service its servers, and maintain a secure environment for users. “It is likely that there are big security issues & your info could get hacked. This is also not uncommon, but a pain. If you have a credit card loaded in, be on alert,” tech journalist Kara Swisher tweeted.
A mass of Twitter users made their uncertainty known Thursday night, causing the hashtag #RIPTwitter to trend as longtime users said their goodbyes. Musk tried to tamp down on the chatter, tweeting: “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried.” The new CEO even seemed to revel in the mayhem, sharing a meme that depicted a Twitter logo basking atop the grave of another Twitter logo. “Record numbers of users are logging in to see if Twitter is dead, ironically making it more alive than ever!” he wrote in a Friday morning post.
It’s become clear that Musk’s blow-it-all-up-and-see-what-works approach to running Twitter has created an untenable work environment for many. “My boss was laid off, and my boss’s boss—the head of the department—quit. So I did not know who my boss was. I didn’t know what new assignment I had,” former Twitter employee Melissa Ingle told NPR. “We’re not really sure if the work we’re doing matters to the new ownership,” Ingle, a data scientist who worked on the platform’s civic integrity team, said. Musk laid off about half of the company’s 7,500 employees two weeks ago, reportedly cutting thousands more contractor jobs last weekend and firing several employees who had openly criticized him this week. All throughout Thursday, the company-wide internal chat was inundated with farewell messages from over 500 employees, according to Reuters. Many of the employees who opted to take the three-month severance package announced their exits under the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked and by tweeting a saluting emoji—a symbol that has reportedly been in constant use in Twitter’s internal Slack these days.
Musk could be in more trouble than he is letting on. Tech news site Platformer reported that the designers behind the Twitter Blue project—Musk’s floundering revenue scheme that would allow any account to buy verification badges that were previously reserved for corporations, government officials, and public figures—decided to leave the company Thursday, along with a number of key employees responsible for maintaining the platform’s back end.
Moreover, a group of Democratic senators sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission chair Thursday calling for an investigation of the company and accusing its new CEO of taking “alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform.” On Friday, Musk shared another meme shrugging off the lawmakers’ remarks, suggesting that they should instead be focusing on the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
