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ZebethMedia staff on what we lose if we lose Twitter • ZebethMedia

I spied a tweet the other day that journalists would suffer if Twitter ever shut down because they would lose a driver of traffic. While there is some truth to that — Twitter does help expose your writing to a larger audience — it’s also true that Twitter has value beyond that for journalists and other users. It’s safe to say that Twitter is in disarray as Elon Musk fecklessly tries to grasp the business, instituting mass layoffs as the remaining essential employees flee the general chaos, spurred on by midnight email ultimatums. That most recent missive, it seems, triggered a mass resignation, according to reports. When you add that to the people who were let go in the layoffs, it’s fair to ask how many people are left to run the site. Even before all this happened, the ZebethMedia team had a conversation on Slack about what we would miss if Twitter went away tomorrow. At the time (three days ago), it felt more like a whimsical game than a real possibility. For all its warts, Twitter has a way of connecting people who otherwise might never connect. It gives us a place to share our passions, our random thoughts, and yes, our shitposts, all while keeping us up on what’s happening in the world in real time. “It’s hard to imagine anything could replace Black Twitter. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that we’ll always find our way.” Dominic-Madori Davis While there are surely many negatives to the platform — it’s way too easy to spread misinformation and hate speech and attack people you disagree with — there are also loads of positives, and many things we would miss if Twitter perishes. It now feels like it very well could. So several ZebethMedia staffers contributed what they would miss most if Twitter went away (while hoping it’ll still be up tomorrow): I’m not even sure where to begin to describe the immense impact Black Twitter has had on, well, the world, really. From when I was a teenager, watching so many Black people mobilize to bring awareness to the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, to that time we all shared experiences and made jokes as to what it was like having Thanksgiving with a Black family. “When it’s time to leave and the plate you hid is missing, *insert Kermit screaming meme here.*” The memes are endless, as is the support — and the heat — we give and place onto people and topics. It was a place to find community in a world so unkind to us. It really does feel like its own universe sometimes. I remember a few years ago going to Clubhouse to hear the talks and then running to Twitter to watch everyone live-tweet the conversations. This thread from a few days ago really brought back memories, in which author Kira J hosted a little “Black Jeopardy.” Famous dates for 500, please. “On December 21st, 2020, what were Black people waiting around to get?” Superpowers. And they’re coming still, don’t worry. They’re just running on CP time. The community always felt quite insular; what happened there rarely burst out of our bubble. When it does hit the mainstream, everything shifts, everything changes. Like someone walking in on you mid-shower. Non-Black people often don’t understand the humor, the sarcasm, the wait, did we all have the same childhood? I’m always reminded of some tweet a while ago asking, How does one get into Black Twitter? It’s not quite the same or as easy as people just giving invites to the cookout (stop just giving those out, please!!!). “I really want a place to post sentence-long shitposts with no punctuation, and I don’t know where I would go if I couldn’t do that on Twitter anymore.” Amanda Silberling I often wonder what it is like to not be in Black Twitter. What do people think when they come across a photo of Chris Evans wearing long neon yellow acrylics with a honey mustard-colored satin bonnet? Where do other people get their news, if not from Philip Lewis? I’ll miss seeing something trending and saying yep, that’s Black Twitter, it has to be. I would miss the solidarity, the camaraderie often not easily made or reciprocated out in the physical world. Yes, I think I would even miss Roc Nation Brunch Twitter, also known as LLC Twitter, also known as the people who tell everyone to start a business and become entrepreneurs. “Would you rather take $500,000 or dinner with Jay-Z?” Seriously, just take the money and run. Last week, Brooklyn White-Grier, the features editor at Essence, asked everyone what we were going to wear to Twitter’s homegoing service. Someone made programs, started planning gospel music performances, and, of course, we started picking out our hats. I tweeted that I was excited to get an extra low vibrational plate at the repast and would probably show up with slicked-back baby edges and in Valentino couture, as Zendaya did to the Emmys. It’s hard to imagine anything could replace Black Twitter. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that we’ll always find our way.

New Twitter accounts will have to wait 90 days before buying a subscription • ZebethMedia

Twitter has published a policy change saying that newly-created Twitter accounts will have to wait 90 days before being allowed to subscribe to the new Twitter Blue plan and get verified. This is likely to avoid impersonation and spam from verified accounts. “Newly created Twitter accounts will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 90 days. We may also impose waiting periods for new accounts in the future at our discretion without notice,” the company said on its FAQ page about Twitter Blue. Prior to this, the Elon Musk-led company just said that new accounts created after November 9 won’t be able to purchase the $8 Twitter subscription plan. Twitter Blue terms on Nov 10 noting accounts created after Nov 9 can’t sign up for Twitter Blue. Image Credits: Twitter The old terms were published during the rushed rollout of Twitter Blue, which caused havoc and a barrage of verified accounts started impersonating brands, celebrities, and athletes. Because of fake verified accounts tweeting misinformation, shares of companies like Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin took a dip. To avoid impersonation, the company has prohibited verified users from changing their names. Earlier this week, Musk said that paid accounts will lose the verified checkmark until the social network confirms that the new name follows its rules. However, the company hasn’t made any formal policy around that. With new release, changing your verified name will cause loss of checkmark until name is confirmed by Twitter to meet Terms of Service — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022 Twitter is in the soup with the new paid plan. On the one hand, Musk has promised that subscribers will get prominence on the notification tab, replies, and searches — the company briefly moved the verified notification tab’s position to place it before all notifications too. On the other hand, after assessing the initial results from the verification rollout, it clearly has to thwart spam and impersonation to prevent more advertisers from leaving the platform. As a result, Musk paused the rollout of Twitter Blue last week. He also promised to relaunch the relaunched Twitter Blue program on November 29, but in Elonverse things can change rather quickly.

Twitter is working on a feature to divide long text into a thread automatically • ZebethMedia

Composing a thread on Twitter can be challenging as you need to separate the whole text into 280-character chunks. However, the company now seems to be working on a solution to turn long-form text into a thread automatically. According to a tweet posted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, twitter’s composer will automatically break the text into a thread when it crosses the 280-character limit. Twitter is working on making Tweet composer automatically expand into a thread when the characters count is approaching the 280 characters limit — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) November 17, 2022 As she explained in a reply to a user (aka me), Twitter wants to reduce the friction of creating threads. Currently, users need to hit the + button to add a tweet to a thread and post the next set of 280 characters — which can be very annoying when you are trying out a thought or pasting info from another document. I guess the point is to reduce the friction so the user no longer need to tap that (+) button at every 280 characters — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) November 17, 2022 In the last few hours, a few folks pointed out difficulties in posting and reading threads that have more than a few tweets — the one in focus was an 82-tweet-long thread on the fallen cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Musk replied to these tweets saying that the team is working on making thread writing easier. While the final details of the implementation are not apparent, as Financial Times product manager Matt Taylor pointed out, it will be good to have markers to indicate the start and end of a tweet in the thread — that makes it easier for users to edit the text in a way that it doesn’t break the reading flow. I’m sure that people who use this feature appreciate the ability to select what each tweet starts and ends with. This sounds like it does away with that in the name of simplicity. This is another engineering solution to what is not an engineering problem, it’s an editorial one. — Matt ‘TK’ Taylor (@MattieTK) November 17, 2022 This is not the first time Musk has addressed the issue of posting long-form tweets. Earlier this month, he said the social network is working on the ability to attach long-form text to tweets. It’s not clear if that will be a separate feature from the new thread composer. Some users currently rely on third-party solutions like Typefully, ThreadStart, and Chirr App, which provide tools to automatically split your post into threads without breaking sentence flow along with scheduling features. The company currently offers Twitter Blue subscribers an easy way to read threads — powered by its acquisition of Threader last year. But Musk hasn’t really mentioned if he is making changes to the reading experience for an average user. Twitter already has a program for long-form writing called Notes, but only a select set of writers have access to that, and with Musk’s management, there is no clarity about its future. It’s not clear when the new composer feature for threads will roll out even if Twitter engineers are working on it at this moment. After taking over the company, Musk has fired half the staff — and more. Plenty of executives have resigned and the new boss even put an ultimatum yesterday that the remaining employees have to be “hardcore” or leave. In this environment, there is no guarantee that products will be shipped on time. The company rushed the rollout of the new Twitter Blue plan with a verification mark, only to discontinue the program days later. Earlier this week, Musk said that it will now roll out later this month. Wong also recently discovered code hinting that Twitter is working on making direct messages end-to-end encrypted.

I volunteer as tribute! • ZebethMedia

It’s not every day that an opportunity like this comes around. After working at Twitter for years, I’m finally being asked to do more with less. I’ve always wanted fewer co-workers, a manic boss, reduced communication, and non-stop chaos. And if I do well, I’ll help save the richest person alive both money and pride! Can you imagine a better offer? Let me explain. You see, there’s a man called Elon Musk. He’s very involved in a bunch of projects and doesn’t like to work in any single office. Heck, Elon doesn’t even work for just one company! He’s in charge of a bevy of concerns that keep him rather occupied. You can even track his jet as he flies about, busy as a bee. (It makes perfect sense that the leader should not have to work in an office while I am required to report to my cubicle daily — after all, the wealthy are our moral superiors!) But after he corralled a host of rich folks to invest and underwrite his hostile takeover of Twitter, things got sticky for poor Elon. He’s a big tweeter, you see, and before he owned the website, he could post whatever he wanted and get away with it. Remember that time he tweeted that he had the capital to take Tesla private? That was a tiny error, but Elon is still in charge of Tesla, collecting the lion’s share of the wealth on the backs of others. So it all came out fine!

Have you tried turning it off and on again, Elon? • ZebethMedia

A few days ago, new Twitter owner Elon Musk said that the company will try a lot of dumb things in the coming days. And that seems to be the product strategy of the company — even if it causes utter chaos all around. It’s a tough time for anyone keeping tabs on changes at the social network because anything can flip anytime without warning. Blinked a few times? Something has changed. Went to make coffee? A lot has changed. Went to sleep? Welcome to a new world. Earlier this week, Twitter launched its grey-colored official checkmark for notable accounts like companies and politicians. This was meant to be a second layer of identification after Musk declared that everyone paying $8 a month will get the original blue check mark. But within hours of the launch, he “killed it.” On the other hand, the company’s product manager Esther Crawford clarified that the grey “Official” labels are “still going out” as a part of the new Twitter Blue product. As of this morning on Friday, The official check mark is back (kinda) — but to a limited number of accounts. There is no clarity on how this is being rolled out. Beat this plot, Christopher Nolan. Then there is the new $8 Twitter Blue plan, which Musk thinks is the savior of Twitter (and possibly humanity). It began rolling out to iOS users in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. The only feature it currently has is the blue checkmark, and yes, new users can’t sign up for it. After this was rolled out, a bunch of accounts started to troll brands, athletes, and officials making it look like they are tweeting from official accounts. Despite several bans and blocks, many accounts are still spreading misinformation. A lot of these tweets are getting thousands of likes and retweets. Until now, we don’t know of any grave consequences but this can cause a lot of damage. Only if Twitter had strong leaders in security, legal, comms, and trust and safety teams. Twitter has changed its policy about parody accounts saying that they should specify this in both their names and bio to avoid impersonation. Notably, the language used in these policy changes is crude and vague. At the time of writing, Twitter seems to have turned off Twitter Blue subscriptions across the globe. As app researcher Jane Manchun Wong noted, the company is not letting users subscribe to this new plan. This could be a result of a premature rollout in countries like India, and it could also be another “killed it.” Maybe by the time you’re reading this, it might be available again who knows? There is a lot happening on Twitter at breakneck speed. New policy pages are popping up without corresponding features being available on the app. The company is probably rolling out changes to production directly from the development environment. Timelines are breaking. There are tons of bugs on the platform. Spam has increased. Musk has called off remote work and said the company could go bankrupt. Hoards of executives have left. But everything is fine, and Twitter is the most interesting place on earth.

FTC warns ‘no CEO or company is above the law’ if Twitter shirks privacy order • ZebethMedia

The FTC has telegraphed what appears to be a now-inevitable investigation into Twitter’s internal data handling practices, as the company continues to shed important staff and improvise new features. “No CEO or company is above the law,” the agency said in a statement — and if Elon Musk’s Twitter continues its current spree, they may find themselves in violation of the FTC’s order and facing serious consequences. To be clear at the outset, the FTC has not announced any investigation into Twitter, Elon Musk, or even that they are gathering information in service of such an investigation. Nor would it be able to confirm it was investigating if it was. But circumstantial evidence, common sense, and the ominous statement issued today leave little doubt that the company is in the agency’s crosshairs. In the course of its ordinary oversight duties, the FTC looks into complaints by consumers, companies, and anyone with a bone to pick about things like misleading advertising, broken privacy promises, illicit business arrangements, and so on. But in 2011 Twitter agreed to a consent decree with the regulator after being found to have misused user data. It was also found to have done so again for many years in an investigation culminating in a $150 million settlement earlier this year, so this isn’t some bygone red tape. This decree required Twitter to establish and maintain a program to ensure and regularly report that its new features do not further misrepresent “the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, confidentiality, or integrity of any nonpublic consumer information.” The revised order adds more oversight and gives the FTC more power, since evidently Twitter needed a stick as well as a carrot. The gist of it is that Twitter is in the doghouse with the FTC already, and it has specific and legally binding requirements regarding what it can and can’t do with data, and how it verifies that it is in compliance. Around the time of the settlement, Elon Musk entered the stage and now we have all… this. But the news that last night several data handling executives, no doubt important to walking the line with a watchful regulator, all reportedly left at once. Literally minutes after I wrote this paragraph, the company’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, was reported to be leaving as well. NEW: A senior member of Twitter’s legal team just posted this message in Slack:“Everyone should know that our CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer ALL resigned last night. This news will be buried in the return-to-office drama. I believe that is intentional.” — Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) November 10, 2022   This would be troubling at any company, at any time, under any level of federal scrutiny. But for Twitter the departing chiefs might as well have hired a skywriter to spell out “INVESTIGATE ME” in huge letters above Twitter HQ. (Of course normally that might apply to any number of companies in downtown San Francisco, but right now there’s little question.) The amount of changes, new products, eliminations of various departments and processes (many of which had to do with privacy, fairness, data handling and other crucial topics) don’t mean Twitter is necessarily in violation of the consent decree. But with things going the way they are, it’s quite hard to imagine that it is in compliance now, or it is is, will remain so for long. It’s important, though, to understand that the FTC isn’t like the FBI, kicking doors down and arranging evidence in damning dioramas. The FTC conducts its investigations privately and at great length — they can’t and don’t publicize the fact that they are looking into a company for some violation or another until there is a legally binding consequence like a signed consent decree, settlement, or a decision to go to trial via the Department of Justice. Although many expected the FTC under the leadership of tech skeptic and very smart person Lina Khan to be more proactive, it is limited by law what it can do. It’s actually a bit surprising that the agency got as spicy as it did in the full statement: We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern. No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees. Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them. Though it stops short of saying “We are sharpening our knives,” this statement nevertheless is about as strong an implication that they will be giving Twitter a call soon as they can make. (A juicy tidbit uncovered by CNN’s Brian Fung, while enticing, could relate to ongoing discussions regarding the $150M settlement, so don’t get too excited.) If they decide to pursue an investigation, which would probably happen if there are any red flags at all, let alone this many, it will be done confidentially — but importantly, it is not secret. That means that although it is the FTC’s policy not to reveal or comment on an investigation, a company or person being investigated may do so at any time if they wish. So if the FTC makes a formal request for certain data from Twitter, or deposes its executives (present or former), they may decide to publicize that information. In fact Twitter did this in late 2020, long before the settlement with the FTC was finalized. After all, you don’t want your investors to be the last to hear about something like a $150M charge, even though in telling them you risk discovery by hawk-eyed journalists. So if the FTC investigates Twitter, it’s far more likely that we will hear about it from the company — in a filing with investors or, more likely, from its incautious and prolix CEO during one of his increasingly frequent emergency meetings. The state of chaos at Twitter makes the commonplace observation that we don’t know what it will look like in six months

In his first emails to Twitter staff, Musk talks about ending remote work and battling verified spam • ZebethMedia

More than 10 days after taking over Twitter, Elon Musk addressed the company’s employees for the first time in a series of emails. He talked about ending remote work and making the fight against spam a priority. According to a report from Bloomberg, the new CEO asked workers to be ready for “difficult times ahead.” At the same time, he asked them to mandatorily work from the office unless an employee received a personal exemption. The report also said that the employees will have to put in at least 40 hours per week working from the office and these policies are effective immediately. This is not really surprising as, during a Q&A with Twitter staff in June, Musk said only “exceptional” employees would be able to work remotely. Around the same time, he ended the remote work policy for Tesla employees and asked them to spend at least 40 hours a week in the office. During the first few days after taking control of Twitter, Musk fired top executives, tweeted about introducing new verification and subscription plans, and laid off half of the staff. But he just got time to address the remaining employees. All this while, the staff was living in uncertainty about the direction of the company and how their roles would change. The billionaire has set aggressive product deadlines after promising to bring a ton of features through a bunch of tweets. Now deleted tweets from employees suggested that they had to sleep at the office to meet some of these new product deadlines. Earlier this month, Musk also eliminated company-wide rest days that were introduced during the pandemic. In 2020, Twitter was one of the first companies to allow employees to work remotely forever. The Bloomberg report also noted that, in a separate email, Musk asked Twitter staff to make it a priority to battle verified spam, bots and impersonation. After he announced the plans to introduce new verification through a paid program, a bunch of legacy verified accounts changed their profile to imitate Musk. In response, he said that any verified account indulging in impersonation will be banned. On Thursday, the social network debuted its new Twitter Blue program for $8 a month allowing people to buy out verified check marks. Soon after the roll-out, a bunch of accounts started impersonating brands, athletes and officials across the world. In the terms of the new subscription plan, Twitter has specified that new accounts can’t sign up for this offering yet. The company has taken this step to possibly reduce spam. It is also preventing existing verified accounts from changing their display names. “Twitter Blue subscribers will be unable to change their display name after receiving a blue checkmark. We will be implementing a new process soon for any display name changes,” the terms read.  So overall, the company has had a messy start to the Musk era with an extremely rough rollout to an ambitious subscription program.

A list of features Elon Musk has promised to bring to Twitter • ZebethMedia

Elon Musk has completed his takeover of Twitter, and he has lofty plans for this platform. In the short time, he has been at the helm of the platform he has promised things like a new verification system, revamped subscription program, and better creator monetization. Musk has a knack for announcing these features on a whim through Twitter. But it’s hard to know in what form and when they would make their way to the public release. So here is a handy list of things Musk has announced that’s coming to Twitter: After taking over Twitter, the first product change Musk announced was revamping the verification system. Days later, he posted more details that included new features for Twitter Blue paid plan. Musk said the new system will cost $8 per month and have fewer ads, priority in replies (something which verified handles get through the “Verified” notification channel), mentions and search, and the ability to post longer videos. At this moment, paid users can post 10-minute long videos and other users have a time limit of two minutes and 20 seconds on videos. The company has already been experimenting with things like moving the verified notification tab to appear as the default screen in the notification screen. While the new Twitter Blue plan will cost $8 in the U.S., Musk has said that he will adjust the pricing for different regions according to purchasing power parity. In a reply to a user, he also said that revamped subscription will roll out to India by the end of the month. This means Twitter will soon expand Twitter Blue beyond existing markets — the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Musk has already got the Twitter Blue team working on a better video experience, too. He said that with the new paid plan, users will be able to upload 42 minutes of video at 1080p resolution. The Tesla CEO said that the platform is working on removing the 42-minute limit as well. The new Twitter CEO said that the company is working on attaching long text to the tweet. This announcement is strange as the platform debuted Notes, its program for long-form content, in June. Under this test, a set of writers from the U.S., Canada, Ghana, and the UK got access to tools to write long posts. A Twitter employee, who was part of a mass layoff at the company, pointed out that Musk fired the team who built and shipped the Notes feature. The Twitter CEO said that the platform’s search reminds him of “Infoseek in ’98” and wants to fix the experience. But we don’t know what improvements to expect. Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in ‘98! That will also get a lot better pronto. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022 In his short tenure as the head of the social network, Musk has promised to implement better payouts for creators. In a reply to YouTuber Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), he claimed that Twitter can become an S-tier (Super tier) network. In another tweet, the SpaceX CEO said that he can beat YouTube’s 55% ad-revenue share rate with creators. But that revenue might not be significant if major ad spenders don’t splash big bucks on the platform. Trust and Saftey Apart from announcing a ton of product changes, Twitter’s new head is also making some critical policy decisions. However, it’s unclear when these rules will come into effect and how they will play with various international laws. Just after taking charge of Twitter, Musk said that the company will form a content moderation council that will have people sharing diverse sets of views. At this moment, there is no clarity about who will participate in this council, how many members it might have, and what kind of powers it might wield. Notably, Twitter already has a Trust & Safety Council consisting of more than 100 organizations, but members are not sure if there is a future for them. After a ton of accounts changed their account name and details like profile photo and bio to mimic Musk, the billionaire said that Twitter Blue users won’t be allowed to impersonate anyone unless they specify that it is a parody account. He noted that accounts violating will be permanently suspended. He added that any change in name would result in accounts losing the verification mark temporarily. Currently, there are no written rules about this, so we don’t know how it will work in practice and what guidelines parody accounts might have to follow. Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022 Musk has also promised to make changes to Birdwatch, Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking program. But he has only said that it will be renamed to “Community Notes” — and Jack Dorsey didn’t like it. All these changes have very aggressive deadlines so it won’t be surprising if we don’t see these changes being rolled out in the promised timeframe. We will keep this piece updated to track these promises.

After laying off half of its staff, Twitter might be asking some employees to come back • ZebethMedia

Twitter is reaching out to some employees to come back after it engaged in a mass layoff last week, according to multiple reports. The company’s new owner Elon Musk laid off 3,700 people from Twitter — almost half of its staff — after he completed the takeover. A Bloomberg report cited sources saying that the company asked some folks to return as they were laid off “by mistake.” It also noted it was calling some other employees back as they were critical for building features for the platform Musk envisions. In addition to this, several posts on the anonymous app Blind also indicated that Twitter might have called a few employees back. Casey Newton also reported in a thread that on internal slack, remaining employees were asked to make a list of potential candidates that could be called back. From Twitter Slack: “sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4PM PST Sunday. — Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 6, 2022 The company had dismissed people across multiple departments including human rights, accessibility, machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability, advertising, marketing, communications, engineering, and curation. So it is not surprising that it realized some of those folks might be critical to keep the platform running smoothly and working on new features. Within weeks of taking over the company, Musk has promised a bunch of new features like revamped verification process and a new Twitter Blue experience priced at $8. The Tesla CEO has also set very tight deadlines for these feature rollouts. With a ton of people laid off across functions, it might be tough for the remaining employees to get things done in time. Last week, a bunch of former Twitter employees filed a class action lawsuit against the company for not giving them adequate notice before dismissing them from their jobs. The case alleged Twitter of violating worker protection laws like the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act as well as the California WARN Act — both require 60 days of advance notice before a mass layoff. Job cuts haven’t been the only chaotic thing at Twitter after the Musk takeover. The product rollout has also been a mess. Over the weekend, several folks received notifications on their iOS device that the company is rolling out the blue checkmark to people who are ready to pay $7.99 a month. However, Esther Crawford, a product lead at Twitter clarified that these notifications were just a part of a test. Over the weekend, Twitter reportedly shelved the plan of rolling out the new verification system until after Tuesday’s midterms elections in the US. Twitter didn’t comment on the story, but maybe because the whole communication staff was laid off. You can contact this reporter on Signal and WhatsApp at +91 816-951-8403 or im@ivanmehta.com by email.

Twitter faces a class action lawsuit over mass employee layoffs with proper legal notice • ZebethMedia

Twitter is being sued for not giving employees advanced written notice of a mass layoff, in violation of worker protection laws including the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act as well as the California WARN Act, both of which require 60 days of advance notice. Following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the company began mass layoffs early on Friday in an effort to reduce costs by eliminating 3,700 jobs, or 50% of its total workforce. Bloomberg first reported the news of the lawsuit, filed on November 3, 2022 in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. The complaint notes that Twitter began its layoffs on November 1, when it terminated the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Emmanuel Cornet, without providing the proper written notice in violation of U.S. and California law. Additional plaintiffs, Justine De Caires, Jessica Pan, and Grae Kindel said they were terminated on November 3 by being locked out of their accounts. Twitter is also enacting widespread layoffs across its workforce today, on Nov. 4, 2022,  it stated, adding that California’s Employment Development Department had not received a notice related to the event. The suit reminds the court that Musk had previously laid off employees without notice at another company he owns, Tesla.  A federal judge later ruled that Tesla must inform workers of the proposed class action lawsuit, as the termination agreements they had signed may have been misleading and caused them to waive their rights under federal law, Reuters reported at the time. Musk had dismissed that lawsuit as “trivial,” when commenting on the lawsuit at the Qatar Economic Forum organized by Bloomberg. In the new complaint against Twitter, the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Twitter has violated the federal and California WARN Acts and certify the case as a class action suit. It’s also asking the court to stop Twitter from having the laid-off employees sign documents that would release their claims without informing them of this lawsuit. And it’s seeking a range of relief, including compensatory damages (including wages owed), as well as declaratory relief, pre- and post-judgment interest, plus other attorneys’ fees and costs. Under Twitter’s takeover deal terms, Musk had agreed to keep employee compensation and benefits the same. That means the laid-off employees should receive 60 days of salary and the cash value of the stock they were to receive within three months of their last date at the company, per law. “Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has made clear that he believes complying with federal labor laws is ‘trivial’ We have filed this federal complaint to ensure that Twitter should be held accountable to our laws and to prevent Twitter employees from unknowingly signing away their rights.” Shannon Liss-Riordan, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit told CNN in a statement. Twitter hasn’t responded to requests for comment — but that could also be because its comms staff has been included in the layoffs. The company has gone about its mass layoffs in a chaotic and fairly cold fashion. Instead of being informed personally, Twitter employees were to receive an email with an update about their employment status by Friday 9 AM PT. If they still had a job, the email would come to their work inbox. If not, they’d receive a personal email as access to internal systems was cut off. A number of Twitter employees around the world have already posted tweets indicating that they have been laid off and are sharing sympathies with their fellow “tweeps.” Twitter also closed its offices temporarily as the layoffs were underway by disabling badge access. The transition has been one of confusion for Twitter staff. It’s been reported that Twitter’s new owner hadn’t officially communicated with employees following the deal’s closure on Oct. 27, leading staff to learn of events by following Musk’s tweets, through private chats, on workplace gossip site Blind, and by reading news media reports. Immediately after the takeover, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde. Other top executives like Chief Consumer Officer Sarah Personette and Chief of People and Diversity Dalana Brand handed in their resignations the following day. General manager for core technologies Nick Caldwell, Chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, Twitter’s head of product Jay Sullivan, and its vice president of global sales, Jean-Philippe Maheu, have also left. The company canceled its upcoming developer conference Chirp and it appears that Twitter’s head of its developer platform, Amir Shevat, is also out, as he tweeted he’s “better out than in” and thanked the developer community for the amazing journey they had. In addition to reducing the number of employees, Musk has also been overhauling Twitter’s product at a rapid pace. Earlier this week, he announced his intention to enact a new version of the Twitter Blue paid subscription, which will cost $8 per month and offer users the verification check mark, fewer ads, and the ability to post longer videos. According to a report by The Platformer, Twitter is also planning to shut down its long-form writing product Notes and newsletter product Revue, which was acquired in 2021. Tweets indicate that staff that worked on Twitter Communities were also laid off, suggesting that product may also be shut down. The new legal complaint is embedded below. Twitter class action lawsuit over mass layoffs by ZebethMedia on Scribd

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