Elon Musk says Twitter was ‘absurdly overstaffed’ and run like a ‘glorified activist group’ earlier than his takeover

• Elon Musk instructed Fox Information that Twitter was beforehand “absurdly overstaffed.”
• He mentioned that the platform is “working higher than ever” regardless of dropping 80% of its employees.

Elon Musk mentioned that Twitter was “absurdly overstaffed” earlier than he took over the corporate in October and laid off hundreds of staff.

In an interview on Fox Information Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” – which aired on Monday however was recorded earlier this month – Musk described Twitter as “a comedy state of affairs” earlier than his takeover. He mentioned that censorship made it like a “glorified activist group.”

The billionaire beforehand instructed the BBC that it was “painful” to chop employees numbers, however essential to cease Twitter from going bankrupt.

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Round half the workforce was let go shortly after Musk’s takeover, whereas others later selected severance in an ultimatum to work “extraordinarily hardcore,” earlier than extra layoffs in January and February. This has resulted in its workforce dropping by 80%.

Another workers have reportedly been fired for telling Musk his recognition was declining, or advising in opposition to a joke tweet about Donald Trump’s return to the platform.

Musk earlier criticized the corporate’s previous administration for banning Trump – calling it a “grave mistake” as he defined why he reinstated the previous president’s account.

He promoted the “Twitter Recordsdata” – a collection of inside paperwork exhibiting former Twitter execs speaking with the FBI, and the Biden marketing campaign’s function in getting images of Hunter Biden eliminated, as they appeared to violate the positioning’s guidelines on non-consensual nudity.

“If you happen to’re not attempting to run some kind of glorified activist group … then you possibly can actually let go of lots of people, it seems,” Musk instructed Carlson.

He added that the platform is “working higher than ever” regardless of the decreased workforce. “It seems you do not want all that many individuals to run Twitter,” he mentioned.

However Twitter has suffered a number of outages since employees numbers have plunged.

In February, customers had been left unable to tweet after an worker by accident deleted knowledge and there was no one left on the group accountable to repair it, Platformer reported.

It additionally noticed a partial outage throughout the Tremendous Bowl halftime present, regardless of Musk telling employees to maximise stability for the massive occasion.

One unnamed present Twitter worker instructed Platformer final month that outages have grow to be so frequent that: “I feel we’re all numb to it,” they mentioned.

Insider contacted Twitter for remark. The corporate responded with an automatic message that did not handle the inquiry.