from the little-sensitive-elon dept

There’s a faculty of thought amongst some who consider that the only cause why Elon Musk purchased Twitter was due to a gaping void in his soul and a deep-seeded have to be cherished and adored by everybody, with the idea that he might try this higher if he ran Twitter, and with out the concern of getting any of his tweets — or my goodness — his whole account suspended. A pal of mine has typically referred to this phenomenon as “cancelled man syndrome,” which is a situation by which extraordinarily highly effective persons are so afraid that they may, sooner or later, face some penalties for his or her actions, that they construct this whole fantasy world round “cancel tradition” and “woke ideologues” coming to get them.

Beneath this idea, an enormous a part of the explanation why Musk purchased Twitter was (1) to guard his account from any form of reprisal and (2) to proceed to fill that void, by exhibiting up because the grand liberator, to be cherished and adored.

I’m nonetheless not satisfied I consider this idea. However, as an increasing number of information comes out, it a minimum of provides some further proof in assist of it. The newest is from the all the time glorious Platformer Information, the place Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton have fairly a scoop regarding Musk throwing an absolute shit fit as a result of his tweets are getting much less engagement than previously, and even firing one of many solely two remaining precept engineers on the firm, after they urged perhaps folks had been simply kinda uninterested in all of the Elon stuff:

On Tuesday, Musk gathered a bunch of engineers and advisors right into a room at Twitter’s headquarters searching for solutions. Why are his engagement numbers tanking?

“That is ridiculous,” he mentioned, in accordance with a number of sources with direct information of the assembly. “I’ve greater than 100 million followers, and I’m solely getting tens of hundreds of impressions.”

One of many firm’s two remaining principal engineers provided a attainable clarification for Musk’s declining attain: slightly below a yr after the Tesla CEO made his shock supply to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, public curiosity in his antics is waning.  

Staff confirmed Musk inside information relating to engagement along with his account, together with a Google Trends chart. Final April, they instructed him, Musk was at “peak” reputation in search rankings, indicated by a rating of “100.” At this time, he’s at a rating of 9. Engineers had beforehand investigated whether or not Musk’s attain had by some means been artificially restricted, however discovered no proof that the algorithm was biased towards him.

Musk didn’t take the information nicely. 

“You’re fired, you’re fired,” Musk instructed the engineer. 

I imply, Musk has a well-known fame of “rage firing” folks for telling him stuff he doesn’t need to hear. Just a few years again there was a narrative of him randomly rage firing an engineer at Tesla’s Gigafactory after Musk noticed one thing that didn’t work proper. And regardless that the engineer had nothing to do with the damaged system, he was the closest particular person to Musk, and he requested Musk to make clear what he was indignant about, so he received fired. The story in that article sounds fairly much like the one within the Platformer piece. Musk hears one thing he doesn’t like, and fires somebody on the spot.

However the piece doesn’t finish there. It talks concerning the morale (uh, low) at Twitter:

“We haven’t seen a lot in the way in which of long run, cogent technique,” one worker mentioned. “Most of our time is devoted to 3 foremost areas: placing out fires (largely attributable to firing the incorrect folks and attempting to recuperate from that), performing unimaginable duties, and ‘enhancing effectivity’ with out clear pointers of what the anticipated finish outcomes are. We largely transfer from dumpster fireplace to dumpster fireplace, from my perspective.”

Musk’s product suggestions, which comes largely from replies to his tweets, typically baffles his employees. 

“There’s occasions he’s simply awake late at evening and says all types of issues that don’t make sense,” one worker mentioned. “After which he’ll come to us and be like, ‘this one particular person says they’ll’t do that one factor on the platform,’ after which we’ve got to run round chasing some outlier use case for one particular person. It doesn’t make any sense.”

The San Francisco headquarters, whose landlord has sued Twitter for nonpayment of rent, has a melancholy air. When folks go one another within the halls, we’re instructed that the usual greeting is “the place are you interviewing?” and “the place do you’ve affords?”

And, for people who find themselves counting on a Twitter job for vital causes, it places them in a quandry:

“While you’re requested a query, you run it by your head and say ‘what’s the least fireable response I can should this proper now?’” one worker defined.

Additionally, Musk’s obsession along with his personal stats is simply all types of pathetic.

Dissatisfied with engineers’ work up to now, Musk has instructed workers to trace what number of occasions every of his tweets are really helpful, in accordance with one present employee.

Then there’s this, which perhaps explains the prolonged tech outages and issues we’ve seen on Twitter this week:

“Because the adage goes, ‘you ship your org chart,’” mentioned one present worker. “It’s chaos right here proper now, so we’re delivery chaos.”

There are so, so, so many different tales on this article, you need to go learn the entire thing. Nonetheless, I’ll depart you with yet another. We had been among the many first to level out that the FTC’s consent decrees with Twitter are kinda vital, and it looks like Musk was (1) unaware of them, and (2) didn’t care as soon as he discovered. Because the article notes… the time could also be operating out on that perspective:

Since Musk took over, these steps have turn into an afterthought, workers mentioned. “His stance is principally ‘fuck you regulators,’” we’re instructed. 

The FTC plans to audit the corporate this quarter, we’re instructed, and workers have doubts that Twitter has the required documentation in place to go inspection. “FTC compliance is regarding,” one says. 

That’ll be enjoyable.

Anyway, go read the whole thing, because it’s a surprising piece of reporting on what Twitter is like lately.

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