Elon Musk ends remote working for Twitter staff Elon Musk ends remote working for Twitter staff in his first direct email to employees since seizing control, warning them of “difficult times ahead.”
Elon Musk has ended remote working for Twitter employees, warning the company to brace itself for “tough times ahead” in his first memo to employees as CEO. The email, which was received late last night, warned that there was “no sugarcoating” the economic prognosis.
According to Bloomberg, he stated that the poor prognosis will have an impact on a company that relies on advertising, such as Twitter. In the email, he also announced that working from home would be prohibited, with employees expected to work at least 40 hours per week.
The hours are subject to conditions approved by him as Twitter’s new CEO. ‘The road ahead is arduous and will take intense work to achieve,’ he said. The policies indicated in yesterday night’s email are now in force.
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It is his latest warning to his new employees, coming just days after he fired nearly half of the company’s global workforce of approximately 7,500 people. Musk’s decision to end remote working comes after Twitter had agreed to a permanent arrangement that allowed employees to work from anywhere.
The new Twitter CEO is against working from home and will only grant exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Billionaire Musk has also removed ‘days of rest’ from the calendars of Twitter employees.
This was a monthly, company-wide day off implemented during the pandemic.
Since taking over as CEO of Twitter over two weeks ago, Musk has implemented a slew of changes. He is also pushing for users to pay $8 per month for ‘blue tick’ verification on Twitter and stated in an email to staff last night that he wants subscriptions to account for half of the social media site’s revenue.
According to a separate email, Musk is also working on identifying and suspending any verified bots, trolls, and spam over the next few days. His announcement that remote working for Twitter employees would be discontinued came just hours after he canceled the new grey ‘Official’ label.
The badge was intended for high-profile accounts like media outlets and celebrities, but Musk ‘killed it’ just hours after it was released on Wednesday morning. Along with being ‘an aesthetic nightmare,’ Musk added during a live Town Hall meeting that the light grey emblem didn’t solve the matter that ‘there are too many entities that would be deemed official or have sort of heritage blue check marks.’
‘But, as I mentioned earlier, we’re going to be extremely aggressive in eliminating deception,’ he said. ‘So, if someone attempts to impersonate a brand, that account will be suspended, and we will keep their $8.’
Musk, on the other hand, is pressing ahead with plans to charge $8 per month for the blue tick. Minutes after deleting the grey checkmark, he tweeted, “The blue check will be the larger leveler.” Musk’s takeover occurred at a time when hate speech on Twitter was on the rise. According to Dataminr, there was a 1,700% increase in the use of racial slurs.
At its peak, it occurred 215 times every five minutes, and it occurred during a time when the Trust team had no access to enforce moderation policies. Roth addressed the issue directly in response to the slurs.
He stated that the information is seen by “very few individuals” on Twitter and added, “We’ve made meaningful progress, eliminating over 1500 accounts and lowering impressions on this content to practically zero.” Roth described it as a “targeted, short-term trolling campaign.”
Although Musk has stated that he has made no changes to content moderation policies, he has stated that he believes Twitter’s rules are too restrictive.
In addition, he described himself as a free-speech absolutist, reportedly questioning policies while speaking to employees. Musk intends to review Twitter’s general misinformation policy.
Twitter’s policy penalizes postings that provide misleading information about issues such as election results and Covid. Insiders say Musk wants a more precise policy on falsehoods.
The billionaire also wants Twitter’s hateful behavior policy reviewed. According to reports, he has asked the team to investigate the section on “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
However, it has not yet been revealed whether the policies will be rewritten or restrictions completely removed in response to Musk’s request.
