Twitter users were in a frenzy of speculation on Friday afternoon that the website might be forced into an immediate shutdown after hundreds of employees reportedly decided to quit.
There were other reports of security staff booting employees out of Twitter offices, and offices being locked shut.
The events followed a strongly worded ultimatum from the social media company’s new owner, Elon Musk, on Thursday (Australian time). He demanded Twitter staff either work “long hours at high intensity” or leave.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Mr Musk said in a leaked email.
“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
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He then asked employees to tick a box saying ‘yes’ if they wanted to stay around – and warned those who couldn’t commit that they “must leave the company”.
Twitter workers had until 5pm ET Thursday (9am Friday, AEDT) to decide to stay, or be laid off with three months’ severance pay.
It is the latest controversy to engulf the social media giant since Mr Musk took it over last month.
And it appeared by Friday afternoon (AEDT) that many employees had not taken up Mr Musk on his offer, with dozens publicly declaring that they had not ticked the yes box.
He reportedly met top employees and engineers in a last-ditch attempt to try to convince them to stay.
In a poll on the workplace app Blind, 76 of 180 people chose the answer for “Taking exit option, I’m free!”.
In a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave, according to one former employee.
Twitter was flooded with an onslaught of ‘salute’ and blue heart emojis on Friday afternoon as many employees seemingly announced their departure.
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Former Twitter staffer Matt Miller filmed himself and colleagues counting down to the 5pm deadline.
“We’re all about to get fired from Twitter,” he said, adding he had worked for the company for almost a decade.
Twitter’s lead web designer was also rumoured to be among the departing employees.
Reuters is also reporting that Twitter had notified employees it would close its offices and cut off security pass access until Monday.
And with Mr Musk having prohibited remote working just days ago, it can be assumed no Twitter staff will be actively working over the weekend.
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The mass exodus has also already begun to wreak havoc with the site’s functionality, with inside sources telling CNN the platform was beginning to slow by later on Friday.
Monitoring site Downdetector said the number of outages had begun to skyrocket on Friday morning, with hundreds reported each hour.
The Verge editor Alex Heath said multiple employees had come forward to say that the odds of Twitter “breaking” imminently were “very high”.
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Footage also emerged on social media of Twitter’s San Francisco office covered in messages projected onto its walls from a nearby building.
The scrolling message called Mr Musk a “bankruptcy baby”, “supreme parasite”, “petulant pimple”, “apartheid profiteer”, “lawless oligarch” and more.
The display appears to be the work of ‘projectionist activist’ Alan Marling, who trolled Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with similar messages last week.
With news that the Twitter offices would be temporarily shuttered, users rapidly began to speculate that it meant an end to the platform.
Hashtags #RIPTwitter, #TwitterDown and #Twitter2.0 were all trending internationally on Friday afternoon.
Many tweets had an end-of-days vibe – to the tune of ‘If Twitter dies, let this be my final tweet’ – with users sharing final thoughts, images and memes.
Many users also promoted their Mastodon and Instagram accounts, eager to keep followers if Twitter did go offline.
But while the internet was in a frenzy, Mr Musk was not concerned in the least.
He addressed the rumours on Friday afternoon, responding to another user’s tweet about the supposed shut down.
“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” said Mr Musk.
He also announced that Twitter had hit an all-time high in users.
“Let that sink in …” he wrote, referencing the cringe-worthy stunt in which he waltzed into Twitter HQ holding a kitchen sink last month.
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Meanwhile, as Twitter users searched for elsewhere to go, social networking site Tumblr reportedly crashed. Tumblr acknowledged the outage in a cheeky tweet.
“Hold up, like 12 new ppl joined. We’re working on it. Give it a sec :)”
