With Elon Musk on the verge of taking over Twitter Inc. comes news that he plans to gut its workforce, with cuts of up to 75%. That should be a worry not only to the platform’s staff and users, but for those who care about the flow of information crucial to well-functioning democracies.
Musk, who is also the chief executive officer of carmaker Tesla Inc. and space transport company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., plans to whittle Twitter down from 7,500 staff to just over 2,000, The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing documents and people familiar with the plans. While the 51-year-old had tried to back out of deal, the transaction looks like it will actually proceed with a court-issued deadline of Oct. 28.
Yet even without the takeover, Twitter itself had planned to trim its workforce by about a quarter by the end of next year, the Post reported. Beyond staff, the San Francisco-based social media company is also looking at major cuts to infrastructure such as data centers, the newspaper wrote. Twitter told staff later the same day that it has no plans for company-wide layoffs.
