… To Suspend impersonating Accounts permanently
After Twitter Inc laid off roughly half its staff on Friday following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition, the company is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake. Others were let go before management realised that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the report said citing people familiar with the moves.
Twitter recently laid off 50% of its employees, including employees on the trust and safety team, the company’s head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth said in a tweet earlier this week.
Tweets by staff of the social media company said teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics were among those gutted, as were some product and engineering teams.
Although Twitter did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment, it has been noted that since the takeover by Elon Musk, drastic changes and plans for more changes have been ongoing in the company.
Elon Musk had on Sunday warned that Twitter users engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying it as a “parody” account will be permanently suspended without a warning.
In a separate tweet, Musk said Twitter previously issued a warning before suspension, but as Twitter is rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning as well as “no exceptions.”
“This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” Musk said, adding any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark.
Twitter on Saturday updated its app in Apple’s App Store to begin charging $8 for sought-after blue check verification marks, in Elon Musk’s first major revision of the social media platform.
Tesla Inc boss Musk, who also will serve as chief executive of Twitter, last month said Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints”.
“No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes,” he added.
On the topic of banned accounts, Musk last week said they will not be allowed back onto Twitter until the social media platform has “a clear process for doing so.”
Creating such a process would take at least a few more weeks, Musk had tweeted, giving more clarity about the potential return of Twitter’s most famous banned user, former U.S. President Donald Trump. The new timeline implies Trump will not return in time for the midterm elections on Nov. 8.
Also, earlier on Sunday, the New York Times reported Twitter is delaying the rollout of verification check marks to subscribers of its new service until after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
