Tesla Staff Brought in to Assess the Mess After Twitter Engineers Are Locked Out: The Bird is Freed
To make sure that nothing about the Twitter’s product changes prior to the final closing of Elon Musk’s deal to purchase Twitter, the company’s software engineers cannot make changes to Twitter’s proprietary code as of noon in San Francisco yesterday.
Bloomberg reported that several people, none of whom were named in the report, had spoken about the code freeze. Twitter enacted the same lock-out in April when the sale was first announced, Bloomberg said.
Musk yesterday brought in Tesla engineers to review the code yesterday in advance of an expected closing on the sale today.
Bloomberg expected the sale would be complete today, “as planned.”
NEW: Elon Musk asked Tesla engineers to meet with product leaders at Twitter, moving swiftly to make a mark on the company he’s about to take private. @edludlow has more https://t.co/hYPxjLRbqc pic.twitter.com/Vu0LbSu1yF
— Bloomberg (@business) October 27, 2022
News of changes as Musk has taken control of the social media giant has been coming fast and furious in the days leading up to Musk’s taking the company private.
On Oct. 20, The Washington Post reported that Musk had told investors that he planned to reduce the company’s workforce by 5,000 more people, leaving only about 2,000 employees to run the company.
(A week later, Bloomberg reported that Musk had told employees that he did not, in fact, plan to make such deep cuts.)
Some Twitter employees expressed concern about how the company would moderate content with so few workers.
On Wednesday, Musk changed his handle on Twitter to “Chief Twit” and shared a video of himself carrying a sink into the company’s headquarters.
“Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!” he wrote.
Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
Yesterday, Musk tweeted an open letter to advertisers, thanking them for partnering with them an promising to “build something extraordinary” with them.
Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022
“Let us build something extraordinary together,” he wrote.
Also yesterday, word came out that some of the most senior people at Twitter had been let go.
Then, late last night, Musk tweeted simply, “The bird is freed.”
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
What’s coming next? Changes to the way Twitter users are banned and their speech censored on the platform, probably. Beyond that, I’d hate to be forced to wager.
But I will make one educated guess: Whatever it is, it’s not going to be boring.
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