Twitter Chief Elon Musk has refused a report by the United States’ news publication New York Times that he might lay off Twitter employees before the start of November so that he does not have to pay them.
He replied a Twitter user, asking about the report, saying, “This is false.” Musk concluded his $44 billion Twitter deal after months of controversy with the social media platform. However, the deal took away Twitter’s top designates like its CEO, chairman and finance chief.
Over the weekend, the US publications reported that Elon Musk had ordered big job cuts throughout the company.
The newspaper claimed the job cuts would take place before 1 November, at the time when workers were to get grants of shares in the company as a major part of their pay deals.
Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has started discussion among users on what the platform will become under his ownership.
Some people have expressed concern that laxer free speech laws would allow persons who were barred for using hate speech or misleading material to return to the platform.
Last week Musk said that he doesn’t want the platform to become an echo chamber for hate and division. “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hell-scape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” he tweeted.
Post refusing the New York Times layoff report, Musk tweeted a screen shot of a New York Times headline about him posting a link to a “site known to publish false news”.
This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times! pic.twitter.com/d6V6m5ATW2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
The New York Times headline gave a reference of a reply Musk had posted, and later deleted, to a tweet by former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
His alleged reply contained a link to a conspiracy theory about an assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of US House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In another reply to a question about users being verified, getting the ‘blue tick’, he said the process will be revised.
“Whole verification process is being revamped right now”, Musk said without telling further. According to reports, the company was planning to make users pay to become verified.
Musk initiated a Twitter poll to know how many of his 112 million folowers would vote in favor of bringing back the short-video app Vine.
Twitter had bought the video app that allow users to share six-second-long looping clips, in 2012. By the end of 2015, it had more than 200 million active users before the social media platform abandoned it.
Polls on whether or not Mr. Musk should sell 10% of his stock in Tesla and whether or not Twitter should have an edit button have both been conducted in the past.k
