Elon Musk Buys Twitter

Money is arguably the most important part of a business. Without it, a company ceases to exist. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he made drastic changes to how Twitter was run, and not just financially. Many changes have been made and not all of them are good. 

Twitter has moved quickly to slash costs, including cutting its staff by more than half. Salaries and other compensation make up a large chunk of expenses. The company had 7,500 full-time employees at the end of 2021, up from 5,500 a year earlier. 

The layoffs of roughly 3,700 people could save the company roughly $860 million a year if the employees that are leaving made an average of about $233,000 annually (the company’s most recently disclosed median pay figure). The estimated savings would represent about 15% of Twitter’s $5.57 billion in costs and expenses last year. Its costs and expenses climbed 51% from the previous year, as hiring drove up its payroll. Many employees decided to leave because Elon required “long hours at high intensity” to keep their job. 

The Twitter executives who were fired on Thursday include Parag Agrawal, the chief executive; Ned Segal, the chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, the top legal and policy executive; and Sean Edgett, the general counsel, said two people with knowledge of the matter. At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office, they said. 

Elon, who is one of the active users of Twitter and has more than 109 million followers, began accumulating shares in the company this year. In April, he struck the deal to buy the company for $44 billion. He said he would lift Twitter’s content moderation policies, eliminate spam, add new features and provide more transparency about the algorithms used to promote content. But, within weeks, he began questioning the deal. Mr. Musk lashed out at the Twitter executives responsible for content decisions and accused the company of failing to accurately count the spam accounts on its platform. When Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, tried debunking Mr. Musk’s claims, Mr. Musk responded by tweeting a poop emoji.

Twitter has a giant impact because it’s a primary social media site. Many different people are concerned about the way Elon is leading Twitter. Noah Duff, a sophomore says “I used to use Twitter a bit. But ever since a bunch of stuff is going down with Elon making kinda dumb decisions, I’m not really sure I want to use it anymore.” But why does this matter to you, or anyone in Waukee? If you don’t use Twitter you should still pay attention. And the big question for Twitter and all social media is should we have freedom of speech, but allow people to spread hate? Or remove hate speech, and therefore remove free speech? I am not supporting hate speech, but that is the problem with most social media. And Elon wants to promote free speech, at the expense of letting people tweet whatever they want.