Following the acquisition of Twitter by American billionaire Elon Musk, many of the original employees have been let go. According to Axios, this is part of a larger plan by Musk to slowly remove all long-time Twitter staff.
According to sources who spoke with Axios, Twitter has recently stopped working with an unknown number of contractors in various departments, including content moderation. This is similar to what other companies have done where they mix full-time employees and third-party contract workers.
After Elon Musk laid off half of his employees early this month, the aura of mystery that surrounded the situation for these contractors dissipated, and some of them no longer had to deal with their counterparts within the company.
After Twitter fired several of its full-time employees, those who work with them part-time are now concerned about their paycheck and if someone will be there to sign their time cards, sources close to the situation told Axios.
In some instances, Twitter employees were not notified of their firing beforehand and only realized they had been let go when they attempted to log into Twitter’s systems.
Melissa Engel, a content moderator for Twitter who resides in San Francisco, was one of those fired.
Engel, who is teaches data science and has two masters degrees, was surprised by the holiday layoffs and expressed concern for providing her family. “Firing me doesn’t make sense- I’m an asset to any company!”
Since Twitter was acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the social media company has been in turmoil due to his Launch-and-Pull method of product testing.
The Twitter blue tick subscription service is one example, allowing people to add the verification tag usually given to politicians, journalists, government agencies and celebrities.
Twitter discontinued its subscription service feature after a few days, after many exploited the feature to impersonate prominent brands, athletes and politicians.
Twitter has dismissed all of its communications staff, and did not immediately respond to an email sent to the company’s press account.
