The IT Nerd

Given the current beyond next level chaos that Elon Musk has created on Twitter in the last 24 hours, I am guessing that he needs a distraction to stop people from focusing on how badly he’s running Twitter. Which I am guessing is why he just dropped this Tweet:

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t Twitter already doing a form of this? It seems to me that was already in place and will not resolve Twitter’s obligation to remove various types of material that they are required by law, to do via a process called “content moderation.” Sound familiar?

The good news, I guess, is that this company’s tech will fail before that given what’s happened in the last 24 hours.

Bottom line: It’s the least destructive thing that Musk has done on Twitter today. Which says a lot.

I have no clue what part of the Twilight Zone I’ve currently stepped into. But every time I turn around, the Twitter story gets more and more surreal. This is the latest example:

So, based on the above and what I wrote in this story, which to be clear was written less than an hour ago, I have to assume that whatever is happening at Twitter right now is so dire, and so world ending that he’s going to more and more desperate means to try and get anyone to help him avert whatever is coming. That’s not good. Which of course is likely the understatement of the year.

I’m going to cancel my weekend plans as I get this feeling that a lot is going to happen over the weekend. And none of it will be good for Elon Musk.

Elon Musk clearly has hit rock bottom after his demand for Twitter workers to sign on to being more “hardcore” backfired. Zoë Schiffer of Platformer has posted this series of Tweets that has me simply saying WTF:

So let’s break this down:

• Twitter either has, or is about to have some sort of issue that requires Elon to reach out to any person who can write code to report to him at 2PM PST (presumably) today.
• In line with how Elon thinks, he needs you to prove your worth to him. Presumably because whatever issue that Twitter has or is going to have is so dire that in his mind, only the best people can alleviate whatever is happening or is about to happen.
• There’s zero context to this email that Elon has sent out. So this could be a big problem, or it could be a catastrophically big problem.
• Twitter employees were locked out of Twitter yesterday. So it isn’t clear how they could get back in.

Thus the only conclusion that I can come to is that the impending demise of Twitter that I predicted here is happening or is about to happen:

It will be interesting to see if anyone responds to this. Because based on my read of this situation, Elon is in deep trouble and he appears to know it.

#RIPTwitter indeed.

Business Insider is reporting that the latest from last night’s fallout from Elon Musk’s demand that staff sign onto his demand that Twitter employees be “hardcore“. It seems significant parts of Twitter’s financial groups are gone:

Along with the payroll department resigning, Twitter’s US Tax team and its financial reporting team also resigned, two people familiar with the matter said, matching several internal messages seen by Insider. All three segments of the company were part of Twitter’s finance and accounting organization. While accounting was “less impacted” by resignations on Thursday, that part of the organization is smaller now, too, one of the people said.

Employees are set to get paid again next week, one former worker said. While those payments are likely to have been already approved, the next round of payments will not have been, the person said. 

“What happens in another two weeks?” the person asked. “When everyone who can approve something is gone.”

This is not good and is the perfect example of unintended consequences. You have to wonder what Elon is thinking as he’s clearly screwed himself and Twitter along with it. I am not sure what will happen next. But I think it’s safe to say that this will further accelerate Twitter’s downfall. After all, if you can’t pay your taxes, bills, and employees, you’re going to have a problem. Or in Elon’s case, yet another problem.

Elon Musk’s power play to get employees to sign on to being “hardcore” has crashed and burned. Overnight that had the hashtag “#RIPTwitter” trending, people announcing that they were moving to other social media sites, and I noticed this on Down Detector:

Well Twitter is still alive as I type this. But for how much longer? The way I see it, there are a number of scenarios that could play out here given everything that has happened to this point. Four specific scenarios come to mind along with a bonus one:

1. Users leave Twitter taking advertisers with them: Given the events of last night, it would not at all surprise me if user engagement plummets on Twitter. Now that Twitter is a private company, it is highly likely we will never see the truth on what those numbers look like. But if user engagement drops, we’ll see that as other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Mastodon gain users. And more importantly advertisers will see that and direct their money to the places where people are which will leave Twitter out in the cold. And the lack of advertising revenue will ensure that Twitter dies a slow death.
2. Twitter gets hacked: Seeing as the key people behind Twitter’s platform security have left, this now makes Twitter a prime target for hackers. To be honest, it was highly likely that Twitter was repelling attacks long before the Elon Musk gong show. But without the key people manning the defences, it is only a matter of time before someone pwns Twitter and Twitter dies as a result from the bad press.
3. Twitter simply falls apart: From all reports, there’s a lot of people who worked at Twitter who know something that not only nobody else knows, but can’t be replicated. Having that level of institutional knowledge go out the door will be fatal for Twitter. It is probable that Twitter will limp along for weeks or perhaps months. But small things will start to break. Followed by bigger things. And with nobody who knows how any of that stuff works, it is probable that this will kill Twitter.
4. Musk uses the nuclear option: During Elon Musk’s reign as “Chief Twit”, Musk has been exposed as not being as smart as he portrays himself to be given the high profile failures of leadership that we’ve seen since he took over. And the longer that this goes on, the more his fragile ego will be unable to cope with it. So it would not shock me if he wakes up one morning and declares the whole thing bankrupt killing the platform in one go. Then Musk will try and spin it as not being his fault to save his fragile ego. Even though the world would have seen him kill the platform though his actions over the last two or three weeks.

There’s a bonus scenario for the people asking “where’s the option of Twitter surviving?” Musk and his fragile ego give up and sell Twitter to a group who can actually run the company. And that group tries to rebuild. But even if they did get Twitter stable, it won’t be anywhere near the same as it was before Elon Musk the immature billionaire took over as has already caused so much damage that I don’t think anyone can repair it. And I think that’s the point of all these scenarios. Which is Twitter as we know it is done. It is now a question of if it dies quickly, dies slowly, or stays in some sort of comatose like state never to recover.