Elon Musk has sent an email to Twitter employees, most of whom work remotely, ordering them to immediately return to the office for at least 40 hours a week and warning of “tough times ahead.”
A pair of messages Wednesday night seen by The Associated Press marked Musk’s first companywide message to employees who survived last week’s mass layoffs. Many have had to rely on the billionaire Tesla CEO’s public tweets for clues about Twitter’s future.
“I’m sorry this is my first email to the entire company, but there is no way to wrap the message,” Musk wrote, before describing a dire economic climate for businesses like Twitter that rely almost entirely on advertising for earned money.
“Without significant subscription revenue, there’s a good chance Twitter won’t survive the next economic downturn,” Musk said. “We need about half of our revenue to be subscription.”
Musk’s memo followed a live chat trying to placate top advertisers on Wednesday, his most extensive public comments about Twitter’s direction since it closed a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform at the end of the month past and sacked its main leaders. A number of popular brands have suspended advertising on Twitter as they wait to see how Musk’s proposals to ease content rules against hate and misinformation affect the platform’s strength.
Musk told employees the “priority over the last 10 days” was developing and launching Twitter’s new $7.99-a-month subscription service that includes a blue checkmark next to the name of paying members — the branding was previously only for accounts verified.
An executive last week said Twitter was cutting roughly 50% of its workforce, which numbered 7,500 earlier this year.
Musk had previously expressed distaste for Twitter’s pandemic-era remote work policies that allowed team leaders to decide whether employees had to report to the office. On Wednesday, he ordered all employees to return to the office on Thursday.
Musk told employees in the email that “remote work is no longer allowed” and the road ahead is “difficult and will require intensive work to succeed.” He said he would personally review any exemption requests.
Twitter has not disclosed the total number of layoffs in its global workforce, but told local and state officials in the US that it was cutting 784 workers at its San Francisco headquarters, about 200 elsewhere in California and more than 400 in New York City. more than 200 in Seattle and about 80 in Atlanta.
The Twitter exodus is ongoing, including the company’s chief information security officer Lea Kissner, who tweeted Thursday that “I have made the difficult decision to leave Twitter.”
Cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos, a former Facebook security chief, tweeted Thursday that there is a “serious risk of a breach with drastically reduced staff” that could also put Twitter in violation of a 2011 order from the Federal Trade Commission asking him to address seriously. data security errors.
“Twitter made great strides toward a more rational internal security model, and going back will get them in trouble with the FTC” and other regulators in the US and Europe, Stamos said.
The FTC said in a statement Thursday that it is “following recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”
“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” the agency said in a statement. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”
The FTC would not say whether it was investigating Twitter for possible violations. If it were, it is authorized to request documents and fire employees.
Twitter paid a $150 million penalty in May for violating the 2011 consent order, and its updated version put new procedures in place that required the company to implement an improved privacy protection program as well as increase the security of information.
