Elon Musk will offer 'amnesty' to banned Twitter accounts amid further layoffs
Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk says a 'blanket amnesty' for banned accounts will begin next week for those who 'have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spamming' . He polled users on whether Twitter should offer amnesty, seemingly ignoring the fact that such polls can be easily played by bots. More than 72% of the 3.2 million votes approved Musk's amnesty proposal.
Musk reinstated Donald Trump's account last weekend after a similar poll. Trump has yet to tweet after recovering his account, although he has continued to post on his own app, Truth Social. Late last week, Musk restored the accounts of comedian Kathy Griffin (who had needled Musk before his account was suspended), right-wing provocateur Jordan Peterson, and conservative satire site Babylon Bee< /em>.
The latest twist in the Twitter saga comes a day after the company laid off around 50 more engineers without notice, according to reports. They were fired just after the company launched a code review program, under which engineers are asked to submit samples of their work on a weekly basis. Dozens of engineers were fired via email the day before Thanksgiving because their "code is unsatisfactory", according to The Verge's Alex Heath.
Others have received a performance warning. "Note that failure to meet expectations could result in your dismissal...please take this opportunity to restore our trust and demonstrate your contributions to the team and the company," the email reads. 'warning.
The fired engineers would have been offered four weeks of severance if they signed a separation agreement and waived any claims against Twitter. They had remained with the company after Musk laid off about half the workforce. Last week, he asked remaining employees to commit to working on his vision of an "extremely hardcore" Twitter 2.0. Those who pulled out (about 1,200 of the 3,900 who were still with the company at the start of last week) were let go with the promise of three months' severance pay.
The latest batch of layoffs came just two days after Musk reportedly announced to employees that layoffs had been made and Twitter was hiring, emphasizing "people who excel at writing software ". One of the engineers Twitter eliminated on Wednesday is Ikuhiro Ihara, who led the campaign to double the tweet character limit to 280 in 2017. Twitter also let go of Ying Xiao, a senior machine learning researcher whom a colleague described to Platfomer as "the best ML modeler" around. It appears that some of the terminated engineers were on H1B visas and now face a race to find new jobs if they want to stay in the United States.
Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk says a 'blanket amnesty' for banned accounts will begin next week for those who 'have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spamming' . He polled users on whether Twitter should offer amnesty, seemingly ignoring the fact that such polls can be easily played by bots. More than 72% of the 3.2 million votes approved Musk's amnesty proposal.
Musk reinstated Donald Trump's account last weekend after a similar poll. Trump has yet to tweet after recovering his account, although he has continued to post on his own app, Truth Social. Late last week, Musk restored the accounts of comedian Kathy Griffin (who had needled Musk before his account was suspended), right-wing provocateur Jordan Peterson, and conservative satire site Babylon Bee< /em>.
The latest twist in the Twitter saga comes a day after the company laid off around 50 more engineers without notice, according to reports. They were fired just after the company launched a code review program, under which engineers are asked to submit samples of their work on a weekly basis. Dozens of engineers were fired via email the day before Thanksgiving because their "code is unsatisfactory", according to The Verge's Alex Heath.
Others have received a performance warning. "Note that failure to meet expectations could result in your dismissal...please take this opportunity to restore our trust and demonstrate your contributions to the team and the company," the email reads. 'warning.
The fired engineers would have been offered four weeks of severance if they signed a separation agreement and waived any claims against Twitter. They had remained with the company after Musk laid off about half the workforce. Last week, he asked remaining employees to commit to working on his vision of an "extremely hardcore" Twitter 2.0. Those who pulled out (about 1,200 of the 3,900 who were still with the company at the start of last week) were let go with the promise of three months' severance pay.
The latest batch of layoffs came just two days after Musk reportedly announced to employees that layoffs had been made and Twitter was hiring, emphasizing "people who excel at writing software ". One of the engineers Twitter eliminated on Wednesday is Ikuhiro Ihara, who led the campaign to double the tweet character limit to 280 in 2017. Twitter also let go of Ying Xiao, a senior machine learning researcher whom a colleague described to Platfomer as "the best ML modeler" around. It appears that some of the terminated engineers were on H1B visas and now face a race to find new jobs if they want to stay in the United States.
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