Come Back To Work, Twitter Begs Laid Off Staffs

 The takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk is proceeding about as well as one could anticipate.

Musk laid off about 3,700 employees on Friday, or roughly half the company, and also announced that the platform would now be giving out blue "verification" checks to anyone who feels like paying $8 a month. He claimed the action was required to make Twitter profitable.

However, Bloomberg revealed on Sunday that over the course of the next two days, the business contacted a lot of those dismissed workers to invite them to return:

According to two persons familiar with the changes, some of the workers who are being invited to come back were unintentionally fired. Others were fired before management acknowledged the value of their labor and experience in developing the brand-new features Musk dreams up, according to the employees, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive matters.

The Slack message that some employees got over the weekend was posted by reporter Casey Newton.

Musk announced the change after lamenting Twitter's "huge reduction in revenue, caused by activist groups pressing advertisers."

He was fact-checked on this by a new feature that "adds context" to some tweets and was introduced in October: The tweet's attachment states that "many advertisers have stated they are halting expenditure as they see what route Elon Musk goes with the platform." The rapid departure of advertisers coincides with worries that Musk may weaken the platform's security and anti-misinformation measures.

A number of companies, including General Mills and the Volkswagen Group, have halted their platform advertising because they are concerned about the direction Musk would lead the platform in. For instance, since he acquired the business, the N-word usage on Twitter reportedly increased by 500%, and Musk has already used it to propagate false information about the assault on Paul Pelosi. General Mills spokesman Kelsey Roemhildt told CNN, "We have suspended advertising on Twitter." As always, we'll keep an eye on this new strategy and assess our marketing budget.

Many Twitter employees who were expecting or just gave birth have announced their terminations on the website.

It's not known if any of these women are among the people the company is purportedly getting back in touch with. The request for comment from Bloomberg received no response from Twitter.