Twitter employees expressed distrust and exhaustion Friday after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said he was terminating a deal to buy the social media company in what could be the beginning of months of legal wrangling.
musk Told Twitter Violated several provisions of a $44 billion (about Rs 3,49,060 crore) merger agreement signed in April, including failing to turn over sufficient data on spam accounts and letting some executives and recruiters go. Twitter’s chairman said the board plans to take legal action to enforce the deal.
In candid commentary on the latest development in Musk’s courtship from January, the company’s engineers, marketing leaders and other employees took to Twitter to publicly post memes, such as a rollercoaster ride and a baby screaming into the phone. Others joked about the impossibility of breaking their personal commitments.
Employees have expressed widespread concern about Musk taking over Twitter because of his priorities for cutting headcount and other costs, reducing content moderation, and limiting remote working.
But Musk’s now-registered offering also marks a 36 percent premium for the company’s shares and could mean a huge payday for employees and other shareholders.
After months of relentless headlines, a Twitter employee told Reuters on Friday that he only felt more fatigued about the road ahead.
“I can’t believe it’s really over,” the employee said on condition of anonymity.
Amir Shevat, whose Twitter bio says he works on the company’s developer products, posted on the service shortly after news of Musk’s termination, “End of season – what a cliffhanger…”
Jared Manfredi, whose profile says he works at iOS “If only this wasn’t the start of a long drawn out court battle that would drive down the purchase price and continue the circus for another indefinite time,” wrote the products on Twitter.
Reuters could not independently verify the information in his profile, and he did not immediately respond to requests for comment via private messages.
Twitter told employees last month that it was on track to increase the number of users who viewed ads by 13 million during the recently-ended second quarter, its highest target ever. Twitter is yet to announce its second quarter results.
Musk, the automaker’s chief executive officer Tesla and rocket company SpaceXtold Twitter employees at a video townhall later in the month that he wanted to grow the company from 229 million to at least 1 billion users. He also told them that users should be allowed to post “very derogatory things”.
Musk, a prolific user of Twitter, has said that by owning a social media service, he can make it more enjoyable and maintain it as an essential public platform.
In a regulatory filing on Friday, his lawyer said Twitter had taken a stand to keep the physical components of its existing business organization largely intact, by firing two managers, a part of its talent acquisition team, and setting up a hiring freeze. had violated the provisions of the deal. The job offer also cited the resignations of three leaders of the department.
Twitter had over 7,500 employees by the end of 2021.
© Thomson Reuters 2022