But New York Times tech reporter Ryan Mac points out that the appointment would raise a host of potential conflicts of interest: "I mean, [Musk] is a man who runs multiple companies who are under investigation from various government agencies," Mac says.
Musk's SpaceX, for instance, is facing off with the National Labor Relations Board over allegations of sexual harassment. And the Department of Justice is investigating Tesla for comments Musk has made about the company's self-driving technology.
In their new book, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, Mac and fellow reporter Kate Conger take a closer look at Musk's takeover of the social media platform now known as X. Since buying the platform in 2022, Musk has laid off or fired about 75% of the staff; eliminated rules banning hate speech and disinformation; alienated many advertisers and users and lost money.
"There's almost no part of the company that was left untouched," Conger says the Twitter takeover. "We saw Musk make serious cuts to management, to engineering teams, to teams that worked on content moderation, advertising salespeople, security, janitorial services. Every part of the company was reduced in some way."
Mac says the cuts were so deep that some employees in the New York office were left without toilet paper — they had to bring their own from home. At one point, Conger says, Musk got so frustrated that Twitter was not saving more money that he called the staff into weekend conference call. During the course of the hours-long call, he went through the company's budget, line item by line item, asking employees to explain why they were spending money.
"It's a scene that I keep coming back to, thinking about this efficiency platform," Conger says. "And if [Musk] will try to hold a conference call with all of the Office of Management and Budget and run through the government spending with them or how that's going to work."
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