How Elon Musk Could Actually Kill Twitter
Updated at 9:35 p.m. ET on October 27, 2022
Sign up for Charlie’s newsletter, Galaxy Brain, here.
Journalists have been declaring Twitter dead for nearly a decade. Observers see flagging user numbers or feel an amorphous, grim vibe shift and pounce, often prematurely. But this week, everyone is fretting and monitoring. Tonight, Elon Musk reportedly took control of Twitter, firing CEO Parag Agrawal and other executives, including Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy, and trust. There is, both inside and outside the company, an apocalyptic feel to the ordeal.
Earlier, Musk wandered around Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, carrying a porcelain sink (for content purposes) while simultaneously trying to convince employees that he will not, as previously reported, cut 75 percent of staff. One current Twitter staffer told me that “the bootlicking [was] next level” as anxious employees greeted Musk in the hallway, unsure of his plans for his new company and their place in it.
Outside the company, power users are mulling plans to bail, and sharing a that Twitter is already on life support. My threads of good tweets. Dara Lind, a reporter, , noting that the whole thing has “big, big last-night-of-camp energy.”
