The news that American billionaire Elon Musk, purchased Twitter, has prompted it to become a widely discussed topic. Musk now owns one of the loudest megaphones in the world after purchasing Twitter reportedly for $44 billion. The promotion of free speech is what Musk said was the main driving force behind buying Twitter.
However, recent times haven’t been great for the mogul.
Less than two weeks after Elon Musk finished buying Twitter, there are already worries that the firm is deciding to overlook significant dangers in some of its most important international growth markets.
Twitter let go thousands of workers worldwide, including those in India and Africa.
Four days after opening in the Ghanaian city of Accra, Musk’s Twitter laid off nearly all of its staff there.
Twitter announced that it would open its first African office in Ghana in April 2021, but its employees had been working remotely until last week. According to reports, only one employee appears to have been retained in the Ghana office after the global job cuts.
“It’s very insulting,” one former employee said on condition of anonymity. “They didn’t even have the courtesy to address me by name. The email just said ‘see attached’ and yet they used my name when they gave me an offer.”
Musk defended the move, tweeting that “unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day” and those impacted would be offered three months of severance pay. It is unclear whether all Twitter employees in Ghana will receive the same benefit.
Business-Mogul scared of losses
Musk, who has a great deal of commercial acumen, should presumably understand that while a company’s expansion may initially result in financial losses, doing so is crucial in the foreseeable future, especially when the markets are as promising as those in Africa. You see, for a firm to survive and continue to be appealing to investors and analysts, profitability and growth are crucial and necessary for it to be successful and remain in business. A corporation must be profitable in order to survive, but expansion is also essential for long-term survival.
Additionally, reducing the workforce is terrible news for both Twitter’s staff and users in its overseas markets and is in no way a strategy to encourage free speech, a catchphrase that Musk himself has frequently championed.
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One cannot ignore Twitter’s significance in political dialogue. Some political leaders find it upsetting that everyone with a Twitter account may express their opinions to the world, regardless of their social or political standing.
Twitter implicitly encourages citizens to participate in unrestrained and occasionally difficult political discussions that irritate authorities. This assumes even greater significance in Africa, a continent marked by tremendous political volatility and violations of human rights.
Musk can, of course, do whatever he wants because the corporation is in his hands. He is free to enact any free speech regulation he wants. He can reactivate accounts that were suspended. He may forbid anyone from questioning his foreign policy objectives as well as Tesla short sellers. He may comply to a subpoena, court orders, or other legal process in order to pass up private user data to governments. He can swiftly fire 75% of his employees. Ultimately, only time will tell whether Musk’s Twitter stunt was indeed a big success or a disastrous failure.
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