According to ShackNews, Elon Musk is planning to intensify his Twitter Takeover by cutting infrastructure costs by at least $1 billion. Twitter is currently losing millions each day, and Elon Musk seems to want to temporarily cut the bird’s wings by making cuts to cloud services and servers.
Elon Musk recently spent $44 billion on his acquisition of Twitter, a popular social media platform that Musk believes has become a hotbed of censorship and marked the death of truly free speech. In an attempt to recuperate capital from the takeover, Musk is reportedly directing Twitter’s teams to find additional funds somewhere within the company. In this case, the SpaceX founder reportedly intends to cut funding to cloud services and servers, and according to CNBC, jobs might be on the line too.
The CNBC report highlights that Elon Musk may be looking to cut Twitter’s employee count by at least half. Yashar Ali, an American journalist, recently reported on an internal email allegedly circulated to Twitter staff confirming that today, November 4th, is the day that the hammer will drop. The email reportedly also stated that the office would close temporarily and bade access would be temporarily suspended to ‘ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.’
While Musk is reportedly conducting a mass Twitter employee purge, he is also reportedly introducing a fee for the highly-coveted blue check mark that signifies a verified Twitter account. Twitter users who want the blue check mark to appear next to their name will now reportedly need to pay $8 a month to stay verified.
While Musk says his takeover was motivated by altruism and the greater good, It’s not yet clear whether the $44 billion price tag for his stated goal of freedom of speech and expression will be worth it. The company needs to start generating income, and Musk may feel the pinch as he cinches company spending. No matter what happens, it could be beacon of hope for the future of our freedoms and liberties that Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been finalized.