As the mass exodus from Twitter continues on both the consumer and internal sides of the platform, new owner Elon Musk has decided to reactivate the accounts of actress Kathy Griffin, bestselling author and psychologist Jordan Peterson, and the Babylon Bee.
Only the Babylon Bee account has acknowledged Musk’s decision, tweeting, “We’re back. Let that sink in.”
The Tesla billionaire tweeted this latest update, and he did not disclose a final decision about former (and now campaigning once more) President Donald Trump’s account.
He also clarified the new policies around the app’s speech guidelines.
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” he wrote. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from the rest of the Internet” Musk added.
Musk’s latest demand that the platform’s workforce commit to a hardcore output of “woking long hours at high intensity” backfired as a record number of staffers (higher than what Musk expected) quit their positions at the company, taking the other option offered by the “Chief Twit” of resigning with severance pay.
The Associated Press chalked up the number to “hundreds,” many of whom signified their departure with the “salute” emoji on Slack.
“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” Musk tweeted Thursday night.
“Am hearing the number of Twitter resignations today is likely over 1,000, though unclear as not all are posting their decision,” Alex Heath, editor of The Verge, posted late Thursday. A related story on the site noted the company had just 2,900 workers remaining before Musk’s deadline.
“Some teams, such as the engineering team that manages Twitter’s core system libraries, are completely gone now.”
“Hundreds upon hundreds of Twitter employees have technically resigned but still have access to Twitter’s internal systems, with some speculating it is because the employees tasked with managing that access also resigned,” he added, detailing several members of Twitter’s “Command Center” that oversaw the day-to-day functions of the platform. “Also entire key infra teams gone. Not good!”
Thursday night also devolved into a discussion of the social media outlet’s downfall as the hashtag #RIPTwitter trended.