Twitter Verges On Collapse, Ex-Employees Say

Twitter workers reportedly quit by the hundreds Thursday after refusing to agree to billionaire CEO Elon Musk's demand that they work longer hours as part of his self-described "extremely hardcore" plan to overhaul the social media platform, Jake Johnson of Common Dreams reported for Raw Story.

Photo Insert: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has 13.5 million Twitter followers, connected the possible collapse of the platform to sky-high income and wealth inequality and policymakers' refusal to tackle it via higher taxes on billionaires like Musk.

"As a lot of freelancers have been saying, if Twitter goes down, our livelihoods suffer," tweeted labor journalist Kim Kelly.

"Twitter is where I share my work, promote my book, connect with editors, sources, other journalists, workers, activists, and organizers. We all know no corporate media outlet is gonna hire me. One anti-worker, union-busting, sniveling, sack o' shit billionaire is casually torpedoing the livelihoods of thousands of precarious media workers in the name of 'free speech,'" Kelly wrote.

"We are witnessing the real-time destruction of one of the world's most powerful communication systems. It's no coincidence that a notorious union-buster and flagrant violator of labor law is effectively running one of the most viable tools we have for union organizing into the ground," responded the AFL-CIO as news reports detailed the internal turmoil at the company as Musk and his advisers scrambled to stop key employees from quitting.

Jessica González, CEO of the advocacy group Free Press, said in a statement Friday that "Musk has swiftly decimated Twitter's ability to maintain the platform's integrity, health, and safety."

"His reckless actions, including sacking most of his staff and compelling others to leave, have caused an explosion of hate speech, conspiracy theories, and fraud on the site," said González.

"If there is one lesson that all social media platforms must take away from this debacle, it's that without protecting users from hate and lies, you have no company at all. Invest in the health and integrity of your platforms or risk extinction."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has 13.5 million Twitter followers, connected the possible collapse of the platform to sky-high income and wealth inequality and policymakers' refusal to tackle it via higher taxes on billionaires like Musk.

"If only we had taxed the rich," the New York Democrat wrote, "maybe none of this would have happened."

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