(NEW YORK) — Twitter employees have till Thursday evening to commit to being “extremely hardcore” or accept three months of severance upon their exiting the company, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk wrote in a company-wide email. The internal email sent out this morning was obtained by ABC News and first reported by Platformer.
With the subject line “A Fork in the Road,” Musk wrote: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore.”
“This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” he added. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
For those who wish to be part of the “new Twitter,” Musk directs employees to “click yes” on a forms link embodied in the email.
“Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance,” Musk wrote. “Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.”
Twitter will from now on be more “engineering-driven,” he wrote — with less focus on design and product management.
“Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway,” Musk wrote. “At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense.”
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
On Tuesday, Twitter fired “dozens” of employees over comments they made on an internal Slack channel criticizing new owner Elon Musk, two former employees had told ABC News.
Controversy has surrounded Musk since he purchased the social media site at the end of October for roughly $44 billion.
In the days since he acquired Twitter, Musk fired top executives, laid off half of the company’s staff, formed a content moderation council that will review account reinstatements and revamped the platform’s subscription service, Twitter Blue.
ABC News’ Max Zahn and Teddy Grant contributed to this story.
(NEW YORK) — Estée Lauder is acquiring Tom Ford for $2.8 billion, the venerable beauty brand announced Tuesday.
Through the new deal, the beauty conglomerate plans to add the designer label’s fragrances, cosmetics, skin care and apparel to its large portfolio of brands.
While the acquisition is subject to certain conditions, including regulatory approvals, it is expected to close during the first half of next year.
Estée Lauder said it has made arrangements to pay for the transaction through cash, debt and $300 million in deferred payments to the sellers by July 2025.
Acquiring Tom Ford’s line of fragrances was one of the main drivers of the acquisition, ABC News’s Rebecca Jarvis reported on Good Morning America.
Perfumes were a growth category during the pandemic, while Estée Lauder was hit hard by China’s COVID-19 restrictions — with once booming sales in Asia falling — and its shares down about 40% this year.
Estée Lauder hopes Ford’s flourishing business, whose net sales grew nearly 25% in its most recent fiscal year, according to the company, will fuel even more growth.
“We are incredibly proud of the success Tom Ford Beauty has achieved in luxury fragrance and makeup and its dedication to creating desirable, high-quality products for discerning consumers around the world,” Fabrizio Freda, president and chief executive officer for The Estée Lauder Companies, said in a statement. “As an owned brand, this strategic acquisition will unlock new opportunities and fortify our growth plans for Tom Ford Beauty. It will also further help to propel our momentum in the promising category of luxury beauty for the long-term while reaffirming our commitment to being the leading pure player in global prestige beauty.”
Tom Ford Beauty was initially launched as a partnership with Estée Lauder in 2006 with fragrance, makeup and skin care, and through the years, has grown to be a highly sought-after brand.
“I could not be happier with this acquisition as The Estée Lauder Companies is the ideal home for the brand. They have been an extraordinary partner from the first day of my creation of the company and I am thrilled to see them become the luxury stewards in this next chapter of the Tom Ford brand,” Ford said in a statement.
While Ford himself has not confirmed his future plans, he will continue to stay with the brand through the end of 2023.
(NEW YORK) — Amazon is warning customers about an increase in online and mobile scams ahead of the holiday season.
According to Amazon, they have already initiated takedowns of more than 20,000 phishing websites and 10,000 phone numbers associated with impersonation schemes this year.
The retail giant said more than 50% of the impersonation scams its customers report are fake order confirmations.
“A scammer will send a fake order confirmation looking like you bought something online or in a store and pretend that you need to urgently contact customer service,” Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of selling partner services, told Good Morning America, explaining how the scams often play out. “And they’ll give you a link or a phone number to try and contact them.”
Once a person reaches out, scammers may ask for anything from credit card or Social Security numbers or other personal information.
One example of a fraudulent text message someone may receive asks a potential Amazon customer to click a link to contact customer care if they didn’t place an order. Upon closer inspection, the “o” in the word “order” is the number zero.
Another example of a fraudulent text message is one that offers information about a fake order and then asks a customer to call a phone number to request a refund.
“As our technology has become more sophisticated, scammers have become more sophisticated,” Claire Rosenzweig, the CEO of Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York, told GMA. “Scammers are going to try to use your emotions against you so that you react and give them what they want, which is usually your money or your personal information.”
The Federal Trade Commission said it has received more than 3 million reports of impersonation scams since 2018, with consumers losing more than $6 billion.
To protect your personal information and your money, Amazon is advising customers:
Do not to click on any suspicious links.
Do not call or text any phone numbers you don’t recognize.
Be wary of any sense of urgency.
When in doubt, contact customer service directly and file a report.
When using email, look for the Amazon smile logo. That is an icon used to verify the message is directly from Amazon.
“If you want to check your real order history, if you want to really contact our customer service, you go to Amazon.com or use the Amazon app,” said Mehta. “Don’t fall prey to those scams.”
If you think you have been scammed, experts recommend taking the following steps:
Contact your bank immediately.
Ask your bank to have the transaction reversed.
Cancel your credit card.
If you used a gift card, contact the company that issued the gift card and ask for a refund.
For Amazon specifically, utilize the company’s scam reporting feature at Amazon.com/reportascam.
(NEW YORK) — A red wave in the midterm elections propelled by discontent over sky-high inflation was expected to deliver a historic defeat for Democrats — until it didn’t.
Typically the party in control of the White House suffers significant losses in the midterm elections. In this case, some analysts expected the disadvantage for Democrats to prove greater than usual, since inflation stood near a 40-year high and recession fears abounded.
Days before the election, polls validated that concern. Roughly half of Americans said either the economy or inflation was the most important issue in their vote for Congress, making bread-and-butter financial issues by far the most dominant, according to an ABC News/Ipsos survey.
Instead, the Democrats are projected to control the Senate; and while Republicans lead in the race for a House majority, that chamber has yet to be decided.
The apparent lack of a voter backlash against Democrats over inflation stems in part from the priority placed on other issues as well as the struggles of candidates backed by former President Donald Trump, experts told ABC News.
But the results also suggest that inflation motivated voters less than many expected, perhaps because savings have cushioned the financial pain and the job market remains fairly robust, some experts said.
Here’s why the Democrats eluded a voter backlash over inflation, according to experts:
Abortion, candidate quality play outsized role
A top reason why Democrats avoided a midterms landslide over inflation has nothing to do with the price hikes, experts told ABC News. Instead, voters prioritized other issues like abortion or formed judgments based on the candidates on offer in a given race.
On election day, 32% of voters said inflation was their most important issue but abortion followed close behind at 27%, while voters also mentioned crime, immigration and gun policy, an ABC News exit poll showed.
Moreover, more than two-thirds of voters said democracy in the U.S. is threatened, the exit poll found.
Inflation less motivating to voters
Another reason why Democrats avoided punishment at the polls over inflation is that the issue appeared to motivate voters less than expected, in part because some analysts overstated the typical role of inflation in midterm elections, experts said.
Further, some analysts and media outlets may have overstated the degree of financial pain inflicted by inflation, since savings carried over from the pandemic have softened the blow of high prices, some experts said.
Historically, the height or change of inflation has not been linked with the performance of the president’s party in the midterms, Matt Grossman, a professor of political science at Michigan State University who studies the role of inflation in electoral politics, told ABC News.
However, academics have tied gas prices to presidential approval rating, which in turn marks a key indicator for the midterm performance of the party in control of the White House, Grossman added.
While gas prices declined over the final few weeks of the campaign, they remained elevated on election day. Only 44% approved of Biden’s presidency, among the lowest midterm approval ratings in 40 years.
Voters may have held Biden responsible for high prices but forwent placing blame on Congressional candidates, Grossman said.
The lower-than-expected voter motivation based on the midterms owes in part to household savings that have mitigated some of the damage, some experts said.
U.S. households amassed about $2.3 trillion in savings in 2020 and 2021, a Federal Reserve study showed last month. Moreover, households in the lower half of income distribution were still holding a combined $350 billion in excess savings as of the middle of this year, the study found.
Mark Zandi, of Moody Analytics, estimated that inflation has added about $500 per month in costs on average for a U.S. household compared with a year ago.
“It’s financially tough,” he said. “Excess savings built up during the pandemic certainly have cushioned the blow.”
Labor market remains fairly strong
Despite sky-high inflation and rising interest rates, the labor market remains fairly robust. While the jobs added each month have fallen over the second half of this year, they remain strong, keeping the unemployment rate below 4%.
The lack of a voter backlash against Democrats over the economy suggests that the pain imposed by inflation may be offset in part by the high level of employment, experts told ABC News.
“The topline take from the midterms from an economic perspective is that full employment matters,” Felicia Wong, the president and CEO of the left-leaning nonprofit Roosevelt Forward, told ABC News.
Wong contrasted the results of the midterms last week with the midterm election in 2010, when then-President Barack Obama oversaw an economy with a 9.6% unemployment rate in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession. In what Obama later described as a “shellacking,” Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House.
“Inflation is a financial corrosive for all Americans, but it’s not an acute pain,” Zandi said. “Unemployment is a very acute pain when people are affected by it.”
(MAPLETON, Ill.) — One of the world’s biggest manufacturers of industrial vehicles and equipment has been cited and penalized for the death of a worker who fell into an 11-foot-deep pot of molten iron heated to more than 2,000 degrees this summer.
Steve Dierkes, a 39-year-old employee and melting specialist at a Caterpillar foundry which produces cast iron engine components in Mapleton, Illinois, was “immediately incinerated” after falling into the huge tub of molten iron that was heated to approximately twice the temperature of volcanic lava on June 2 earlier this year. Dierkes was only on the ninth day of his new job when he died.
“Investigators with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration determined the foundry routinely exposed employees to unprotected fall hazards as they worked within four feet of deep ceramic containers of super-heated molten iron,” OSHA said in a statement. “If required safety guards or fall protection had been installed, the 39-year-old employee’s ninth day on the job might not have been their last.”
Caterpillar, a Fortune 500 corporation and construction equipment manufacturer, was cited for one willful violation and fined $145,027 by OSHA, according to OSHA’s statement announcing the punishment.
“A worker’s life could have been spared if Caterpillar had made sure required safety protections were in place, a fact that only adds to this tragedy,” said OSHA Regional Administrator Bill Donovan in Chicago. “Producing more than 150,000 tons each year, Caterpillar’s foundry is one of the nation’s largest and they should be acutely aware of industry regulations to protect workers using smelters and other dangerous equipment.”
Federal safety regulations require employers to install guardrails and restraint systems to protect workers from falls into dangerous equipment like Dierkes suffered.
“Caterpillar’s failure to meet its legal responsibilities to ensure the safety and health of workers leaves this worker’s family, friends and co-workers to grieve needlessly,” said OSHA Area Director Christine Zortman in Peoria, Illinois. “We implore employers to review the agency specific regulations to protect workers from falls into equipment in industrial settings.”
More than 800 people are employed at the Caterpillar foundry in Mapleton, Illinois, and the foundry manufactures “engine components used for construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives,” according to OSHA.
Caterpillar has 15 business days from the time of OSHA’s citation to either comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area director to discuss the matter further or contest the findings and citation in front of the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
(NEW YORK) — Popeyes made waves in 2019 for its cult-favorite fried chicken sandwich that sold out, prompted copycat recipes and created a rivalry amongst competitors. Now, the culinary minds behind the popular item concocted a new menu addition with even more of its signature Cajun flavors.
The fast food chain debuted its “next great menu innovation: a breading-free, flavor-full Blackened Chicken Sandwich” on Tuesday.
The sandwich, which costs $4.99 and is available for a limited-time, is made with whole chicken breast that’s marinated for 12 hours, seasoned with a blend of Cajun and Creole spices and served atop a warm, toasted brioche bun with Popeyes’ house classic or spicy mayo and crunchy barrel-cured pickles.
“The Popeyes Culinary Team spent four years perfecting its version of the classic Blackening cooking technique, which originated in Louisiana and is used to better seal in seasoning and spices to flavor the meat, which then develops a crave-worthy, yet subtle browned or blackened crust,” Popeyes stated in a press release.
The brand said it’s “sure others will try to copy it again” and confidently boasted their new blackened chicken sandwich “can’t be surpassed by potential copycats.”
To double down, Popeyes kicked off a new campaign sharing the ingredients in the sandwich and inviting competitors and customers alike to recreate their own copy-cat version.
“Our Chicken Sandwich changed the QSR (quick service restaurant) industry back in 2019, and since then, we’ve continued to innovate within the category to give our guests what they want – even more Chicken Sandwich options,” President of Popeyes North America Sami Siddiqui, said in a statement. “After the immense success of the Chicken Sandwich, we wanted to reinvent the category of traditional grilled chicken sandwiches with our all-new take on a non-breaded option, the Popeyes Blackened Chicken Sandwich. We’re excited for guests to try this delicious new offering, and knowing our history for trendsetting, we have a feeling it may spark some copycat Blackened Chicken Sandwiches down the road.”
(NEW YORK) — Twitter has fired “dozens” of employees over comments they made on an internal Slack channel criticizing new owner Elon Musk, two former employees told ABC News.
“We regret to inform you that your employment is terminated effective immediately,” read an email from Twitter HR to some employees on Tuesday. “Your recent behavior has violated company policy.”
The two now-former employees told ABC News they received the emails overnight.
“I can only assume this was for not showing 100% loyalty on Slack,” said one of the employees, who asked to remain anonymous. “I have heard the same thing has happened to many others.”
In a tweet, seemingly confirming he fired employees critical of him in an internal Slack channel, Musk tweeted on Tuesday, “I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.”
Twitter did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the reported employee terminations.
Controversy has surrounded Musk since he purchased the social media site at the end of October for roughly $44 billion.
In the days since he acquired Twitter, Musk fired top executives, laid off half of the company’s staff, formed a content moderation council that will review account reinstatements and revamped the platform’s subscription service, Twitter Blue.
Shortly after the Twitter Blue overhaul, the company suspended the service that allowed users to access verification if they pay a monthly fee of $8 because of a rise of fake accounts impersonating public figures and brands, including Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, video game company Nintendo of America and even Tesla, the electric vehicle maker run by Musk.
Some Twitter contractors learned they’d been laid off when they lost access to their work email and Slack accounts on Saturday night, three sources tell ABC News. It is not yet clear how many people were impacted in this apparent second round of layoffs targeting contract employees.
Contractors began to share their dismay and disbelief in a team group chat late Saturday as contractors quickly realized they were locked out of their accounts.
“I also lost access,” one contractor in this group replied to another in the group chat reviewed by ABC News. “I am out,” said another contractor regarding their login credentials at Twitter.
In a Blind group chat amongst Twitter employees, one employee estimated that Twitter cut nearly 80% of its contractors yesterday. ABC News has not confirmed how many contractors were let go beyond the three contractors who share their stories, and several more who appeared to be let go based on their messages within the Health and Public Safety Team’s group chat.
Twitter has not replied to ABC News’ request for comment on the new layoffs, and neither has Surya Systems.
Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Balenciaga is saying “bye-bye” to Twitter.
Several users recently noticed that the luxury fashion label no longer had an account on the platform. Good Morning America has confirmed that the brand will no longer maintain a Twitter account moving forward.
While the brand has chosen not to make any further statements on its decision to leave Twitter, the news comes shortly after investor Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout of the company last month.
Prior to leaving Twitter, Balenciaga’s account had millions of followers.
Several other notable public figures, such as Gigi Hadid and Shonda Rhimes, have also left their Twitter accounts behind in the wake of Musk’s takeover. Some have expressed disapproval of Musk’s leadership, claiming his buyout was detrimental to the platform.
“I deactivated my Twitter account today,” Hadid said in an Instagram story alongside a screenshot claiming Twitter’s entire human rights department had been laid off. “For a long time, but especially with its new leadership, it’s becoming more and more of a cesspool of hate & bigotry, and it’s not a place I want to be a part of.”
The screenshot featured a tweet from Twitter’s former human rights counsel Shannon Raj Singh, who claimed on Nov. 4 that the company’s full Human Rights team had been “cut from the company.”
“I am enormously proud of the work we did to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, to protect those at-risk in global conflicts & crises including Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and to defend the needs of those, particularly at risk of human rights abuse by virtue of their social media presence, such as journalists & human rights defenders,” Singh wrote at the time.
Musk’s Twitter takeover has been plagued with issues since day one. In addition to backlash over Musk’s decision to charge $8 for Twitter Blue subscriptions, which provide subscribers with a blue “verified” checkmark, the company has also faced internal upheaval, issuing mass layoffs, losing advertisers, and dealing with product issues that have caused some users to be locked out of their accounts, among other things. Additionally, Musk was forced to freeze new Twitter Blue subscription sign-ups after newly verified paid accounts began impersonating public figures, companies and legitimate media outlets.
The Federal Trade Commission stated last Thursday that it was “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”
Meanwhile, a study from Montclair State University earlier in November showed a spike in hate speech on Twitter immediately following Musk’s takeover of the platform.
Balenciaga’s departure comes as other advertisers face increased pressure to consider their futures on the platform, with companies such as General Motors, GM, United Airlines, General Mills, and Mondelez International Inc. pulling ads from Twitter already.
Previously, Musk had threatened “a thermonuclear name & shame” of companies leaving Twitter, however he took a markedly different stance in a conversation with advertisers last week that was broadcast on the platform using the Twitter Spaces function. According to Reuters, over 100,000 listeners tuned into the conversation.
“I understand if people want to give it a minute … [but] the best way to see how things are evolving is just use Twitter,” he said, according to the outlet.
Musk has also attempted to smooth things over on his own official Twitter account. “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months,” he tweeted on Nov. 9. “We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”
Representatives for Twitter did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment for this story.
ABC News’ Melanie Schmitz contributed to this story.
(NEW YORK) — Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter late last month as CEO has ignited a public conversation about whether the billionaire will obstruct or encourage free speech on the social media platform, which has about 240 million active users worldwide.
An early sign of Musk’s direction may be evident by his inner circle, the center of which stands Alex Spiro, his personal attorney. Known as a powerhouse attorney representing world-renowned celebrities and athletes, Spiro is also a staunch free speech advocate, particularly in cases that intersect hip-hop music and criminal justice reform.
Concerns over the future of free speech on Twitter have come largely from Musk’s own posts since he took control of the company. Although he has said that existing laws protect Twitter from hate speech, he has said Twitter cannot be “considered inclusive or fair if it is biased against half the country,” which has made some worry that leniency toward extreme voices may be in the platform’s future.
A flood of fake accounts impersonating public figures and brands overtook the platform last week after the launch of paid verification badges, raising fears about the supercharged spread of misinformation. Musk himself posted a link to a story about a baseless conspiracy theory about the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Musk later took the tweet down. Musk has also said that accounts impersonating others will not be tolerated unless they clearly state they are parody accounts.
Spiro declined to discuss Musk or Twitter for this story, but he did tell ABC News that free speech “is a core, fundamental belief” of Spiro’s that has guided his career, which started when he was a prosecutor in Manhattan with the New York County District Attorney’s Office.
“I’m hoping that free speech in music is something we could all get behind,” he told ABC News.
A “mirror” of Musk
Spiro met Musk in 2019 when representing him in a defamation lawsuit by British cave diver Vernon Unsworth, in which the Tesla CEO had called Unsworth a “pedo guy.” Spiro won that case on Musk’s behalf, arguing that Musk was ultimately trying to fund efforts to save a group of Thai teenagers who were trapped in a cave and saying the comment was a “throwaway insult” after Unsworth tried unsuccessfully to characterize him as a “billionaire bully.”
“The First Amendment does not [just] protect compliments and happy speak, it protects unfavorable speech. It protects all speech,” Spiro said in a recent Original Jurisdiction podcast interview. “If we start policing speech, where are we? We’re in a bad place in our society and in our world.”
After that, Spiro continued to represent Musk in various legal battles, including continuous investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, one involving Musk’s appeal to a $40 million SEC settlement for alleged securities fraud. Bill Burck, a co-managing partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, who helped recruit Spiro to the firm in 2016, said Musk required an attorney who was also a personal confidante.
Musk “clearly thinks outside of the box and he follows the beat of his own drum, and he looks for intellectual courage and extreme dedication,” Burck told ABC News. “Alex mirrors that. He is probably one of the very few people who can keep up with the ideas and not be hamstrung or straightjacketed by the perceived wisdom. That’s probably the larger reason why he has clearly gotten Musk’s trust in a way that very few other lawyers have.”
Even in his early days, fresh out of Harvard Law School and working as a prosecutor in New York, Spiro demonstrated the strength required “to tell clients the truth,” said attorney Elliot Felig, who worked with Spiro in 2009 when both were prosecutors at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
“Alex is the most confident courtroom attorney I’ve ever seen. Beyond that, he had a thirst for trying cases that was unparalleled,” he told ABC News. “I think Elon Musk has a fearlessness and I suspect Alex is a good match.”
Spiro, 39, was born in New York City but grew up in Boston. Early in his career, he worked at Harvard’s McLean Hospital where he helped run a program for children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome until he realized he could do more for their plight through the justice system. “I went to law school sort of by accident,” he told the Original Jurisdiction podcast audience.
His interest in psychology served him well early in his life when it became clear he could relate to not just clients, but jurors from all walks of life, Felig said.
“The best prosecutors love being on trial and Alex loved being on trial. He wanted trials. He would go door to door looking for trials,” he said. “The desire he had was innate. You can’t teach it. It’s a competitive spirit that some professional athletes have. They love the competition.”
Working to decriminalize rap lyrics
Along the way, Spiro became a serious advocate for hip-hop artists who he believed were unfairly having their music and lyrics weaponized against them in court by criminal prosecutors. He told ABC News his interest in overturning wrongful convictions originated from observing prosecutors using the YouTube rap videos of defendants to characterize them as dangerous in order to have a judge deny their bail. The trend, he said, struck him as “particularly problematic and a hill to die on.”
He ended up representing prominent hip-hop artists, including Jay-Z, 21 Savage, Meek Mill, Chance the Rapper and others, earning the title of “hip-hop’s most sought-after criminal justice attorney” by Billboard. He defended Brooklyn rapper Bobby Shmurda, then on trial for gang conspiracy charges, in 2016, and remains the lead attorney for Jay-Z and his Roc Nation roster of artists — a designation that required defending 21 Savage, who was arrested in 2019 for alleged immigration violations. (The case is still pending).
Along the way, Jay-Z enlisted Spiro to lead several criminal justice reform cases that had nothing to do with the music industry, such as filing a complaint in 2020 with the U.S. District Court in Greenville, Mississippi, on behalf of 29 inmates who authorities said were involved in a spate of violence that left five prisoners dead. Spiro argued that the deaths instead resulted from years of staff shortages and neglect in the state prison system.
Spiro also frequently partners with Erik Nielson, a liberal arts professor at the University of Richmond who has written extensively about hip-hop, to advocate for legislation to limit the use of rap lyrics used against defendants in criminal trials. Their work helped a law pass in California, and a similar bill is pending in both New York and New Jersey. Spiro co-wrote the bill and helped get stars such as Jay-Z, Killer Mike, Big Sean, and others to sign letters of support. A similar bill, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, is working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives.
His advocacy originated in the case of Pittsburgh rapper Jamal Knox, who was found guilty in 2013 of threatening two police officers in his song, “F— the Police.” Nielson said there are hundreds of cases like Knox’s, and he and Spiro — who works pro bono on cases involving the legislation — talk regularly about which potential cases could use their support.
“One thing about Alex is he really does walk the walk. He can achieve a lot in a very short period of time,” Nielson told ABC News. “He’s been an invaluable advocate of serious issues involving rap artists. He is driven and he is very effective, and so I can understand why someone like Elon Musk would rely on him.”
(NEW YORK) — Twitter’s struggles have been mounting since Elon Musk bought the social media company and among the challenges are the thousands of employee layoffs.
From top executives to contract workers who kept an eye on misinformation, no one was spared from Musk’s orders.
Melissa Ingle was laid off from the company over the weekend and spoke with “Start Here” Monday about her experience, the harassment she faced and her concerns about the direction that Musk is taking Twitter.
START HERE: Melissa, first of all, can you just describe what you did on Twitter?
MELISSA INGLE: Absolutely. So I was a data scientist in the Civic Integrity Department, which basically means I wrote and monitored algorithms which scanned Twitter for tweets that violated our policies around political misinformation.
My specific department was just the three of us data scientists, and we were just looking for political misinformation. The larger department that we rolled up into was about 30 people, and they were looking for all kinds of misinformation, hate speech, targeted abuse, pornography [and] child abuse.
We were just trying to keep the site as free and as clear as possible and safe to use for so many people.
START HERE:Did you like it?
INGLE:I loved it. I really, really enjoyed working for Twitter. It felt like it was an important job trying to prevent the spread of misinformation… I love the product, and I’m a longtime Twitter user even before I was hired there.
START HERE:Can you give me examples of what you guys would moderate? How would you get involved with some example of how you guys would help the service?
INGLE:Absolutely. So we used a process called Natural Language Processing, which you may have heard about. It’s searches, language…for keywords or phrases which we had identified as belonging to political misinformation.
So we would flag those tweets and a certain subsection of those, say 200 a week, would be sent for human review.
START HERE:Like someone says “so and so’s campaign is committing fraud,” that could be fake.
INGLE:So, No. 1, we would need to check that it had political information at all. Most people are tweeting about politics. And No. 2, we would check that it had political misinformation.
So we’re trying to keep the elections clean as possible. You can express your opinion. We want you to express your opinion. But the moment you start spreading misinformation, we want to make sure that that is curtailed.
START HERE:So after Elon Musk takes over a couple weeks ago…he started having some all-hands meetings. We’ve actually obtained audio of one last Thursday. Can you just describe how he was talking about the company and what employees thought of it?
INGLE: Yeah, absolutely.
The message was that the financial situation of Twitter was shaky, [and] uncertain, let me say that. And he was not ruling out further cuts and he was requiring everybody to come in to work. Those were some of the things that I heard.
I’ve been in the tech industry here for over 12 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. People were openly saying in meetings, ‘I don’t trust the new CEO.’ And tech is generally [a] very rah-rah place. We’re all committed to the vision and the mission of the company, And I’ve just, I’ve never heard such disparaging terms about the new company leadership. Many of the senior executives were laid off who were people we had trusted.
On Saturday the 12th, I happened to be looking at my phone. At about 5:30 p.m. I had a popup. It said one or more of your access tokens had been removed from this app and it was my Twitter Gmail app. So I tried to log in. I was locked out. I tried to log into the company Slack on my phone, locked out as well. With no warning at all.
START HERE: Ah, that’s the moment when you realized you were laid off. What’s going through your mind then?
INGLE:It’s a horrible feeling. This area, the Bay Area, is extremely expensive to live in, and I’m a single parent, and I was thinking, ‘Well, am I going to be able to afford to live here? Am I going to be able [to pay] my rent? Am I going to be able to give my children a good Christmas? These were my fears throughout the week. There was some uncertainty, and this really drove it home that, well, I don’t have any income, anymore. So I was really terrified for my future.
START HERE: What happened after that? Because you were quite vocal about this.
INGLE:Yeah, for sure. I tweeted immediately.
A journalist reported that they had seen that they heard reports of the contract [workers] were being laid off. And I responded to this and I said, “Yeah, this happened to me.”
I’ve had people say, ‘hey, I’ve heard about this job and why don’t you submit your resume,’ which is just incredible and so heartwarming that people would want to do that for somebody they don’t even know. And not to be cheesy, that’s what’s great about Twitter. It really can help you learn. It’s just empathy machine in a way. It can be at its best.
But then, also not relevant, and I’m a trans woman and I usually keep a pretty low profile. And the amount of hate I’ve received just in the past, I don’t know, 12 to 14 hours, has been absolutely wild. People [were] digging up old posts of mine, tweeting out memes about me. A meme mocking me has over 36,000 likes at this point.
START HERE: Really? Wait, you’re talking about ‘I got laid off’ and then people respond to you with, like, transphobic stuff?
INGLE:Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Not even not dog whistles and outright misgendering. “Good. You are a pedophile. You’re a groomer. You’re a Nazi sympathizer.” Just the worst. “You have a beard. You’re a man.” All this kind of stuff. Yeah.
It’s awful. It’s really upsetting. It’s really upsetting to have to experience it. I’m not talking about that in my post. I’m just talking about being laid off from this company that I really love to work at. I’m expressing my sadness and grief and I’m not saying it to anybody, and it’s just been really tough. People are DM’ing me really awful things and it’s just really terrible.
START HERE:What’s that like for you, knowing that you were part of this team that’s responsible for making Twitter feel safer to use? Because that seems like a really sad, ironic twist.
INGLE:Yeah, it’s a really interesting phenomenon right now. So I want to say that. All right. Now, all of the content moderation is still in place. It hasn’t been removed yet.
But [with] these machine learning models, people like to think that they’re just, they just operate by themselves and they’re great. No. They need constant human input and tuning because over time, with fewer people there, they’re absolutely going to degrade.
Content moderation is important. I know it’s not like a “sexy topic” or some people don’t think it’s important, but without it, your platform can crash and burn.
START HERE:What are you going to do next? Do you have any thoughts about that or what do you do?
INGLE: I understand that there is a class-action lawsuit ongoing under the WARN Act. People on my group chat are mentioning it or actively talking about it. So I know that that is something that people are pursuing. I have not looked into this, as a contract employee, if my rights are still covered. I’m honestly not certain. So in the immediate term, I have to make sure that I can make my rent. I have to make sure that I can get food on the table. And so my immediate concern is just to apply for a bunch of jobs starting immediately.
