One of the biggest shock events in the history of digital communications took place in April of 2022 when Elon Musk followed through on his promise to purchase Twitter (now known as X). The buyout took place amid the chaos of covid hype and in the middle of a full spectrum mass censorship campaign organized by Big Tech companies and multiple government agencies and officials.
In early 2022, it was nearly impossible to make statements regarding certain hot button issues; any information contrary to the establishment narrative about covid vaccines, gender ideology, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the war in Ukraine, or the events of January 6th were treated as radioactive. Tens of thousands of people lost their social media accounts merely for reprinting the facts.
Musk reactivated many of these accounts (including Zero Hedge’s account) after taking control of the company, and then targeted the root of the censorship regime: The far-left management as well as the incredible number of activist moderators employed by the website to monitor and silence dissent.
Not surprisingly, this action triggered a mob of journalists as well as government bureaucrats who threatened investigations into Musk’s takeover while entertaining the possibility of shutting the company down completely. The government’s collusion with Big Tech to violate the 1st Amendment rights of Americans was exposed and leftists lost one of their biggest online echo chambers. Their veritable monopoly was broken. Musk also proved that Twitter was a bloated farce after firing over 80% of Twitter staff (more than 6000 people), only for the platform to function just fine without them.
The woke regime was not done posturing yet, though. In November of 2022 San Francisco Mayor London Breed attempted to stick it to Musk when she announced that the city would offer 4800 vacant positions to the fired “Tweeps” (Twitter employees).
It’s not surprising that the city government believed thousands of activist managers and censors would find easy homes within the local bureaucracy, but the purpose of the Mayor’s offer was more likely to send a message. What was the message? That leftists will be protected from the consequences of their decisions and behavior. If they are ever made to reap the whirlwind, the hive will respond and ensure that they fail upwards; that they are granted more favors and more benefits to offset what few punishments they might endure.
It’s the ever present reward for fealty to the leftist cause; no failure is left behind. At least, in theory…
Breed had recently attacked Musk in a Bloomberg interview as “the person who got a ton of tax breaks in California and decided to take that money and run,” after he moved Tesla out of California and set up shop in Texas. Her hostility to the mogul’s business efforts was no secret.
Riding the wave of anti-Musk sentiment in CA might have seemed valuable at the time and giving reassurance to activists that no one would really suffer consequences made the woke movement feel at ease, but following through on bold claims is not something leftists are known for.
As it turned out, the mass job offer for fired Tweeps was nothing more than a virtue signal.
It’s been over a year since the San Francisco Mayor claimed that the city could use 4800 tech workers in civic roles, yet, only 16 people have been hired by the city so far for those positions. It is unknown if any of these people actually worked at Twitter previously.
Most critics suggest that the city’s notoriously slow hiring process is to blame for the tiny hiring pool, with many people waiting up to 260 days after the application process to find out if they have a position.
Then there is the issue of spoiled and delusional tech workers. The city noted when making the offer that they could not compete with the lavish perks Big Tech companies were famous for (no more smoothie bars, yoga rooms and two hours of actual work per day). Working for mother government would be a step down in terms of image and prestige, turning many Tweeps off to the opportunity.
Then again, many Twitter employees might have discovered they were completely unqualified for any work outside of the cushy Big Tech sphere. What skill sets do these people have beyond the very narrow requirements of a social media conglomerate?
In any case, San Francisco’s attempt to white knight for overpaid Twitter execs and commissars ended up a miserable mess and they are still struggling to fill thousands of empty city positions. Surely, some of these people ended up at other tech companies, but with so many web based corporations also instituting extensive job cuts it would seem Elon Musk was simply ahead of the curve when it came to trimming the fat that’s clogging the arteries of the social media landscape.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 12/31/2023 – 08:45
