5 ms·

> Twitter reportedly no longer has a communications department to relay information to the media. Doesn’t look good.

by bluepoint 4y ago

thatguy0900 4y ago
Musk got rid of teslas a long time ago, seems par for the course for him
JohnTHaller 4y ago
Not sure if they have legal, compliance, or privacy at this point either.
- cpeterso 4y ago
  Or a payroll department. Good luck retaining any remaining employees if you can't pay them. And good luck hiring new payroll employees who will want to deal with the inevitable lawsuits in multiple countries about the firings, layoffs, and unpaid severance.
memish 4y ago
Why is that not good? Twitter can communicate to people directly without the media middleman.
- apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
  They previously had a team whose sole job was to respond to requests like this. If they no longer exist and the company relies solely on Musk being interested enough to respond, media outlets will never get a response before the article runs. It's bad for Twitter, bad for the article, bad for the readers. Even if it's just PR speak, it's still a response that can be analyzed by the other two parties in the story (the author and the reader).
- jcranmer 4y ago
  The primary purpose of communications departments is to coordinate a uniform corporate messaging. Particularly when there's a negative story coming out, the communications department is going to be the one trying to explain away the negativity, and is likely to be more competent at talking its way out of situation than an individual is likely to be (see also the former CEO of FTX, who has more or less been confessing to fraud online in trying to explain his way out of the situation). Given that a social media company is almost invariably going to be caught in complicated negative stories like "$PLATFORM was found being used to coordinate genocide against Rohingyas in Myanmar" or "$TERRORIST posted manifesto on $PLATFORM before $TERRORIST_EVENT", not having anyone available to officially comment on those kinds of stories is... not a good idea. Even worse would be if you decide to let a shitposter be the point man...
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  The "media middlemen" still are writing their articles. With a working communications department, you get ahead info on articles (maybe not all details from the article, but a heads up) and a chance to incluence the articles by providing input to the author. Without a communication department article authors rely stronger on other sources.
- bastawhiz 4y ago
  > Twitter can communicate to people directly But they're not, which is why this information is being reported by the media. And the media has questions which Twitter hasn't addressed, and those questions are going unanswered because Twitter no longer employs the people that answer those questions. Moreover, the "media middlemen" that you're describing are also looking at this from the perspective of the Twitter employees (and former employees). Do you really expect Twitter (the nebulous entity which communicates directly to people, as you imply) to reflect accurately on what their employees have to say? Of course not. If it was up to Twitter, none of this would be reported on and the public would be no wiser. These journalists are reporting information that wouldn't be reported otherwise; they _obviously_ add value beyond being middlemen, because there seems to be nobody to be a middleman _for_.
- cr1895 4y ago
  >Twitter can communicate to people directly Who is Twitter?
- epistasis 4y ago
  Lol, who is doing the communicating? I haven't met a single defender of Musk that has the slightest inkling of business or tech, and this is a great example. You want to have random engineers talking to the press through their Twitter accounts? Sounds great! Especially if there's no way to tell who actually even works at Twitter because verification is now purchased for a tiny amount of money, rather than reflecting any sort of trust based verification.
  - memish 4y ago
    "I have people skills, I communicate to the customers!"
grogenaut 4y ago
It feels like a narrator tag at the end of a scene "they weren't"

> Twitter reportedly no longer has a communications department to relay information to the media. Doesn’t look good.

thatguy0900 4y ago

Musk got rid of teslas a long time ago, seems par for the course for him

JohnTHaller 4y ago

Not sure if they have legal, compliance, or privacy at this point either.

cpeterso 4y ago
Or a payroll department. Good luck retaining any remaining employees if you can't pay them. And good luck hiring new payroll employees who will want to deal with the inevitable lawsuits in multiple countries about the firings, layoffs, and unpaid severance.

memish 4y ago

Why is that not good? Twitter can communicate to people directly without the media middleman.

apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
They previously had a team whose sole job was to respond to requests like this. If they no longer exist and the company relies solely on Musk being interested enough to respond, media outlets will never get a response before the article runs. It's bad for Twitter, bad for the article, bad for the readers. Even if it's just PR speak, it's still a response that can be analyzed by the other two parties in the story (the author and the reader).
jcranmer 4y ago
The primary purpose of communications departments is to coordinate a uniform corporate messaging. Particularly when there's a negative story coming out, the communications department is going to be the one trying to explain away the negativity, and is likely to be more competent at talking its way out of situation than an individual is likely to be (see also the former CEO of FTX, who has more or less been confessing to fraud online in trying to explain his way out of the situation). Given that a social media company is almost invariably going to be caught in complicated negative stories like "$PLATFORM was found being used to coordinate genocide against Rohingyas in Myanmar" or "$TERRORIST posted manifesto on $PLATFORM before $TERRORIST_EVENT", not having anyone available to officially comment on those kinds of stories is... not a good idea. Even worse would be if you decide to let a shitposter be the point man...
johannes1234321 4y ago
The "media middlemen" still are writing their articles. With a working communications department, you get ahead info on articles (maybe not all details from the article, but a heads up) and a chance to incluence the articles by providing input to the author. Without a communication department article authors rely stronger on other sources.
bastawhiz 4y ago
> Twitter can communicate to people directly But they're not, which is why this information is being reported by the media. And the media has questions which Twitter hasn't addressed, and those questions are going unanswered because Twitter no longer employs the people that answer those questions. Moreover, the "media middlemen" that you're describing are also looking at this from the perspective of the Twitter employees (and former employees). Do you really expect Twitter (the nebulous entity which communicates directly to people, as you imply) to reflect accurately on what their employees have to say? Of course not. If it was up to Twitter, none of this would be reported on and the public would be no wiser. These journalists are reporting information that wouldn't be reported otherwise; they _obviously_ add value beyond being middlemen, because there seems to be nobody to be a middleman _for_.
cr1895 4y ago
>Twitter can communicate to people directly Who is Twitter?
epistasis 4y ago
Lol, who is doing the communicating? I haven't met a single defender of Musk that has the slightest inkling of business or tech, and this is a great example. You want to have random engineers talking to the press through their Twitter accounts? Sounds great! Especially if there's no way to tell who actually even works at Twitter because verification is now purchased for a tiny amount of money, rather than reflecting any sort of trust based verification.
- memish 4y ago
  "I have people skills, I communicate to the customers!"

grogenaut 4y ago

It feels like a narrator tag at the end of a scene "they weren't"