“Chaotic”, “improvised” and “brutal”, the purge at Twitter seen from the inside

The fate of the “tweeps”, the nickname given to Twitter employees, was already sealed. The brand new boss of the blue bird social network, Elon Musk, launched his massive layoff plan on Friday in a bid to clean up the company’s finances. The ax quickly fell, and within hours the platform lost half of its workforce in a wave of layoffs rarely seen. On condition of anonymity, three current and past employees of the California headquarters have agreed to tell us the unbelievable behind-the-scenes of what amounts to a purge.