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Between dismissals and controversies on Twitter, users fear for the future of the platform

On Thursday night, following another exodus of employees from Twitter, outage detection website Down Detector showed an increase in the number of users reporting problems accessing the social media platform.

A graph of the sharp increase in outage reports was shared by some users on Twitter, appearing to validate a growing fear that the site would struggle to stay online with fewer staff. But that wasn’t exactly the case yet.

In fact, Twitter didn’t seem to be facing an outage, but the Down Detector was automatically logging hundreds of tweets from users wondering if the site might “go down” or if the company was “shutting down.”

The apparent confusion highlighted a very real anxiety about the imminent demise of Twitter, just weeks after it was acquired by the richest man in the world.

After new owner Elon Musk demanded that Twitter employees agree to work “extremely hard” or leave the company, many opted for the latter option, with one former executive referring to the departures as a “mass exodus”. .

“They will fight just to keep the lights on,” added the former executive, who recently left the company.

While users digested the news late Thursday and early Friday, the social network had the air of the last day of high school. People on the platform mulled over whether to send their final tweets if Musk and his remaining team struggled to keep it going.

This week’s departures come after Musk already laid off about 3,700 Twitter employees, or roughly half of the staff, earlier this month.

Several Twitter users have suggested that any followers who have a secret crush on them should come forward, in case the platform goes down for good. Others posted links to follow them on alternative platforms.

Former employees held “therapy” on Twitter spaces to discuss better times working for the platform before Musk’s takeover catapulted it into chaos, and what they plan to do now that they’re gone.

The social media owner posted a meme appearing to mock the fact that people were discussing the death of Twitter on the platform itself. He also said in a separate tweet that “the best people will stay, so I’m not too worried.”

However, users have reported glitches with the platform in recent days, including issues with two-factor authentication and an apparent test page that surfaced live in its trending section on Thursday. As of Friday morning, an element of the feature that allows users to download their data from the site appeared not to be working.

Twitter, which has largely cut its public relations team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As of Friday morning, the platform remains operational and will almost certainly not face an immediate death. But Thursday’s departures – which included top infrastructure engineers as well as key roles in finance, user security and other areas of the business, according to employee tweets – raise legitimate questions about the social network’s ability to continue running without service interruptions.

The uncertainty also comes at a particularly bad time for Twitter: The World Cup, which tends to be one of the busiest times for global usage of the platform, is set to kick off on Sunday.

Source: CNN Brasil

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