Last week closed out with chaos on Twitter and at Twitter. The social media platform’s new owner Elon Musk terminated the positions of nearly half of Twitter’s workforce, which stood around seventy-five hundred employees until Friday at nine A.M. pacific. The bombastic billionaire left most of twitter’s internal teams gutted, just days before the midterm elections when misinformation and disinformation campaigns were expected to surge. Not to mention that we’re in the midst of a rise in anti-Semitism sparked by the dangerous nonsense of an asinine rapper and idiotic NBA player. Because of a billionaire, no one is safe at Twitter or on Twitter… and the end result will harm the people. From the start… It was crummy how Musk moved to kill Twitter from within. Sure, when he took control of the company in the close of last month, Musk was open about the fact that he’d be slashing much of the platform’s workforce. But how he did it was cowardly. Sending out an unsigned email on Thursday basically telling people they’d be locked out of their offices and would know if they still had a job by way of an email the next morning. How long of a night that must’ve been for more than three thousand employees, many of whom were devoted to Twitter, and were left wondering if they’d be employed during the holiday season. Not only did it appear that Musk failed to abide by state and federal laws ensuring advance notice of mass layoffs, but he also ignored any sense of decency. For several years, Twitter was among the highest ranked places to work in tech. I’m sure the place was far from perfect, but many people loved their teams and what they did each day. We know this because of the outpouring of sorrow from those who were unceremoniously dismissed on Friday. Musk is treating Twitter’s workforce like its disposable. He’s acting like a privileged playboy who never expected to have to make good on his forty-four billion dollar offer to buy a company that had been unprofitable for eight of the last 10 years. This was all a joke to Musk, but now it’s the people at Twitter who are facing the consequences. And they’re not alone… we’re suffering too. By we, I mean legitimate twitter users. The platform is becoming a dumpster fire for disinformation and misinformation. When Musk slashed the workforce, he gutted Twitter’s content monitoring teams… those who helped reduce the surge of lies and hate speech by suspending the accounts of users who violated the rules, making the app unsafe for many of us. Even before then, the mere presence Musk at the helm, conveyed to the bottom feeders out there that hate would be embraced on the platform. Usage of the N-word started skyrocketing. Political misinformation is making its way around with ease. Anti-Semitism is being uplifted. The standards users worked so hard to get Twitter to implement are now largely irrelevant. Without guardrails, we’re not safe on this app. Nor are we inclined to use it. That’s a huge hit for our democracy. Twitter was the hub for journalists and respected voices in academia, medicine, politics and other walks of life. It also was a place where people could speak out about their experiences with companies, employers, individuals. Twitter gave a megaphone to marginalized voices that otherwise may not have been heard or amplified by media. Now Twitter’s primed to be a pit of hateful takes and conspiracy theories… 4Chan with $8 verification badges. Musk didn’t just kill the town square but he dismissed those who threw their heart into Twitter and he diminished a place where people could go to learn and be heard. For the sake of democracy, Billionaires shouldn’t be able to buy social media platforms.