Why Musk Is A Concern

We all are aware of the whole Twitter drama that has been ensuing for some time now. If you don't, you can read @CyberCrypto article to be informed. A look at the whole Twitter deal situation, as it would be with any other big firm, will show that a lot more people stand to be affected by this situation. If you think I'm talking about the millions of Twitter users, you're wrong; not that they aren't important, but they will always find an alternative if it comes to it. There are a whole lot of concerns or potential concerns that have nothing to do with the users, but other stakeholders such as advertisers, shareholders, management, staff etc. 

Why Should Staff Members Be Concerned??

In today's labour market, job security is becoming a very rare commodity. This situation is more acute in low and middle-income countries, where the labour market is well saturated and labour is unreasonably cheap. Lots of jobs that seemingly offered security, turned out to be false during the pandemic. This is not to mention the fact that AI is increasingly replacing humans at a very fast pace in different industries and workplaces. In uncertain times like these, the thing workers most desire is job security. Why should this matter to twitter's staff??

To answer that question, we need to establish the persona of the man called Musk. Mr Musk is a man who likes attention and constantly wants to be in the news. The only way to do that in this age of information overload is to be constantly unpredictable, unstable, disruptive and controversial. Anyone or a combination of those will do, although a combination will work better. This persona far contrasts that of Twitter's current CEO, who's more pragmatic and rather refines the way things are done than unsettle everything. 

It matters to twitter's employees in several ways. If the current CEO were to carry out a change in Twitter's workforce, it will be done in such a slow meticulous way that wouldn't leave anyone uncertain about their future, but can we say the same for Musk? An unpredictable, attention seeker like must could just wake up one day and decide to lay off 25% of Twitter's workforce for no good reason, just to be in the news. 

Another reason why staff should be worried is that Mr Musk is an aggressively profit-seeking businessman and to him, business and profit come first before workers' welfare/satisfaction. His desire for profit could see him want to reduce operating costs by reducing workers' overall benefits, especially in low and middle-income countries where sadly most of its workforce in the form of moderators are based. 

Last but not necessarily least, Mr Musk is someone whose thoughts are more inclined towards the future. He's also tech-savvy and technophilic. This could effectively mean that with the advancement in AI technology, some current jobs in Twitter's workspace will probably be removed in favour of AI. As long as it's more efficient and productive, a man like Musk wouldn't mind replacing the whole Twitter workforce with bots and AIs.

Conclusion

These are some of my thoughts on the matter, and as such are just speculations, but if what we know of Musk from his public persona is to be relied on, I doubt it would remain speculations for long.

Thanks for reading…