Hours after Twitter shareholders accepted a 44 billion dollar bid from Elon Musk, the microblogging platform has locked changes to its source code, reported Bloomberg. Citing sources, the publication reported that the decision was taken to prevent disgruntled Twitter employees from making unauthorised changes to the platform.
“Twitter imposed the temporary ban to keep employees who may be miffed about the deal from “going rogue,” according to one of the people…Many of the company’s employees have been agitated about the idea of Musk taking charge and what changes may come,” the report added.
Temporarily, Twitter will not allow updates to the platform unless they are ‘business-critical.’ All such changes will require the approval of the Vice-President of the company. It must be mentioned that Twitter was a publicly held company that has now turned private, following the acquisition by Musk.
Political activist Jack Posobiec had shared testimonies of Twitter employees, expressing their anger for turning Twitter Inc. private. These included claims of ‘Elon being a troll and ignorant of Twitter policies’, and ‘inability to monitor toxicity on the platform.’
Twitter employees are having breakdowns pic.twitter.com/xIPcty2x6z
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 25, 2022
Popular handler Disclose.tv, has claimed that employees of the micro-blogging platform added an empty public repository titled ‘the-algorithm’ on Github before the temporary cessation of updates to the platform.
“For non-techies: It seems that some developers at Twitter wanted to send a message to Elon Musk by uploading this empty software repository,” it added.
MORE – For non-techies: It seems that some developers at Twitter wanted to send a message to Elon Musk by uploading this empty software repository.
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) April 25, 2022
However, this is not the first time that the company has locked updates to its source code. Earlier, it was done before key events such as the Super Bowl to prevent ‘mistakes from appearing and ensure continuity.’
Elon Musk takes over Twitter Inc.
Elon Musk, who was already the largest individual shareholder of Twitter holding 9.2% of the company, had earlier stated that he had no faith in the current management and couldn’t fulfil Twitter’s true potential under them. He aimed to make the company private so that he could have full control over it and could direct Twitter to fulfil its full potential.
Twitter’s board had tried its best to resist Elon Musk’s takeover bid, including trying to trigger the poison pill strategy. However, the price Musk offered coupled with the mood of the majority of Twitter shareholders eventually forced the Twitter board’s hand.
Elon Musk, who is already the CEO of electric vehicle giant Tesla and SpaceX, co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI as well as the founder of The Boring Company, is now the owner of the social media giant Twitter.
