Since the completion of Elon Musk’s long-awaited takeover of Twitter in late October, the social media platform has gone through internal turmoil and now faces serious questions about its future. Mere days after the buyout, Musk instructed members of Twitter’s human resources team to prepare for mass layoffs. On Nov. 4, the layoffs were announced, and Musk planned to cut about half of the site’s workforce. The chaotic rollout of a paid verification service known as “Twitter Blue,” which offered any user the opportunity to pay $8 for a blue check, led to further internal confusion and the widespread creation of parody accounts. Although offering paid verification did lead to some amusing uses of these parody accounts — such as one user who impersonated the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company and tweeted that “insulin was free” — allowing anyone to acquire verification poses obvious problems of potentially widespread misinformation. Musk has now warned that the possibility of bankruptcy is not out of the question. Musk’s purchase of Twitter has put thousands of its employees at risk and is actively doing damage to a platform that has become a global town square.

The fallout for Twitter employees after Musk took over was swift and devastating. The day after Musk completed his acquisition, he invited Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, and Ned Segal, its chief financial officer, into his office. Shortly after the meeting, both Agrawal and Segal received emails informing them they had been fired without any clear explanation. Twitter’s general counsel and top policy and legal executives were also fired. Although one can certainly take issues with the way Twitter’s top executives have historically run the platform, firing those who are experienced at dealing with the numerous problems that can arise from managing a massive site such as Twitter is a foolish policy. Furthermore, it has subsequently become abundantly clear that Musk’s handling of key issues facing the company has been worse than that of the executives he replaced. Many of the advisors Musk has brought with him have come from his previous ventures and do not have the specialization necessary to adequately replace the highly important people who have already been let go.

For lower-level employees, confusion reigned as it was initially unclear who had been fired and who had not. Employees had their work emails shut off on Nov. 4, but were still able to access their Slack accounts and did not receive any official word about layoffs. Some employees learned they had been let go in the middle of the night. The cuts were widespread across numerous departments of the company, including the divisions which control content moderation and advertising, two critical components of Twitter. Sandra Sucher, a Harvard University professor who has studied layoffs for over a decade, called Twitter’s cuts a “masterclass in how not to do it.” The massive scale of the layoffs has obviously created unenviable situations for those who were unexpectedly let go, so many former employees went to Twitter to voice their frustrations with the slapdash nature of the cuts. The cuts have also gutted other key divisions, such as information technology, and have had an obvious negative impact on Twitter’s functionality.

The chaotic rollout and rollback of Twitter Blue further exposed Musk’s incompetence as the new head of Twitter. Initially, Musk stated that any account that did not clearly label itself as a parody would face permanent suspension. Then, Twitter announced it would attach an “official” label to certain accounts after a widespread proliferation of verified parody accounts. It is unclear exactly why Musk did not anticipate the potential downsides of making verification available to anyone with $8 to spare. He also made the questionable decision to roll out the program during the same week as midterm elections were taking place, increasing the already high chance of misinformation spreading rapidly throughout Twitter. In a test of how easy it was to impersonate a politician, a Washington Post reporter was able to create an account impersonating Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in a matter of minutes. One of the driving factors beyond the launch of Twitter Blue was Musk’s hope that the service would bring in more money for Twitter, but that has not been the case so far as a relatively small percentage of users have signed up for the service. The rollout has clearly been a failure on all counts, no matter how many tweets Musk sends out stating the opposite.

It is unclear where Twitter and Musk can go from here. Due to Musk’s chaotic time in charge, many users are moving to other platforms, such as Mastodon. Twitter’s functionality has worsened as a result of the mass layoffs, and the firm is rapidly losing money. Half of Twitter’s employees were let go with little warning and in an extremely unorganized fashion. So although “comedy is now legal on Twitter,” the platform is in bad shape with few signs anything will improve. If Musk wishes to turn any sort of profit from his investment in Twitter, it will most likely require him to backtrack or fix several of the changes he has implemented so far.

Theodore Brita is a junior majoring in political science.