Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter Inc., suggested on Thursday that the social media site could go bankrupt. This came at the end of a crazy day that included a warning from a U.S. privacy regulator and the departure of the company’s leader for trust and safety.
Bloomberg News said that the billionaire said on his first call with all of the employees that he couldn’t rule out bankruptcy. This was two weeks after he bought Twitter for $44 billion, a deal that credit experts say has put Twitter’s finances in a bad place.
Related: A few days after taking over Twitter, Musk sold Tesla shares worth $3.95 billion.
Earlier in the day, Musk sent out his first company-wide email. In it, he warned that Twitter wouldn’t be able to “survive the coming economic downturn” if it didn’t get more money from subscriptions to make up for less money from ads, according to three people who saw the message and gave it to Reuters.
Two people with knowledge of the situation told Reuters that Yoel Roth quit on Thursday. He was in charge of how Twitter dealt with hate speech, false information, and spam on the site.
On Thursday, Roth wrote on his Twitter profile that he used to be the “Former Head of Trust and Safety” at the company.
Roth did not answer when asked for a comment. Bloomberg and the tech site Platformer were the first to report on his departure.
Lea Kissner, who was in charge of Twitter’s security, tweeted earlier on Thursday that she was leaving.
According to a message posted Thursday by an attorney on Twitter’s privacy team to the company’s Slack messaging system and seen by Reuters, Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty also quit.
A person who saw the message said that the company’s top ad sales executive, Robin Wheeler, told employees in a memo that she was staying with the company, which was different from what the media had said before, which was that she, too, was leaving.
Wheeler tweeted late Thursday, “I’m still here.”
After the three privacy and compliance officers quit, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it was keeping a close eye on Twitter out of “deep concern.” Because of these resignations, Twitter could be in danger of breaking the rules.
In an email sent to some employees late on Thursday, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, said that Twitter would continue to follow the rules.
“We talked to the FTC about our ongoing responsibilities and have a good, ongoing conversation,” Spiro wrote.
He said that the orders could only be used against Twitter and not against any of its employees.
“I know that some Twitter employees who don’t even work on the FTC issue have said that they could go to jail if we didn’t comply, but that’s not how this works,” he wrote.
The information said that Musk’s first meeting with many Twitter employees was on Thursday afternoon. During the meeting, he warned that the company could lose billions of dollars next year.
Musk also told workers in the email that they would no longer be able to work from home and that they would have to spend at least 40 hours a week at the office.
When asked about a possible bankruptcy, the FTC warning, or the departures, Twitter, Musk, and Spiro did not answer.
After taking over on October 27, Musk moved quickly to clean house. He has said that the company was losing more than $4 million a day, mostly because advertisers left after he took over.
After the deal, Twitter owes $13 billion and will have to pay close to $1.2 billion in interest over the next year. The payments are more than Twitter’s cash flow, which was reported to be $1.1 billion at the end of June.
Musk has started charging $8 a month for the Twitter Blue service, which will include blue check verification.
WARNING
The FTC’s director of public affairs, Douglas Farrar, told Reuters, “We are very worried about what’s going on at Twitter right now.”
“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies have to follow our consent decrees. “Our revised consent order gives us new ways to make sure people follow the rules, and we’re ready to use them,” Farrar said.
In May, Twitter agreed to pay $150 million to settle claims by the FTC that it used private information, like phone numbers, to target ads to users even though it told them the information was only collected for security reasons.
Thursday, Twitter’s privacy lawyer wrote in an internal memo that Spiro said Musk was willing to take “a huge amount of risk” with the company. “Elon sends rockets into space and doesn’t care about the FTC,” the lawyer said, according to Spiro.
Related: Talk in the crypto community Should Twitter use Bitcoin or XRP?
People are worried that countries that want to control what people say online could put pressure on Musk because he often gets involved in political debates.
It made U.S. President Joe Biden say on Wednesday that Musk’s “cooperation and/or technical relationships” with other countries are worth looking into.
not comfortable for advertisers.
Musk told advertisers on Twitter’s Spaces on Wednesday that he wanted to make the site a source of truth and stop fake accounts.
His words of comfort might not be enough.
Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) said on Thursday that it had removed its paid and owned content from Twitter “while we learn more about where the platform is going under its new leadership.”
It stopped advertising on Twitter along with other brands like General Motors (NYSE:GM) because they were worried that Musk would make it easier for people to post inappropriate content.