Musk shuts Brussels office, EU regulators raise eyebrows

SAN FRANCISCO: Elon Musk-owned Twitter has shut down its office in Brussels in the European Union (EU), a move that has not gone well with the local regulators.

As per a media report, the Brussels office was focused on the European Union digital policy, working in close proximity with the European Commission. The last two remaining Twitter public policy staffers, Julia Mozer and Dario La Nasa quit Twitter last week, “resulting in the Brussels office being entirely disbanded”.

Last week, another Brussels-based Twitter staffer Stephen Turner was among those laid off by Elon Musk.

“After 6 years I have officially retired from Twitter. From starting the office in Brussels to building an awesome team, it has been an amazing ride,” Turner tweeted.

The move to shut the Brussels office could be a major strategic blunder by Musk.

The EU has given indication that it could appoint itself as overseer of Twitter’s compliance with the incoming Digital Services Act (DSA).

The Brussels-based European Commission will soon begin overseeing regulation of large internet and social media platforms under the DSA.

Musk still firing coders at Twitter amid Thanksgiving feasts

Musk is still in the firing mode at Twitter amid the Thanksgiving festivities, as several coders who were brought back after a massive lay off as part of “knowledge transition”, are being shown the door again in the name of “code review”.

Ikuhiro Ihara, a highly-respected Twitter coder who made the transition from 140-character to 280-character happen, has been fired unceremoniously.“One of the people fired Musk’s latest purge was Ikuhiro Ihara, a highly-respected senior software engineer who helped lead the push to expand tweets to 280 characters,” tweeted Casey Newton of Platformer. “Ihara fought relentlessly for 280 in the face of strong scepticism from top executives. He co-authored the blog post explaining the value of 280 characters when it launched,” Newton said.

Tech writer Gergely Orosz said that the night before Thanksgiving, Twitter fired more software engineers effective immediately because their “code is not satisfactory” following the recent code review.

“Dozens of other developers for performance warnings in their inboxes,” Orosz tweeted.

Twitter ‘Verified’ next week, all accounts to be manually authenticated, says CEO

Musk on Friday said Twitter will tentatively relaunch ‘Verified’ service on Friday next week and all verified accounts will be “manually authenticated before check activates”.

The new Twitter owner had earlier paused its $8 Blue subscription service with verification after it faced chaos on the platform as fake accounts with blue badge impersonated real accounts after paying $8, saying it will relaunch it from November 29 - this time more “rock solid”.

“Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week,” said Musk.

“Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary,” he added.

Musk said all verified individual humans will have the same blue check, as the boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective.

“Individuals can have a secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org. Longer explanation next week,” said the world’s richest man.

Musk also said ‘incitement to violence will result in account suspension”.