Firing 75% of the staff works as cost cutting but is very short-sighted. Acting like an attention-starved “fellow kids!!” edgelord and ruining the Verified program wasn’t cost cutting. And then, his edgelordness led to losing 60-70% of ad revenue, which surely nullified any legitimate cost cutting attempts.
There was a method behind these things, which are the exception I mentioned. He removed the moderation staff, because he wanted to encourage Nazi content on the platform, and moderators are bad for that. The paid verified program meant that only fans of him and Nazis would pay money and thus be verified, so he could legitimately amplify their voice on the platform.
The problem he ran into is that advertisers don’t like their ads next to Nazi propaganda, so now revenue is down.
