Every large company that handles IT as a cost-center has a host of zombie projects they believe are still well, but actually are understaffed/funded, and will eventually fail unexpectedly. When the failure is perceived, the usual decision is to start a rewrite, and have both an old, unmaintainable product and a recent product that isn't fully-featured yet.
> and can get away with far fewer employees
I can't tell whether Twitter was really overstaffed or not, but I don't agree with people who use "see, twitter.com is still stable now" as a proof that the company was overstaffed before layoff. For instance, the stability could have been earlier investment in reliability engineering paying off. Cutting features and reducing changes also improves stability, but that may not be a good thing in the long run.
Can the company get away with it? Possible.
Musk took a baby step in the direction of free speech, and immediately the order went out for major corporations to stage an advertising boycott.
Whatever this is in the direction of it certainly isn't a baby step.
Gimme a break...