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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

By nearly every measure Twitter is doing a lot worse than it was before those people were fired. It was growing in revenues and profit and since then has shrunk drastically in both measures.

Now one could reasonably argue that it wasn’t due to the firing. However, the burden of proof lies with the people claiming that the concurrent loss of revenue and profit had nothing to do with the firings.

And Twitter being a private company it’s unlikely anyone can ever get the data to support that claim. Further, Twitter’s unique nature as a vanity project for the owner makes even public statements bh thst owner highly suspect, since they have a vested interest in making this look like the right decision and disclosure laws don’t apply to private companies so he can basically lie and still be ok.

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People were claiming at the time that twitter would shutdown and close shop.

The people who said that had no idea what extent the Twitter tech team had gone to to build a robust application that wouldn't fall over. The fact it withstood 75% of the staff being removed is a testament to the good work they did, not a sign that they weren't needed in the first place.

>By nearly every measure Twitter is doing a lot worse than it was before those people were fired.

Care to share which measures are those you speak of?

From what I saw, Twitter's revenue went down only due to the post pandemic economic slump following the pandemic bubble, and due to advertisers leaving en-masse because Musk won't purge the platform of hate speech and other content that's non advertiser friendly, not due to the workers who got fired leaving.

> By nearly every measure Twitter is doing a lot worse

> And Twitter being a private company it’s unlikely anyone can ever get the data support that claim

So, only the data supporting your point of view is reliable?

> However, the burden of proof lies with the people claiming that the concurrent loss of revenue and profit had nothing to do with the firings.

No, if you want to establish correlation or causation, you have to prove it. Don't have access to the data to prove something? Sucks, but then you can't draw that conclusion, at least not definitively.

I can believe, though, that you're at least somewhat correct that the mass firings were responsible for Twitter's decline. But it's plausible that other things are also to blame, and possibly even primarily to blame: questionable product decisions made post-acquisition (Twitter Blue, lax moderation, requiring logins to view, ...), the volatility and offensiveness of the new owner causing advertisers to leave, etc.

From the 2019 annual report (one of the only years where Twitter posted any net profit):

> We have incurred significant operating losses in the past, and we may not be able to maintain profitability. Since our inception, we have incurred significant operating losses, and, as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $1.45 billion. Our revenue has grown from $664.9 million in 2013 to $3.04 billion in 2018. While we were profitable on a GAAP basis in 2018, we believe that our future revenue growth and our ability to maintain profitability will depend on, among other factors, our ability to attract new users, increase user engagement and ad engagement, increase our brand awareness, compete effectively, maximize our sales efforts, demonstrate a positive return on investment for advertisers, and successfully develop new products and services. *Accordingly, you should not rely on the revenue growth of any prior quarterly or annual period as an indication of our future performance.*

This is standard boilerplate that every public company puts in their official statements to pre-empt any shareholder lawsuits in case something goes wrong.

Imagine if a company told its investors: “Our growth is guaranteed! Nothing can affect our revenue and margins.” The only companies that give that kind of promises are ponzis (and to-the-moon cryptocurrency projects, which is not categorically too different).

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