Vice Shuts Down Virtual Meeting After Staffers Flood Call With Thumbs-Down Emoji: ‘Impossible To Ignore the Emojis’
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
A virtual Vice Media town hall had to be prematurely shut down on Wednesday after staffers flooded the meeting with thumbs-down emojis to protest the company’s mass layoffs.
The town hall “was ultimately scrapped after some laid-off employees invited to the virtual meeting inundated leadership with thumbs down emojis,” according to CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy, who reported on the incident in his Reliable Sources newsletter.
The emojis “became too much to ignore, flooding the screen for all to see” as Vice Media executive Cory Haik spoke, Darcy wrote.
After Vice Media Group CEO Bruce Dixon acknowledged in the meeting that it had become “impossible to ignore the emojis,” the town hall was quickly shut down.
In a statement to CNN, a Vice Media spokesperson said, “It is unfortunate that employees remaining with the organization who greatly want to contribute to its success were sabotaged by a few bad actors.”
The spokesperson added, “We understand that emotions are running high after such a significant change to the company and will continue to communicate. Our strategic vision moving forward is the right one for Vice.”
Last week – nearly a year after it was first reported that Vice would file for bankruptcy – the company announced it would be shutting down its news website and laying off hundreds of employees.
In a memo to staff, Dixon claimed it was “no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously” and announced that Vice would “fully transition to a studio model.”
“As part of this shift, we will no longer publish content on vice.com,” he revealed.
