Stocks in Twitter, Inc. dived in trading Monday following confirmation that the company has “lost” five key executives in the latest sign of trouble for the declining social platform provider.

Rumors of the purge at Twitter first emerged Sunday, resulting in a post from Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey confirming the changes.

Included in the list provided by Dorsey are Katie Jacobs Stanton, Twitter’s Vice President of global media; Kevin Weil, Senior Vice President of Product; Alex Roetter, Senior Vice President of Engineering, and Brian “Skip” Schipper, Twitter’s Vice President of Human Resources.

Vine General Manager Jason Toff confirmed separately on Twitter that he was also leaving the company and had accepted a position with Google, Inc.’s virtual reality unit.

Not included on the list was Twitter’s Vice President of Global Business Development Jana Messerschmidt, who was originally rumored to be leaving the company as well.

Dorsey said he was forced to write about the departures after “inaccurate press rumors” and that the executives were leaving of their own volition.

“I’m addressing this now: I’m sad to announce that Alex Roetter, Skip Schipper, Katie Stanton and Kevin Weil have chosen to leave the company. Alex and Kevin, both here over five years, scaled the ads product and engineering teams from producing near-zero revenue to the over $2bn run rate it is today,” before adding that Stanton was instrumental in growing Twitter’s global team, including international offices in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Japan.

“All four will be taking some well-deserved time off. I’m personally grateful to each of them for everything they’ve contributed to Twitter and our purpose in the world. They are phenomenal people!”

Word plays

The one thing of note in Dorsey’s statement is his choice of words, specifically that all those departing have “chosen to leave the company.”

What it doesn’t address as to whether they were either encouraged to do so, or were given the options of leaving or having their positions terminated; in both cases it is true that they would have chosen to leave Twitter, but it’s a word play as incentivized or threatened, ultimately they would have had little other choice.

You don’t lose four key executives and the General Manager of Vine because they all woke up one morning and simultaneously decided by themselves to leave Twitter all at the exact same.

While it’s clear that Dorsey is trying to bring in a new team to reinvigorate the company, the move none the less reconfirms the dire state Twitter is already in to begin with, and a management shakeup this large can only destabilize it in the short term.

Twitter stock settled after trading as low as $16.51 during the day to close at $17.02 per share, down 4.6 percent from its Friday closing price.

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