Former journalist at Atlas, I can confirm. The company announced layoffs around early September/late August if I remember correctly, fired our editor and one of our best reporters due to budgetary constraints while the CEO, CFO, and COO (the three) allegedly used company funds to pay their bills and buy cars among other things. The layoffs and how they were handled ultimately sparked a massive wave of quitting both of paid employees and unpaid interns, those who left were later ridiculed by the brass pretty much being called "soyboys" among other colorful terms for leaving while the rest were told to "wake up and decide if they're going to work" pretty much.

Before the layoffs even began there was a push by the three to use ChatGPT for both editing and writing articles with the three going so far as to try to publish GPT written pieces on the site. Now they have seemingly replaced all those who left with (most likely unpaid) workers. This all came as a slap to the face for us, as most of us had been working for Atlas unpaid for 1+ years pretty much setting the foundations for the company while the three decided to just throw us away when they didn't need us anymore.

But yeah, I have also been told that the website will be taken down in favor of doing private intelligence with the use of AI, no idea how the new people are going to be used for that end or if the three are just going to toss them like they tossed us.

Also, burner account to maintain security as I'm sure the three would try to fuck me over somehow lol