A CEO deactivated her Instagram after facing immense backlash for announcing she 'restructured' her social media team, forcing other employees to contribute to those roles

• The CEO of a clothing startup drew ire after saying she "restructured" her social media team.
• Many people assumed she laid off the team, but a spokesperson said no one was fired — the roles are being redistributed.

The CEO of an activewear clothing startup deactivated her social media account after facing immense backlash for announcing she "restructured" her social media team, essentially eliminating it. Instead, every employee in a "creative role" would be tasked to contribute to the company's social media marketing, a spokesperson told Insider.

The announcement from Lindsay Carter, the founder and CEO of activewear company SET, drew immediate outcry this week, as people assumed she had laid off her entire social media team. SET told Insider that no one was fired. But the backlash forced Carter to deactivate her own social media "to protect her mental health," the company said.

In the original, now-deleted TikTok that sparked the scandal, Carter told viewers she was restructuring the social media team by getting rid of it.

"We did something internally called Super SET. It is with 12 creatives at SET that make up all the creative stuff that we do," Carter said. "We cover all silos of creative: social, marketing, TikTok."

On Monday, the TikTok was re-shared to Twitter, where it received a flood of criticism because either people assumed she laid off those workers or are forcing people to do more work for equal pay.

"Not the marketing spin of we 'restructured' our team aka we laid people off who were trained and are consolidating to save money and making other marketing folk with specialties now have a bigger work load without more pay or training which won't pan out well or with real profit," one person tweeted.

User @milkkarten shared a screenshot from Carter's Instagram Story explaining her decision further. Carter said "the landscape for the social media role has changed drastically" over the last few years while "the roles for a social team aren't really evolving," and that the new program was working smoothly through its first few weeks.

When reached, Gina Sheldon, the Brand Strategist for SET, told Insider that "no members of [its] social media team were laid off." The company is making social media a "collaborative" effort among 10 of its employees, they said.

"As a team, we decided that the best way for our company to handle our socials would be to work collaboratively among the 10 employees in creative roles, including Lindsey, to bring our brand to life holistically across all marketing channels," Sheldon said in an email statement.

Beyond perhaps misunderstanding the news, many people online were angry that Carter was off-loading extra work on her employees.

"Literally making a reality of the nightmare that everyone in social deals with regularly. Everyone in marketing or brand think they know how to do social's job better than SMMs [Social Media Marketers]," one Twitter user wrote. "Her brand and creative teams get to do a whole ass other job one day a week. And are forced to do a week content in a single day that can't possibly be timely!"

Amid the backlash, Carter temporarily deactivated her personal Instagram account, which has over 31,000 followers. Her account has been reactivated as of Thursday, with comments limited.

Sheldon told Insider that Carter took her account down for a few hours to protect her mental health. "She is openly on medication for her diagnosed Generalized Anxiety and Depression disorder," she said of her CEO.

On the brand's Instagram account, some comments on its most recent posts have also been limited or deleted.

Insider has reached out to Carter for comment.