On October 28th, Musk closed the long-awaited deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion. The takeover itself and the month following the deal’s completion haven’t exactly been seamless. Between lawsuits, mass firings, impersonations, corporations pulling their advertising spend, celebrities and brands leaving the platform and public figures previously banned from the platform being reinstated.
What has been happening at Elon’s “Twitter 2.0”? and what are his long-term plans for the social media platform?
One of the first things Musk was, and still is, determined to introduce is “Twitter Blue” subscription service. The service charges users $7.99 a month for a multitude of different features, but most notably the ability to have a blue checkmark verifying their account.
On November 4th just one week after closing the takeover deal, Musk introduced this new feature, which quickly backfired and resulted in him having to suspend it until further notice.
The following Two days saw an influx of Twitter users taking advantage of this feature. The only issue was many of them were using the feature to impersonate official accounts such as Nintendo, Tesla and in one case, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. They used their verification to spread false information or tweets that could be deemed as offensive such as Mario displaying an offensive hand gesture, or that insulin from Eli Lilly would be made free, causing the company’s stock price to drop.
In addition to the impersonation of official businesses and public figures, Richard Spencer along with almost a dozen other extremist accounts received a blue check mark. In 2017 Spencer was found guilty of engaging in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence related to the Charlottesville Rally.
All this managed to take place over the course of two days, forcing Musk to put Twitter Blue on hold and remove the blue check marks from the accounts that managed to become verified through the service. Musk has since tweeted that the service will be back on November 29th, but we are yet to see what changes will be made.
Musk’s takeover has been met with trepidation from brands, celebrities, and advertisers. Some brands and celebrities have voiced their concerns when it comes to Musk’s plans for company-wide firings and his concentration on free speech leading to a looser moderation of content on the platform. These changes make it easier for users to spread hate speech and misinformation which many companies and celebrities don’t want to be associated with.
Celebrities such as Gigi Hadid have deleted their profiles on the platform following Musk’s takeover. In support of a former Twitter employee’s tweet (shown below), Gigi stated on Instagram that the platform was, “becoming more and more of a cesspool of hate & bigotry." And that the platform “does more harm than good.”
(Screenshot, Shannon Raj Singh’s Twitter account)
Shonda Rhymes (Grey's Anatomy creator) made her final tweet, "Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye," just two days after Musk closed the deal.
Musk’s takeover and loosening of content restrictions have resulted in large corporations such as Dyson and General Motors ending their advertising spending on the platform.
Musk responded to the companies who have halted their advertising and threatened those who may be thinking of doing so with a “thermonuclear name and shame”. So far, we are yet to see Musk follow through on this threat, but it is still early.
It will be interesting to see how things progress on the platform with the number of brands and celebrities leaving the platform growing, could this change the course that has been set in motion this month?
After closing the deal Musk tweeted that “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail”. One of the people this includes is Donald Trump, the decision has since been made via a poll on Musk’s Twitter that Trump will be reinstated (shown below).
(Screenshot, Elon Musk Twitter Account)
Trump was banned from the platform in 2021 following the capitol insurrection because of the “risk of further incitement of violence”. This decision doesn’t instil faith in Musk’s judgement of what can be classed as a “minor” reason. With Trump running for president in 2024 it feels like we will be stepping back in time to the 2020 presidential election race.
Within Musk’s first month as the owner of Twitter, he has reduced a 7,500-person staff by around 3,700 according to CNN. Among those laid off are many of the top executives at the company including, CEO, Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, head of legal Vijaya Gadde and Sean Edgett who has been the general counsel at the company for 10 years. Bloomberg news reported that Edgett was escorted from the building.
Not only has Musk made extreme changes to the executive staff, but he has also been firing or giving ultimatums to thousands of other staff members over email.
On November 10th Musk gave employees a deadline of 5pm to decide if they would stay on with the company now that he has taken over. He asked the employees who do not share his vision to leave their jobs. Two days prior to this Musk fired around 24 employees who had criticised his leadership on Twitter or on the company’s Slack.
It’s interesting to see someone who is an advocate for free speech and is enabling extremist figures to have a platform on Twitter, firing people for speaking their minds on the topic of his takeover.
Musk later went on to mock the ex-employees on Twitter saying, “I would like to apologise for firing these geniuses,” “Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.”. In the current economic climate to fire thousands of employees through email or an internal messaging site, and then proceeding to mock these employees publicly online exhibits Musk’s privilege and an extreme lack of respect for the employees at twitter.
All these events have taken place over less than a month. It will be interesting to observe how Musk and Twitter’s progress over the coming months.
References
Comments