﻿Will Elon Musk finally be what kills Twitter?
Elon Musk is running Twitter into the ground.
For years, the social network has been an extremely popular
center for news and public conversation.
But it’s been in a chaotic transition phase as Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally
completed his months-long purchase of the company.
The sale itself was a tumultuous back and forth – “Then Twitter sued,
Musk sued back, then he changed his mind again.”
– perhaps an omen of what was to come.
Elon’s transition to Twitter CEO has come with immediate changes at
the company, like mass employee layoffs that included top executives
and it seems, anyone who disagrees with him.
We're all about to get fired from Twitter."
Musk’s shakeup also implemented new features designed to monetize
the platform like Twitter Blue, which allows users to pay $8 a
month to be verified and prioritized.
But changes like this one fundamentally alter Twitter’s landscape.
Albeit some flaws, the site was once a place where people could
find verified information in real time from trusted sources.
And how “the little guy” got the word out.
"We're seeing the demise of Twitter in real-time and I'm
sitting here thinking, "I have been akekekeing on that app
- my safe place - for years and years and years.
Now all of a sudden Elon Musk comes along and all of a sudden
"Oh, it might be gone."
The current state of Twitter is evidence of an irresolvable
tension at the heart of the internet: the desire for openness
and free speech coming up against
the demands of shareholders and profitability.
Here’s our take on how Elon Musk’s purchase and redesign of Twitter
– a place that was once a public forum for underdogs to question
those in power – could be its ultimate downfall.
"If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong.
It's my fault 100%."
Twitter can be an incredibly toxic,
exhausting place, full of public pile-ons, absurd conversations, and general negativity.
“Have you seen the hashtags?” “Oh yeah, stay off Twitter.”
So, would its destruction really be such a loss? In short, yes.
Despite a slow start, Twitter had become an invaluable
tool for activists and political movements by the 2010's.
“Twitter is how the Arab Spring took off.
Black Lives Matter blew up on Twitter.
The #MeToo movement started on Twitter.”
In several of these cases, the power of Twitter came from
promoting free and open communication, lifting up the voices of people
who otherwise might not have been heard.
Protestors in places ranging from Egypt to Ferguson, Missouri
were able to document the conditions they dealt with and broadcast their demands.
All of this made Twitter what it is today – a pivotal part
of our global culture – especially when it comes to
how we get our information. “Twitter and journalism go hand in hand.
Twitter is a source of information.
Because Twitter doesn’t have an editorial staff and there’s
no filter, it has a very different role from what
journalists have, which is to be that filter.”
Since anyone’s voice can, in theory, be elevated on Twitter,
it literally launched careers for writers, comics, artists, and other
trailblazers who were able to break through the noise and
establish themselves in their fields. Twitter allows users to follow
– and interact with – anyone of interest.
That’s allowed new communities to form, bringing people together
in surprising ways that might not have been possible before.
This has, understandably, facilitated a fundamental
change in the relationship between fans and public figures.
Powerful people realized that Twitter could help them extend
their power in new ways – exposing Twitter’s
more dangerous potential.
“The online abuse from so-called Twitter trolls escalated
yesterday to bomb threats.”
As of late, Twitter has tried to make the platform a safer
place for its users – putting in barriers meant to curb
misinformation and hate speech – even de-platforming
high-profile users who have violated its standards.
“Twitter’s decision to ban a right wing conspiracy theorist
from its platform for life But moves like this are
what brought conversations surrounding censorship,
free speech, and whether or not Twitter had become
too powerful to the forefront. Enter: Elon Musk.
A self-proclaimed bastion of free speech, the tech
billionaire has been a longtime user but also critic of Twitter.
In early 2022, Musk became a sort of self-appointed knight
in shining armor, coming to liberate the platform and bring
it back to its earlier, less-moderated, version of itself.
But he seems dead set on making Twitter a more open
platform, no matter the cost.
“A good sign as to whether there is free speech is someone
you don't like, allowed to say something you don't like.”
So, will the “public town square” that once empowered the powerless
ever be the same now that it’s being run by the richest man in the world?
Since purchasing Twitter, Elon has laid off roughly 50%
of the company’s employees, caused a mass exodus of even
more employees with a “be extremely hardcore or get out”
approach to leadership, and has users tweeting #ripTwitter
with farewell messages.
And the severe reduction in workforce has dramatically
reduced Twitter’s functionality – since many of the departed
employees were engineers, developers, and coders.
The situation has become so dire that Musk had to ask some
of the people he had let go to come back just days later.
As the company continues to hemorrhage money.
Musk is reportedly laying plans to monetize the app.
But critics wonder how he’s going to get people to pay for a service
they used to get for free – or if there will even be an app
to pay for in the coming weeks.
Elon’s fumbles on Twitter have been well documented over the
years – making the platform central to his career for
both good and not so good.
“You tweet a lot.”
“I use my tweets to express myself.
Some people use their hair.
I use Twitter.”
In 2018, he infamously tweeted that he would be taking Tesla
private at $420 per share, referencing the connection
between the number 420 and marijuana.
Though he claimed there was quote-unquote “funding secured,
” this was ultimately a joke.
Not only was he investigated by the US Securities and
Exchange Commission and forced to settle for $40 million,
he’s still in the middle of a civil lawsuit brought by
Tesla shareholders who lost money by taking the tweet as
a statement of fact.
“These misleading statements, none of which were reviewed or
pre-cleared by anyone at Tesla,
caused significant market confusion and disruption.”
An incident like this one not only showed how central
information shared on Twitter is to businesses – but also
served as a foreshadowing for some of the issues plaguing
the site under Musk’s reign.
Twitter Blue – Elon’s attempt to make the blue checkmark
system more inclusive – was an almost immediate disaster.
The system would allow users to access verification if
they paid a monthly fee of $8.
Previously, Twitter had a more rigorous process –
it would verify journalists,
celebrities, politicians, and public figures on a
case-by-case basis, requiring them to provide
government issued ID in an effort to prevent impersonation.
Musk quickly found out why it was always done this way.
Twitter became flooded with fake, yet blue-check-mark-verified,
accounts impersonating public figures and brands.
A single tweet cost pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly roughly
$15 billion in market cap.
Twitter Blue was disabled the very next day.
Musk says that the feature will come back eventually
but with some careful new changes.
In an effort to discourage impersonators, new accounts
will have to wait 90 days before they can subscribe to Blue.
The paid subscription service was supposed to help wean
Twitter off of its dependence on advertising revenue –
but advertisers are already beating Elon to the punch.
Huge companies like Pfizer, General Motors, United Airlines,
and General Mills have all left
Twitter since Musk took ownership, and more are fleeing in droves.
"The thing about advertising is that it's very easy to turn on and off.
And so while things are so volatile right now, it's better
for advertisers to take a back seat.
Many longtime Twitter users have also decided to
stop using the service,
including several high-profile celebrities like Shonda Rhimes,
Whoopi Goldberg, Liz Phair, and Alex Winter.
What it seems Elon is failing to see is that – until Twitter
stops being so dependent on advertising – it’s going to
need to be a more tightly moderated place.
Elon Musk’s Twitter is gonna be Wild Wild West of Free Speech
I think some regulation’s in order
Misinformation and impersonations threaten Twitter's function as
a public safety tool and an integral part of our global
communication system – which it has been for
nearly twenty years.
When Musk purchased Twitter, one of his major goals was
to expand quote-unquote “free speech.”
He and his followers have railed against the use of
external fact-checking and content moderation on Twitter,
which they claim limits its use as a public forum.
But while Musk would like to present himself as in
favor of absolute free speech, he’s come up against his own
limits after just a few days of owning Twitter.
Faced with verified accounts making fun of him, he’s brought
the full force of Twitter moderation down on several
people whose speech he doesn’t like.
Online content moderation has been a thorny problem for years.
On one hand, there are those who claim that it’s important
to allow free and open platforms for all speech, regardless of
what’s being said. This is ostensibly Musk’s goal, and
something that has been lauded by certain segments
of Twitter’s audience.
Mr. Musk said, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning
democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where
matters vital to humanity are debated.’”
On the other hand, academics, journalists, and activists
criticize tech platforms for
creating what amount to safe spaces for white nationalists
and other dangerous fringe groups.
These conflicts have been a part of Twitter for years,
leading to the permanent banning of controversial figures like
Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, and, most infamously, Trump himself,
though this was recently overturned.
Social media platforms have a responsibility to combat the
spread of information and calls for violence against others –
but Elon doesn’t seem to be too concerned.
"He's trying to decide what to
do and clearly doesn't have a plan - it's absolute chaos.
There has to be a responsible adult in the room, and it's not Elon."
And this is a major problem Twitter users are dealing with right now.
Many of Musk’s layoffs
specifically affected employees who work in content moderation.
In the time since the deal closed and Musk took control
of Twitter, hate speech on the platform has skyrocketed,
in what the Washington Post described as a quote,
“flood of racist posts.”
This creates an environment where it’s actually harder
for certain people to speak—the commitment to free speech means
making a series of tradeoffs about what speech,
and whose speech, is really important.
And though Musk has claimed that his new model for verification
will solve the problem of hate speech
and disinformation, there’s no evidence that that will happen.
What was once a place where people felt welcome to share ideas,
form online communities, and get verified news and
information seems to be crumbling before us in real time.
“You tweet a lot.” “I use my tweets to express myself.
Some people use their hair. I use Twitter.”
Twitter’s done dude, it’s just done…]
Twitter itself may not be dying, but a version of it is.
Many of the users who once relied on the platform are now rightfully
looking elsewhere, fleeing to alternatives like the decentralized
social network Mastodon and the newsletter platform Substack.
In Twitter’s future there are a few real possibilities.
One is that Twitter will literally collapse as the remaining
engineers and employees maintaining its infrastructure get laid off –
or quit – leading the platform to become unusable.
"Okay if you haven't heard it Twitter is dying before our very eyes.
But Tumblr is having the night of her life!"
Another – is that Musk might pull back from the edge, and
return Twitter to at least some measure of equilibrium —
in keeping with the way he has
already asked some of the previously fired employees to come back to their jobs.
And there’s a good possibility that he won’t be CEO for very long.
But for now, Musk seems ready
to double down on both the best and the worst parts of Twitter.
The site will likely remain a headache, both for Musk and for even some
of the most dedicated users —
given how open Twitter can be, it couldn’t go any other way.
"The closest I’ve been to a warzone was when I logged onto Twitter this morning."