It hasn’t even been a week since Elon Musk acquired Twitter and already there have been high-profile layoffs, major platform changes flagged and many influential accounts divided over whether they will stay or leave.
Here’s what you might have missed over the past five days as told by a handful of tweets.
Elon Musk acquires Twitter
After a very public six-month “will he, won’t he” saga, the billionaire and Tesla CEO officially took control of Twitter on Thursday October 27 2022 in a US$44 billion deal. He announced the takeover in a tweet claiming “the bird is freed” — no capitalisation or punctuation, please — and changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit”. The tweet has 2.5 million likes so far.
Twitter becomes a one-man company as the CEO, CFO and policy chief are fired
In one of his first moves as head of the social media giant, Musk began to clean house.
On Thursday he fired the company’s board, making himself the sole director. He also fired several high-ups in the executive ranks — CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde (the person responsible for removing former US president Donald Trump from the platform) were all told to clean out their desks. There have since been reports Musk’s team has discussed laying off 25% of staff.
Saudi Prince Alwaleed becomes Twitter’s second largest shareholder
Shortly after the new Chief Twit’s inaugural tweet and reports of the executive bloodbath, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal confirmed that he would maintain his US$1.9 billion in shares in the platform owned by his private office and Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), making the prince the second- largest investor in the platform after Musk, with approximately 4% of the company.
Not long after the prince’s announcement, US Democratic Senator Chris Murphy called on the US government to investigate national security concerns raised by Saudi Arabia’s role in Twitter’s takeover.
Musk flags big changes
It has now been widely reported, first extensively by The Verge, that the company will revamp its optional paid subscription for Twitter Blue. The changes would force verified users to pay or lose their blue tick.
How do you get big tech changes to happen so quickly? Well, if you’re Musk, you offer an ultimatum: meet his deadline, or pack up your desk and leave.
The blue tick is not the only change the billionaire has made. As one of the first orders of business, he quietly changed the homepage for logged-out users. Where the homepage used to display a signup form, it now directs logged-out users to the Explore page, which displays trending tweets and news stories.
Hate speech spikes on the platform
As Crikey reported yesterday, the takeover of the platform by self-portrayed “free speech absolutist” Musk has coincided with a surge of hate speech across the platform. According to Network Contagion Research Institute, a group that analyses hundreds of millions of social media posts, instances of the N-word on the app spiked nearly 500% over the 12 hours after confirmation of Musk’s takeover. Further, as The Washington Post reports, by Friday afternoon misogynistic and anti-LGBTIQA+ messages had become increasingly prominent.
Musk slams media as ‘fake news’ and ‘far left propaganda’
Following in the footsteps of another free speech hero, it didn’t take Musk long to begin attacking media. He labelled The New York Times “fake news” and, in response to a tweet about the impact his new job will have on The Guardian’s subscriber numbers, Musk responded attacking the newspaper for being a “far-left-wing propaganda machine”.
“The Guardian used to have balance (moderately left) and integrity, but now it is a far left wing propaganda machine. I hope they get back to where they were one day,” he wrote.
As for Trump, he welcomed Musk’s new role, taking to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to declare himself “very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands” and “will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country”.
Big names exit left
Musk’s planned changes and his commitment to “free speech absolutism” have some big names heading for the hills — or whichever platform can (very) quickly capitalise on the exodus — including Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, who made it clear she wasn’t hanging around to see Musk’s vision enacted.
Advertisers also seem to be mulling over their presence, with General Motors flagging it would temporarily pause advertising on Twitter as it seeks to “understand the direction of the platform” under its new ownership.
Does it matter who owns a social media platform like Twitter? Whose ownership would make you walk away? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
