Elon Musk Reveals How He Will Actually Run Twitter
Elon Musk has already started his overhaul of Twitter which reportedly will include a new subscription tier and a moderation board with "wildly diverse views" that will determine who is kept and who is banned from the platform.
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Before Elon Musk finalized his purchase of Twitter, there was rampant speculation about what the platform would look like under his leadership. Voices from both sides of the aisle loudly debated their respective opinions, but no one had any clue. Now, with Musk’s sweeping changes making news headlines almost daily, we are starting to get a glimpse behind the curtain.
The newest CEO of Twitter was a vocal proponent of free speech before he even offered to buy the social media company. So many users believed he would massively overhaul the company. And advertisers became uncertain about the future of Twitter.
So many companies pulled or halted their ads out of an abundance of caution. It amounted to a significant drop in revenue and led to the recent string of layoffs. But those rounds of staffing reduction were just the warmup.
Recently, Elon Musk announced his plan to charge $8 for users to obtain their previously free blue checkmark. This news was greeted loudly by critics. Their biggest complaint was that they didn’t want to pay a fee for a formerly free app and essentially pay to have their right to free speech.
The company even updated its app in the Apple App Store to reflect the new verification option. However, Twitter has no plans to issue new blue checkmarks until after the election. If you decide to purchase one after that, you will receive half the ads, extra video upload time, and priority ranking in feeds.
Elon Musk also announced a new content moderation council that he claims will have “widely diverse views.” That council will convene after the elections. And once it does, they will begin making decisions on content moderation and account reinstatements.
That move is all part of Musk’s mission. On Sunday, he took to the platform to state, “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.” According to Reuters News, his comment sparked intense and immediate debate.
Jack Dorsey, the founder and former CEO of Twitter, responded, “accurate to who?” There is no word on how Musk plans to achieve that. Or who will determine said “accuracy.”
But that was not the only Sunday surprise coming out of Twitter. The platform suspended Kathy Griffith after she changed her name to “Elon Musk.” He responded that “going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended.”
However, he did not uniformly apply this new standard. Valerie Bertinelli pulled a similar prank that went viral. But she retained her account.
So, for the moment, there is no significant change coming to Twitter until after the election. However, there may be good news for some of the recently laid-off staff. The company started reaching out to dozens of its fired employees, asking them to return to work.
According to Bloomberg News, many received layoff news by mistake. And for the others, they “were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions.” Although what that means is yet to be seen.
