Elon Musk Killing Twitter?

Twitter, one of the biggest social media platforms ever created, was recently bought by none other than Elon Musk, the world’s current richest man and owner of huge companies such as Tesla and SpaceX. He bought Twitter because he wanted to provide a pseudo-town square where people can freely voice their opinions without censorship. Unfortunately for him, the purchase of Twitter wasn’t met with the enthusiasm he would’ve liked, and everything he changed only made things worse.

Musk spent 22 billion dollars on the purchase and within the first month of his ownership, he fired over 7000 of Twitter's employees because the platform was running on an extreme loss. Even after firing the majority of employees, leaving about 50, the company continued running on a loss of over 4 million dollars every day. This led to the first major change on the platform, Twitter Blue.

 Twitter Blue was meant to be the new form of verification on the site in the form of a paid monthly subscription. Musk claimed it would push trolls, malicious users, and scam accounts further down the feed, leaving only opinions from real people on the timeline. Twitter Blue was met with extreme backlash and people and, as many expected, the first major problem with Twitter Blue was impersonation. People were pretending to be major companies and began tweeting outrageous things, leading many companies to lose sponsors and have huge falls in stock prices. In less than a week of its incorporation, Twitter Blue was removed from the platform.

The next major thing Musk did was lift the ban from many major users such as president Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and many other controversial figures. Once again, this was not met with open hands and cheers, but rather with boos and rotten tomatoes. Donald Trump was originally banned from the platform for inciting violence in real life, Jordan Peterson was banned for homophobia and being controversial outside of Twitter, and Andrew Tate was banned far before his rise to fame, in 2017 for claiming that rape victims bear some responsibility for the crimes committed against them. The majority of the users unbanned weren’t much different or better than these famous examples and it’s no surprise they were banned. Elon Musk's decision to unban them regardless of the reasons for their initial bans left a bitter taste for the rest of the platform.

So has Elon Musk killed Twitter? No, not yet, but at this rate, Twitter will be either bankrupt or have the majority of the users leave in the near future. Even before Musk, Twitter wasn’t in the best position, but ever since Elon bought the platform, the ship has only sunk further and faster than ever before.

Work Cited 

Binder, Matt. “Elon Musk Is Reinstating Banned Twitter Accounts. Here's Who's Back.” Mashable, Mashable, 22 Nov. 2022, https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-reinstated-banned-twitter-accounts-list.

Maurer, Mark. “How Elon Musk's Twitter Faces Mountain of Debt, Falling Revenue and Surging Costs.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 21 Nov. 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-elon-musks-twitter-faces-mountain-of-debt-falling-revenue-and-surging-costs-11669042132.

Conger, Kate, et al. “Elon Musk Fires Twitter Employees Who Criticized Him.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Nov. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/technology/elon-musk-twitter-fired-criticism.html.

Mac, Ryan, et al. “A Verifiable Mess: Twitter Users Create Havoc by Impersonating Brands.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Nov. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/technology/twitter-blue-fake-accounts.html.