Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover: A Six-month Rollercoaster Ride

When Elon Musk initially agreed to purchase Twitter, he pledged to make it “better than ever,” with more openness, fewer bots, a stronger economy, and more of what he called “free speech.”

The future of the business and the platform, though, has never been less certain than it is now, six months after Musk took over Twitter.

Musk allegedly values Twitter at approximately $20 billion now after purchasing the social media site for $44 billion in late October, but some observers of the business think even that figure is probably high. Musk frequently warned that Twitter would be on the verge of declaring bankruptcy only to claim he had saved it thanks to his cost-cutting measures, which included firing 80% of the company’s employees and allegedly neglecting to pay some of its expenses, according to numerous complaints. It’s unclear, though, just how and when Musk might restart Twitter’s growth.

The site’s success has historically been largely attributed to journalists and news organizations, but under his leadership, policy changes that threaten to make Twitter less dependable or safe have been implemented, the platform has been less transparent to researchers, and many prominent advertisers have been driven away. Musk’s principal goal to increase Twitter’s revenue through a redesigned subscription strategy has caused a lot of confusion but few genuine memberships.

Musk has also damaged his own reputation in the process. Musk, who was once well-known for pioneering initiatives to develop electric vehicles and launch rockets, has spent the majority of the last six months in the news for controversial policy and feature changes at Twitter, drastic staff reductions that frequently cause service interruptions, and briefly banning several well-known journalists. From his personal Twitter account, he has also posted a long list of bizarre tweets, including sharing conspiracies and making fun of a Twitter employee with a disability who was unsure if he had been let go.

Leslie Miley, a former engineering manager at Twitter who established the organization’s product safety and security team and departed the firm in 2015, asserted that “if he had done nothing except cut costs, then Twitter would have been okay.” Since then, he has held positions at the Obama Foundation, Microsoft, and Google. “If you had just let everyone go, treated them with respect, and just let the service run for two years, you probably would have been okay.”

However, Miley recently stated that he anticipates Twitter to “eventually go down the road of MySpace.”

There is no plan to gain or keep people since you are providing them with no value, he said. “I think Twitter is on its way to irrelevance,” he added.

In response to CNN’s request for comment on this story, Twitter, which has significantly reduced the size of its public relations team under Musk, used the auto-reply from its press email that it has been using for weeks: a feces emoji.

Disrupting the online town square

For many years, Twitter’s role as a major hub for real-time news was what set it apart from other social media sites. It was a location where regular people could read and converse with famous people, businessmen, and other newsmakers.

It’s unclear how many of Musk’s recent platform decisions will benefit the company’s bottom line and risk undermining this goal as well as the greater information ecosystem.

In a recent interview with CNN, former Twitter chair of global news Vivian Schiller said, “Twitter has never been perfect, it had a lot of problems but it was critical global infrastructure for information that Elon Musk is now systematically, frankly, vandalizing.”

Most recently, Musk got rid of the traditional blue checkmarks that confirmed the identities of famous users, declaring that he would instead limit access to the checks to those who pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue in the purpose of “treating everyone equally.”

Musk stated in a tweet earlier this month that celebrities shouldn’t have a different standard.

However, the change might make it simpler for criminals to pose as well-known individuals and more difficult for users to believe that the information on the platform is true and authentic. Musk went on to finance the blue checks for a number of renowned people, including Stephen King and LeBron James, effectively setting the “different standard” for famous users he had previously claimed to wish to avoid.

Now that Musk claims content from verified users will be promoted on the site, it might be more difficult for users to find an audience there if they can’t afford or don’t want to pay Musk for a subscription. According to Filippo Menczer, a computer science professor at Indiana University and the director of the Observatory on Social Media, the new paid verification system won’t necessarily rid the platform of bots, a problem Musk spent months railing against while attempting to back out of the acquisition deal last year.

“If you are a well-funded bad actor, you can do more damage now than you could before,” Menczer said. “You can create fake accounts and pay $8 [for a blue check].” “And your information will not be as visible as before if you are a credible source but you are not well-funded.”

The end result, according to Menczer, might be “less free speech, because you’re drowning out the speech of regular people [with speech] by people who either have the technical skills or the money to manipulate the system.”

After objecting to a contentious new “government-funded media” branding that they said was deceptive, NPR, BBC, and CBC quit Twitter. After Twitter removed protections for transgender users from its hateful conduct policy, CenterLink, a global nonprofit organization that represents hundreds of centers offering services to LGBTQ communities, announced that it would stop using the social media platform. Additionally, some prominent users have threatened to leave the site over the blue check change because they may now be more vulnerable to impersonation on Twitter. One such user is bullying activist Monica Lewinsky.

Musk’s standing

Musk established his image by modernizing Tesla, assisting in the transition from gas to electric automobiles, and expanding SpaceX into a space transportation behemoth. He now seems to be trying to implement a similar change at Twitter, upending the tried-and-true digital advertising industry in favor of a subscription model that no other social media platform has yet to achieve widespread success with.

Despite Musk’s efforts to enhance Twitter’s targeted advertising business, Luigi Zingales, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said: “I give him some credit for trying a different business model, I think the business model based on user data is quite abusive.”

Other tech companies have in some cases followed his lead. Meta, a subsidiary of Facebook, imitated Twitter by introducing a premium verification option. And since last fall, Meta and a number of other tech firms have gone through several rounds of cost-cutting. Some of these concepts seem to have received support from Twitter, and in comparison to other companies’ somewhat more ethical approaches, they seemed better.

The stakes are high for both Musk and Twitter: Musk’s ties with banks and investors for future initiatives may depend in part on his success at the social media company, which he bought with billions of dollars in debt. What kind of credibility does this person have, Banks “will sit down and ask? Will we discover him issuing these snap decisions that actually drain our bank accounts?”, stated William Klepper, a management professor at Columbia Business School.

Any deterioration in Musk’s standing during his tenure as CEO of Twitter could ultimately have repercussions for his larger business empire, causing potential investors, employees, and clients to second-guess investing in one of his businesses. Shareholders of Tesla (TSLA) have protested to the board of the firm that Musk seemed “overcommitted.”

According to Klepper, “His reputation has been significantly damaged with Twitter, and once you lose it, it’s very difficult to recover.” It would be a good chance for Musk to reevaluate his suitability for leadership roles.

After millions of users voted in favor of his exit in a poll Musk posted on the platform, Musk announced in December that he would step down as CEO of Twitter. But for the time being, he continues to be known as “Chief Twit.”