How Elon Musk is altering Twitter, from mass layoffs to verify marks

Elon Musk has solely been in command of Twitter since late October. But already, he’s turned the corporate and its platform the wrong way up.

Almost instantly after he took over, Musk booted high executives, slashed rank-and-file headcount by 50 p.c, issued remaining workers an ultimatum to be “hardcore” of their work ethic or give up, and fast-tracked a hodgepodge of doubtless revenue-generating options, together with charging customers to get or preserve a verification verify mark. And that was all earlier than he allowed former president Donald Trump again on the app, reversing Trump’s former ban on the platform.

Musk’s mass layoffs and intense administration type have gutted Twitter’s workers, reportedly together with some key engineering capabilities, inflicting considerations in regards to the web site’s technical skill to remain up and operating.

And his new verify mark system — Musk’s first main product replace — triggered chaos within the hours after its launch, as newly checkmarked customers flooded the app with pretend accounts, impersonating figures from Nintendo’s Mario character to former US President George W. Bush. Adding to the chaos, by November 11, lower than every week for the reason that new paid checkmark system was launched, it appeared that the Twitter Blue subscription service that allow you to purchase a checkmark was now not working for many individuals.

And whereas Musk didn’t instantly change any of Twitter’s insurance policies towards offensive content material, within the hours after Musk took over there was a notable surge in hate speech on the app. Some of the customers posting felt emboldened by Musk’s “free speech absolutist” perspective, and actively tried to check the bounds of what they might say on Twitter underneath the corporate’s new management. Others have examined the bounds of Musk’s free speech stance by making enjoyable of him personally.

Musk doesn’t wish to be CEO of Twitter eternally — he’s repeatedly mentioned he desires to ultimately give that job to another person “over time.” In the meantime, many present and former workers, social media teachers, and human rights advocates are involved that Musk may change Twitter for the more serious, turning it into an much more intense cesspool of unfavourable content material than it already is. But others hope Musk can breathe new life right into a platform that was already bleeding its most prolific customers and, for years, has struggled to show a revenue. In a workers assembly on November 10, Musk mentioned chapter was not out of the query if Twitter doesn’t determine a means to earn more money.

Here are a few of the most important methods Musk has modified the corporate thus far.

Reinstating some high-profile suspended accounts

From the start, Musk took over Twitter with the said objective of creating it a platform that allowed extra controversial speech. While he hasn’t made any drastic adjustments but to Twitter’s content material moderation insurance policies, he has began reinstating some suspended accounts.

On November 18, greater than two weeks since he took over the corporate, Musk tweeted that he had reinstated the accounts of comic Kathy Griffin (who was suspended after she impersonated Musk), controversial psychologist influencer Jordan Peterson, and conservative humor information web site Babylon Bee. Peterson and Babylon Bee have been each suspended after tweeting anti-trans feedback.

These reinstatements come even though Musk mentioned he would wait to make any main choices about reinstating banned accounts till he varieties a “content moderation council” to advise him. Musk mentioned he’s nonetheless deciding about what to with former President Donald Trump’s account, though up to now he has supported bringing again Trump’s account.

Gutting Twitter’s workers

Musk started his reign as Twitter’s chief by firing high executives. Within hours of the deal closing, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of authorized coverage, belief, and security Vijaya Gadde have been proven the door. On November 10, Twitter’s high privateness and safety executives resigned, together with Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner, the corporate’s chief privateness officer, and chief compliance officer, in line with a number of reviews. On the identical day, Twitter’s head of belief and security, Yoel Roth, who in latest days had publicly reassured those that Twitter was nonetheless following its content material moderation insurance policies, additionally left.

The week after he took over, Musk continued firing executives, together with Twitter’s advert chief, common supervisor of core tech, and chief advertising officer Leslie Berland (who only a few days earlier despatched a cheery word saying that Musk was visiting the San Francisco places of work). He additionally pulled in additional than 50 Tesla engineers to work for Twitter and assembled his personal circle of trusted advisers.

Soon after, Musk began gutting Twitter’s rank-and-file workers. He laid off an estimated 50 p.c — upward of three,700 workers — from the corporate. Twitter knowledgeable its workers that layoffs would occur by 9 am PT on Friday in a company-wide electronic mail. By late Thursday night, a number of workers informed Recode or posted publicly on Twitter that they’d already been locked out of their work electronic mail and Slack accounts with none formal discover of whether or not they had been laid off.

These cuts are the biggest in Twitter’s historical past, and a number of other present and former workers Recode spoke with are involved that in consequence Twitter’s operations as a platform could possibly be in danger. Musk has additionally reportedly deliberate to slash $1 billion from Twitter’s infrastructure prices, comparable to server house, according to a report from Reuters, furthering these considerations.

Adding to the chaos, Twitter’s administration modified its thoughts about a few of its cost-cutting: the corporate reportedly requested dozens of not too long ago laid-off workers in the event that they needed to return again to work quickly after the layoffs, in line with a report from Bloomberg.

The day after the primary spherical of cuts, Musk tweeted in regards to the layoffs and mentioned them at an investor convention. He framed the layoffs as needed as a result of earlier than the deal, “Twitter was having pretty serious revenue challenges and cost challenges,” in line with the New York Times.

Twitter’s contract employees have been hit closely by one other spherical of cuts that occurred a couple of week later. Platformer’s Casey Newton reported that round 4,400 out of 5,500 of Twitter’s contractors have been laid off, together with heavy cuts to Twitter’s content material moderation groups. Musk additionally fired not less than twenty workers who posted crucial messages about him on Twitter’s inside Slack channels, or who publicly challenged Musk on Twitter.

Some workers are preventing again. Shortly after the preliminary layoffs, a bunch of 5 workers sued Twitter in a category motion lawsuit, alleging the corporate did not notify them of the approaching layoffs as required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act, that requires sure employers to provide a 60-day discover for mass layoffs within the US. Twitter is giving many laid-off workers full pay and advantages by way of not less than January, though it’s not clear if this utilized to all workers, notably these exterior the US, sources mentioned.

Every week and a half after the primary wave of layoffs, the drama intensified when Musk issued an ultimatum to workers: Work tougher or give up. In a midnight electronic mail to workers, Musk wrote that, shifting ahead, Twitter will “need to be extremely hardcore” and require workers to work “long hours at high intensity.” The electronic mail linked to a type asking workers to verify that they wish to work on the “new Twitter” by 5 pm ET the subsequent day; if not, they might be laid off and obtain three months severance.

The ultimatum confirmed how Musk is making an attempt to pare down Twitter’s workers past the preliminary layoffs that gutted half the corporate.

But Musk could have gone too far together with his calls for. In the hours earlier than the deadline, Musk reportedly tried to persuade crucial workers to remain on the firm.

So far, it’s been reported that 1,200 workers declined to conform to Musk’s phrases and primarily mass resigned from the corporate.

As considerations grew from a few of Twitter’s present and former workers that the location may quickly break due to low ranges of engineering staffing, Musk requested all engineers who “can actually write software” to fulfill him in individual on the tenth ground of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and present examples of latest code they have been liable for. He even inspired workers to fly to San Francisco the identical day if want be, according to emails reported by Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer. Ironically, Twitter workers had been locked out of the constructing till Monday for concern of sabotage, so there was confusion about how individuals would do that.

Shaking up Twitter’s inside tradition

Musk has been operating Twitter in his personal means, much like how he runs his different firms: in an advert hoc and intense style. Rather than speaking to his workers first, Musk usually tweets no matter he’s considering, together with his plans for the corporate.

Elon’s first message to his workers was in an electronic mail despatched on November 9 round midnight Pacific time, saying that he was ending Twitter’s remote-work-for-all coverage, efficient inside hours.

Musk’s intense administration type has been an adjustment for a lot of Twitter workers who’re used to a extra measured, communicative, and structured work tradition. One nameless Twitter worker informed the Washington Post that the work environment underneath Elon was like “working in Trump’s White House.”

Employees are turning to personal or nameless communication platforms like Blind, Signal, and Discord to commiserate, a number of workers informed Recode, since they now not really feel they are often candid on inside Slack or electronic mail.

Another main change Elon is making to Twitter’s inside tradition is to drastically ramp up the tempo at which new options are developed.

Normally, product adjustments like those that Musk proposed — comparable to charging customers for verification — would take months and even years to implement at Twitter. Now, workers are being requested to execute them virtually in a single day.

This may drive the form of innovation that Twitter, a money-losing enterprise, would possibly want. But it may additionally depart workers demoralized, or worse, compromise the reliability and safety the app gives to its a whole lot of tens of millions of customers. Twitter already has present issues on this entrance: Former Twitter head of safety and inside whistleblower Peiter Zatko warned that the platform “was over a decade behind industry security standards” in September.

Making individuals pay for blue verify marks

The first official product change Musk confirmed after taking up Twitter was to start out charging $8 monthly for “blue check marks,” the verification badges that Twitter at present offers to public figures like journalists, politicians, and celebrities. Musk needed to open up verify marks to extra individuals, so long as they’re prepared to pay that worth.

Twitter may also give your account extra precedence in replies, mentions, and search in the event you subscribe for the brand new service — which means that those that don’t pay up may lose visibility on the platform.

Twitter’s verification program was initially designed to ensure individuals actually are who they are saying they’re on-line. Before you bought a verify mark, you needed to apply for one and present ID proving your actual id matched your Twitter title. That helped Twitter’s person base be sure that the account they have been taking a look at wasn’t an imposter.

Now, Musk has eliminated any form of ID verification from Twitter Blue. That means anybody who pays $8 a month can fake to be another person, with a verify mark subsequent to their title. That’s triggered main trolling, with some Twitter Blue accounts impersonating well-known individuals like LeBron James, George W. Bush, and even Mario, the Nintendo character. Many of the brand new pretend accounts use practical profile pictures, names, and handles, and have a verify mark subsequent to their title, so it’s laborious to inform who’s actual or who’s pretend.

Elon appears to search out all this amusing, replying with crying-of-laughter emojis to a number of tweets declaring the pretend accounts.

This change additionally triggered main debate amongst notable figures who received their verify mark without cost — a lot of whom mentioned they aren’t prepared to pay to maintain their verification. Fellow billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban criticized the brand new function, saying Musk “killed the most valuable part of Twitter” by making it tougher for him to search out reliable details about breaking information occasions.

After a bunch of individuals together with comic Kathy Griffin started trolling Musk’s new coverage by altering their names to “Elon Musk” and making enjoyable of the tech CEO, Musk suspended their accounts and introduced new guidelines: Any Twitter accounts concerned in impersonation not clearly labeled as “parody” could be instantly suspended with out warning, and any verified person who adjustments their Twitter title will quickly have their verify mark eliminated.

Musk additionally made one other sudden change when he axed a brand new “Official” grey verify mark (along with the blue one) rolled out on Thursday — meant to differentiate verified customers who’re additionally notable public figures. Within hours of the discharge, Musk tweeted that he “killed” the function, and the brand new verify marks left as shortly as they arrived.

Shortly after the function was pulled again, Musk tweeted this rationalization: “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”

On November 11, Twitter suspended the subscription service for getting checkmarks — Twitter Blue. Musk mentioned that the function will relaunch on November 29 as soon as it’s “rock solid.”

Emboldening the trolls

Musk has mentioned his major motive for getting Twitter was to make it a haven without cost speech. He’s echoed conservatives’ longstanding considerations that Twitter is politically biased towards right-wing speech regardless of the lack of proof of that bias.

Conservative politicians like former president Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have celebrated Elon Musk’s possession of Twitter as a serious win, with Trump saying he’s completely satisfied that Twitter “will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs.”

But Musk’s extra laissez-faire philosophy on content material moderation has additionally triggered one other group of individuals to rejoice: trolls spreading racist, sexist, and in any other case hateful speech.

One instance: There was a 500 p.c enhance in makes use of of the n-word on Twitter within the 12 hours after Musk’s deal was accomplished, in line with a research from the Network Contagion Research Institute, although none of Twitter’s guidelines have modified on the matter.

Twitter has mentioned it’s engaged on decreasing the visibility of those posts. But knowledge factors like this have spooked a number of main advertisers that don’t need their model affiliated with offensive content material, together with General Motors, Volkswagen, Audi, and Pfizer — who’ve are ready to see extra about what route the corporate will take underneath Musk’s management earlier than they resume adverts.

Musk has tried to relax advertiser considerations by tweeting a public word saying that he doesn’t need Twitter to show right into a “free-for-all hellscape.” On Thursday, Musk spoke with leaders of civil rights teams just like the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and Color of Change, promising them that Twitter takes hate speech critically, and that he gained’t make any main choices about reinstating banned accounts (e.g., Trump) till after he units up a content material moderation advisory council, which he mentioned will not less than take a number of weeks.

Musk additionally informed civil rights leaders he would reverse his determination to restrict the quantity of workers who can entry content material moderation methods, one other one among their considerations.

But civil rights leaders organizing underneath the banner “#StopToxicTwitter Coalition” mentioned that Musk had failed to carry true to his guarantees — and ramped up their calls for for main advertisers to pause all adverts on the platform, Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter had a “massive drop in revenue” as a consequence of “activist groups” who he accused of making an attempt to “destroy free speech in America.”

It’s not simply advertisers which are leaving Twitter due to Elon; there are additionally early indicators that Elon’s takeover and the ensuing negativity are inflicting some customers to go away.

One report in MIT Technology Review estimated some 877,000 accounts have been deactivated within the week after Musk’s deal closed. That’s greater than double the same old quantity in that very same time interval, in line with knowledge from the agency Bot Sentinel that MIT Tech Review cited.

Since taking up, Musk has claimed that, on the contrary, Twitter’s day by day lively customers have reached all-time highs.

Of course, these are all estimates, and solely from a brief window of time. Twitter has additionally been dropping its most precious “heavy tweeters” in droves for some time now, in line with a leaked inside report coated by Reuters, and that predates Musk’s takeover. But time will inform whether or not Musk reverses or exacerbates Twitter’s present drawback of customers fleeing the platform.

Throwing different concepts on the wall

Aside from charging for Twitter verification, Musk has been planning a complete new set of adjustments to the platform. While none of those are confirmed but, they’re reportedly within the works or being examined.

Those adjustments embrace making individuals pay for sure varieties of “high risk” video content material (many are speculating it could be grownup video content material), in line with the Washington Post; bringing again Vine, the short-form video app Twitter acquired and later shuttered; altering the login web page to the discover web page; charging individuals for sending DMs to high-profile customers.

Twitter is contemplating getting into the funds enterprise — an space Musk has expertise in going again to his pre-PayPal days — in line with a New York Times report citing paperwork filed with the US Treasury Department. It could possibly be a part of Musk’s said ambitions to make Twitter a “superapp” known as X, which could possibly be much like WeChat in China that’s used not only for posting messages however for issues like making procuring purchases or ordering meals supply.

Otherwise, it appears as if Elon is throwing a bunch of concepts out to see which of them work. As one investor in Musk’s deal, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, mentioned on the Web Summit convention in November, he expects solely 10 p.c of Musk’s concepts “will stick.”

So far, a lot of Musk’s concepts (like Vine and paid movies) are previous ones that Twitter has already tried — and failed at.

Over time, it’ll develop into clear if Musk will be capable of efficiently resurrect these previous concepts — and his new ones, like paying for a verify mark — with a really totally different work tradition and workers than Twitter had earlier than.

We’ll preserve updating this put up as Musk continues to form Twitter, for higher or worse.

Update, November 19, 9:55 pm ET: This story, initially printed on November 4, has been up to date a number of instances, most not too long ago with particulars about Musk reinstating former president Donald Trump’s account.