Hellscape or Not, Twitter Will Be Something Different Under Elon Musk

Elon Musk According to people familiar with the matter, Twitter has already sacked several of the leadership team, including the CEO, and plans to become CEO himself in the immediate term. Public shareholders are cashing out and giving ownership to a hodgepodge of investors that, in addition to Musk, include Oracle Corp’s Larry Ellison and Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. The company will stop reporting its financials — unless Musk wants to. They are expected to have serious job cuts, especially for roles outside of product and engineering.

Top most, Tesla Inc. will bring a different set of values ​​to the major social networks. Twitter has focused on reducing bullying and abuse on its network over the years; Musk says he wants to ease content restrictions and reverse account bans. Twitter is majority funded by advertising; Musk wants to build a more robust subscription product, he has told consultants. Twitter has worked to improve transparency and communication with its users; Musk does a lot of outbound communication for his companies himself – through tweets.

Twitter has long been culturally punched above its weight as a network supported by the world’s top politicians, celebrities and the media. It’s something that Musk gets the best of: his experience, broadcasting directly to his 111 million followers for immediate support of his personal and business goals, represents the value of the medium he’s receiving.

But Twitter has always been an underdog among social media peers, just a fraction of the size of Meta Platforms Inc., TikTok or YouTube. Some employees say they quit working for better-paid veterans out of a sense of duty to improve what they see as the world’s most important engine for politics, news and entertainment. “Twitter is the indie rock punk band and Facebook is the pop radio sellout,” explained one former employee.

Twitter is now controlled by the world’s richest man – a man who is already the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, and the founder of The Boring Company, Neuralink, and OpenAI. Musk’s geopolitical and business interests may color his approach to Twitter’s job. And current employees are already prepared for what that could mean.

Over the years, Twitter has worked to shake the reputation as a service that turned a blind eye to abuse and harassment. The platform, often criticized as “toxic” or “cesspool,” has added controls in recent years to mute and hide content that can make visiting the site uncomfortable. Work was deemed essential from a business standpoint: no one wants to spend their time on a network that makes them feel bad.

Musk believes Twitter has gone too far and says he is concerned about the service’s lack of “free speech.” And he plans to reverse former President Donald Trump’s permanent ban, which was enacted in January 2021 as a punishment for inciting violence. Musk wants Twitter to allow all speech protected by the First Amendment in the US.

It is a stance that has been lauded by conservative politicians, but it promises to create other issues as well. While some users will return to Twitter for tweeting “outrageous” things they feel, others will undoubtedly leave for the same reasons.

Plus, all of Musk’s business struggles have to be considered, as Tesla sells cars in countries where leaders want to silence some of the tweets, and counts major car manufacturing rivals among its advertisers.

Musk has made a “big mistake,” said Alex Stamos, who previously ran security at Meta and now works at the Stanford Internet Observatory. The billionaire “is making himself the global face of content moderation at a critical moment of conflict with governments, while maintaining largely personal contact with challenging countries,” Stamos tweeted.

Musk’s plans to draw the line on the material are still unclear. On Thursday, he wrote an open letter to advertisers, saying he was buying Twitter because “having a common town square is important for the future of civilization” with opinions on both the left and the right, but it could not be made. “A free-for-all hellscape” where anything can be said without consequence. People should be able to choose what kind of experience they have on Twitter, he said, just as they choose which video game to play.

On Friday, Musk said he was not planning to reinstate anyone’s account before forming and consulting a “content moderation council with widely diverse perspectives.”

Rohit Kulkarni, a financial analyst at MKM Partners, said he expects Musk’s business impact on Twitter to be positive, predicting a $100 billion initial public offering in 2026. But some advertisers are skeptical. General Motors Co. said it is temporarily suspending advertising on Twitter until it has a better understanding of what will happen to Musk.

The vision is vague even for the employees. Musk’s mind can change frequently. Eventually, he spent months in court claiming the company’s user numbers were fraudulent and trying to get out of his original deal contract. Most recently, he tried to protect his rights to prosecute the late Twitter executives and the board. Now he says he owns Twitter “to try to help humanity.”

Employees also aren’t sure which teams or jobs will be cut. Musk seems to be ready to ditch Twitter and focus on the core product. “Software engineering will rule server operations and design,” he tweeted in early October. Some employees were invited to the next Wednesday’s staff meeting; According to people familiar with the matter, nothing was there. This raised doubts about which team would be cut.

Some employees may choose to leave simply for lifestyle reasons. Twitter allowed people to work from wherever they wanted; Musk says only “extraordinary” people should be given the privilege of working from home.

So far, he hasn’t been showing much confidence for Twitter employees. According to a person familiar with the matter, he’s asking Twitter’s engineers to print out his most recent 30-day code submissions, then bring them to Musk and his trusted colleagues at Tesla for review.

Those on Twitter who have endured earlier dramas, such as an active investor conflict and the Trump ban, like to joke that his tenure should be measured in dog years, a “normal” company with a year on Twitter. is equal to seven years. t constantly mired in chaos. That feeling, at least, may last.

— With assistance from Ed Ludlow.

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This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed.