Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover
Graphic done by Aysa Taran
October 27, 2022 marks the fateful day that South African billionaire Elon Musk began his Twitter reign. After months of deliberation and debates, Musk has officially bought out Twitter after being its largest shareholder since April of this year. Now, a little over a month after the big buyout, the reviews are in: Musk’s Twitter takeover is one of utter chaos.
After only a few days as the owner of Twitter, Musk used his newfound power to follow through with his threats of layoffs. Using Twitter’s consistent loss of
revenue as justification, Musk fired 3,700 employees (half of his workforce) and offered them a lofty severance package. Those who remained employed were met with harsh working conditions, causing Musk to offer up an ultimatum; either accept the grim working conditions or take the severance package and get out. Many employees opted for the second option and left, causing Twitter to lose an additional 110 employees.
To add on to the pile, several days later Musk announced and launched a new verification system for Twitter. Users had the ability to purchase verification through Twitter Blue, allowing anyone to become a verified user. Quickly after this launch, Twitter paused subscription to Twitter Blue as a result of impersonations of both companies and public figures. Some notable impersonations include faulty tweets from McDonalds, former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, American Girl Doll, Coca-Cola, and BP Global. Certain impersonations even caused stocks to slightly fall for a few large companies.
Overall, the most prominent argument stemming from Musk’s Twitter purchase is in regards to free speech. Since his takeover, many have come to describe him as a “free speech absolutist”, meaning he refuses to ban many users on the basis of them simply exhibiting their constitutional right to freedom of speech. Musk’s freedom ideals are displayed through his unbanning of the former U.S. President Donald Trump from the app, in addition to the prolific amounts of tweets he posts daily. This self-titled “Chief Twit” was noted to have tweeted 105 times in the span of a week. This argument has stirred the pot, causing many to question how far is too far when it comes to freedom of speech. Should people really be able to post whatever they want?
In the end, time will only tell if Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover yields more success or catastrophe. But if the past month has only been a glimpse into Musk’s Twitter ownership, I am sure we are along for an intriguing ride.
