Elon Musk's Turbulent Timeline At Twitter: How One Man Ruined Internet's Favourite App

When Elon Musk said that he wanted to take over Twitter, we were promised a "de facto public town square" that would amplify one of the key principles of democracy - free speech. Instead, we got a foul-smelling potpourri of layoffs, abrupt policy changes, short-sighted implementations, and empty promises.

Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.

What should be done? https://t.co/aPS9ycji37

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2022

Reuters

In a conversation on Twitter Spaces this month, Elon Musk described Twitter as a "plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don't work." He's also justified the extreme cost-cutting measures, in part due to his hefty $44 billion takeover of the company.

Here are the key events that have rocked Twitter since Elon Musk took over.

When profit trumps free speech

Elon Musk screams "democracy" and "free speech" every time he's called out for sympathising with unruly elements on Twitter. Recently, he's also gone on to mock the nomenclature of queer-positive pronouns while attempting to demean Dr. Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who led US' fight against Covid-19.

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

Regardless, the most puzzling aspect of Mr. Musk's persona is how he perceives free speech as an absolute phenomenon with no caveats. Soon after taking over, Elon Musk reversed Twitter's permanent bans on famous people with well-known hateful rhetoric - remember Donald Trump, yep, the same man whose fans attempted an insurrection at the US Capitol? While many of his observers didn't mind that much, Elon Musk recently seemed to agree with the suggestion that only paying subscribers of Twitter Blue should be able to voice their opinions on policy changes at Twitter through polls.

Good point. Twitter will make that change.

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022

Reuters

While catering to populism is entirely enticing, it's also dangerous. This same populist approach told Elon Musk that people no longer want him to be the CEO of Twitter (via a poll, of course). Now, Musk claims that he's hunting someone who is "foolish enough" to take the job.

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

Also read: Elon Musk Says Twitter Has 'No Successor' After Asking Users If He Should Step Down

In the absence of many key teams that moderate content on Twitter, the future of content moderation on the platform can make many people uncomfortable. And if you've been using Twitter in the recent weeks and have felt a change in the kind of content you're being fed, it's not just you. Most employees from core teams were let go, and others resigned after realising that Musk's vision for Twitter is unsustainable, including the company's former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, along with Twitter's former chief information security officer, Lea Kissner

Now, all policy decisions are made on Twitter through polls, sometimes more than one poll for the same purpose, all leading to the same outcome - chaos!

Twitter Verification

Don't fix what isn't broken! While it was inspiring to see how Musk was handling Twitter in the beginning, instilling the kind of leadership that has been absent in social media companies of late, nothing worked out as it would seem.

we¡¯re relaunching @TwitterBlue on Monday ¨C subscribe on web for $8/month or on iOS for $11/month to get access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark ? pic.twitter.com/DvvsLoSO50

¡ª Twitter (@Twitter) December 10, 2022

Elon Musk was extremely bothered by Twitter's verification method. He also replied affirmatively to a user who suggested that many big names got their verified badges by paying good money to employees at Twitter.

Reuters

One fine day, Elon Musk decided that anyone with $8 a month can get verified on Twitter and naturally, mayhem ensued. Accounts began impersonating celebrities and big companies. This became peculiarly dangerous when accounts posing as political officials were being taken seriously by Twitter's digital inhabitants.

Also read: Twitter's New Colour-Coded Labels And Checkmarks For Verified Accounts Are Here

Not much later, he reversed the change, and instead rolled out a colour-coded plan to make verification more... complicated? Regardless, it all comes back to one thing - why create problems that didn't exist instead of dealing with more pressing concerns like election engineering, and proliferation of hate speech.

Abrupt ban on journalists (now reversed)

Two weeks back, a lot of Twitter users woke up with their accounts suspended - including many prominent journalists who had been critical of Elon Musk's handling of Twitter. Musk claimed that they were in violation of Twitter's new policy that disallowed location sharing of others, in this case, him.

so far, i¡¯ve been able to confirm about half the accounts suspended posted links to the jet tracker thing in violation of the new doxx¡¯ing policy. unclear just yet about the rest, but i think it¡¯s safe to say the rule is for real. https://t.co/8MDCG19kNO

¡ª Mike Solana (@micsolana) December 16, 2022

He also suspended @ElonJet for tracking his jet's whereabouts in real-time, citing an assassination attempt. Not much later, he held a poll to collect feedback from the people - a quality we still appreciate but cannot fully grasp.

Reuters

They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

Also read: Elon Musk Bans Accounts Of Several Journalists On Twitter For 'Doxxing' Him

People voted to reverse the ban on accounts of journalists, after which their Twitter profiles were restored. But this entire episode left a bad taste in the mouths of journalists and analysts alike, who felt that Elon Musk's initial promise of free-speech was effectively dead - as if killing the dreams of a content moderation council wasn't enough.

View count is bizarre

We don't know who told Elon Musk that turning the entire social media platform into a visitation counting system would work, but it has completely changed how Twitter appears. For people who have been using the platform for over a decade, this might come off as a deal-breaker, for Twitter is not Instagram.

Reuters

Regardless, Elon Musk's "view count" shows how many times each Tweet has been viewed right below it. While there might be some novelty in this feature for business accounts and influencers, for regular users of the website, this just adds to the chaos. Musk's rationale is to show how alive the website really is, but it ends up doing the opposite - revealing the disparity between the number of likes and views - making Twitter more Instagram-like.

Also read: Twitter's New Feature Shows 'View Count' Below Every Tweet And Users Aren't Pleased

Musk has said that view count would become an optional feature, but until it does, users are forced to see how many people have seen their Tweets - serving little to no purpose at the user's end (of course, unless you're a business account). It makes Tweets look bizarre and has the potential to make people self-police their Tweets in anticipation of public approval or rejection. Aesthetic oversight aside, the feature does little to make Twitter stronger and the app would have been better off without it.

Third-party links

What if Twitter banned all links that lead to third-party apps, or specifically Twitter's competitors like Instagram and Facebook? That actually happened this month when Twitter abruptly rolled out an ill-thought policy that would essentially prevent users from sharing links belonging to Twitter's competitors.

This caused an uproar on the platform - including the disapproval of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. After the entire fiasco ended in another policy reversal for Musk, he apologised for the same on Twitter and promised that all policy decisions would need the public's stamp of approval (read polls) on Twitter.

doesn¡¯t make sense

¡ª jack (@jack) December 18, 2022

Reuters

Say whatever you will, it cannot be easy to lead the most chaotic place on the internet. Regardless, we would love for Twitter to retain all its signature qualities that make it Twitter without compromising on its promise of dealing with hate speech and harmful content.

So far, Twitter seems to have restored more than 12,000 suspended accounts in a move that has polarised Twitter even more. And the fact that Musk consistently reinforces conspiracies on Twitter as its CEO isn't a good look. Regardless, we cannot wait to see what becomes of the platform, even though a research claims that Twitter could end up losing 32 million users in two years.

Enter Twitter Files

When Elon Musk promised to reveal irregularities within Twitter from before his time, he started releasing a bunch of internal documents that point to Twitter's problems with bias, wherein various users were labelled in the following way - high profile, do not amplify, and trends blacklist. Its unclear what any of these really mean, because the documents are really vague.

Also read: Twitter To Lose 32 Million Users In Two Years After Elon Musk Takeover, Report Says

When Elon Musk promised free speech to us, we assumed that it'd apply to the platform and not to their internal communications. Regardless, honesty is a great place to start any business, and even Twitter's founder Jack Dorsey has urged Elon Musk to release the so-called Twitter Files in its entirety.

What Twitter Files do claim is that a series of conservative accounts in the US were purposely shadowbanned to limit their reach through a committee of top Twitter executives known as "Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support."

Reuters

The only issue here is that Twitter has referred to this kind of mechanism in a FAQ section which claims that some accounts' reach is limited through a combination of algorithms and decision making by humans, and that this process is devoid of any political ideology. Musk has long claimed that Twitter's past executives purposely limited the reach of conservative accounts. But when misogyny, homophobia, and Islamophobia come into play, such rhetoric usually emerges from conservative accounts on social media.

The weirdest part of it all? Musk's claim that he hasn't actually seen Twitter Files yet. So, what is the point of this exercise, then? A distraction, if you will. Don't forget that Twitter now wants to sell your personal data to advertisers.

Whatever happened to bots?

When Elon Musk attempted to pull out of the deal to buy Twitter at the last minute, he cited the company's inability to provide accurate information about bot accounts (automated spam accounts) on the platform.

Also read: Elon Musk Has Reinstated 12,000 Banned Accounts Since Taking Over Twitter: Report

But since he was forced to buy Twitter, the concern of bots seems to have vanished (until recently when he lost a pivotal poll about whether he should resign as CEO). Not too long ago, Musk had Tweeted about "Twitter usage (by real humans) reaching all-time highs." So, what is the truth?

Reuters

Before the deal was finalised, Elon Musk had claimed that Twitter's bots could make up 20% of all users (four times of what Twitter declared). Back then, Twitter's former CEO Parag Agrawal had claimed that only 5% of all accounts on Twitter make up for bot presence.

What do you think - is Elon Musk doing a good job at Twitter? Let us know in the comments below. For more in the world of technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com.

References

Warzel, C. (2022, December 15). Elon Musk¡¯s Twitter Files Are Bait. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-twitter-files-documents-bari-weiss/672421/

TIMESOFINDIA.COM. (2022, December 21). Elon Musk¡¯s tweet suggests he can¡¯t make up his mind on Twitter bots. The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/elon-musks-tweet-suggests-he-cant-make-up-his-mind-on-twitter-bots/articleshow/96401157.cms

Chakravarti, A. (2022, July 11). Elon Musk is not buying Twitter, here¡¯s why he is terminating deal. India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/elon-musk-is-not-buying-twitter-states-multiple-reasons-to-terminate-the-deal-1973641-2022-07-09

Elon Musk says Twitter in precarious position, defends cost cuts. (2022, December 22). The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/elon-musk-says-twitter-in-precarious-position-defends-cost-cuts/articleshow/96413370.cms