Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, is putting his stamp on the influential social media platform.
Immediately after Musk bought Twitter late last week, the world’s richest man wasted no time making changes to the social network. From firing executives to proposing a new content moderation council, a lot unfolded even in the first 24 hours with Musk at the helm.
But Twitter’s saga with Musk was chaotic even before he took control. The two sides secured a pact for him to buy the company in April, but Musk later attempted to back out of the deal, provoking Twitter to sue him. After months of messy pretrial skirmishes, the SpaceX and Tesla leader finally closed his acquisition of the company right before a deadline that would have forced them to go head-to-head in open court.
“The bird is freed,” Musk, who has more than 112 million followers on Twitter, tweeted on the night he completed his $44 billion purchase.
Here’s the most recent news about Musk’s takeover of Twitter:
Oct. 31: Layoff plans, board dissolved, no Trump decision yet
Musk reportedly plans to lay off 25% of Twitter’s workforce, The Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources.
Changes to Twitter’s leadership are already underway. A new securities filing shows Twitter’s board of directors was dissolved the day Musk took over and identified Musk as the “sole director” of the company.
Musk, who has previously said he would reverse former US President Donald Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter, is still getting questions about whether he’ll follow through on that. Twitter booted Trump from its platform in 2021 following the US Capitol Hill riots because of concerns that his remarks could incite more violence.
“If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!” Musk tweeted.
Oct. 30: Musk toys with check mark changes and Vine revival, tweets misinformation
Musk has been busy suggesting changes to Twitter. He tweeted a poll about whether Twitter should bring back Vine, a short-form video app that Twitter shut down in 2017.
Twitter also reportedly plans to charge $20 per month for its Twitter Blue subscription service, and verified users would lose their blue check mark if they don’t do so in 90 days, The Verge reported, citing anonymous sources. Platformer’s Casey Newton reported that Twitter is thinking about charging $5 a month to verified users if they want to keep their blue check marks.
Musk stirred up more controversy with his personal tweets: He tweeted and then deleted a link to an article with a baseless conspiracy theory about last week’s attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in San Francisco. The article came from a website called the Santa Monica Observer. Fact-checking website Media Bias/Fact Check noted the outlet publishes right-wing misinformation
Oct. 29: Twitter battles surge in racist slurs
Twitter is trying to combat anonymous accounts that started to tweet racist slurs hours after Musk took over Twitter.
Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, tweeted that the company has “seen a small number of accounts post a ton of Tweets that include slurs and other derogatory terms.” He added that “more than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts.”
“Bottom line up front: Twitter’s policies haven’t changed. Hateful conduct has no place here. And we’re taking steps to put a stop to an organized effort to make people think we have,” he tweeted.
Let’s talk for a minute about slurs, hateful conduct, and trolling campaigns.
Bottom line up front: Twitter’s policies haven’t changed. Hateful conduct has no place here. And we’re taking steps to put a stop to an organized effort to make people think we have.
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) October 30, 2022
Oct. 28: Twitter to form content moderation council
Advocacy groups have raised concerns that Musk’s control over Twitter would allow more hate speech and misinformation to surface on the platform. Musk has vowed publicly he doesn’t want Twitter to become a “free-for-all hellscape” but has also said that he’s “against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”
Musk said the company would form a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints.” The company won’t make any major content decisions or account reinstatements before the council convenes, he tweeted.
Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.
No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
A securities filing on Oct. 28 also noted that Twitter’s stock is being delisted on the New York Stock Exchange. Twitter, a publicly traded company, became a private one.
Oct. 27: Musk takes over Twitter, fires executives
Musk became Twitter’s new owner and reportedly fired key executives at the company, including Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal policy, trust and safety.
Earlier in the day, Musk tweeted a letter to advertisers. The billionaire, who once tweeted that he hated advertising, now posted that “advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you.”
Musk met with employees throughout the week, carried a sink into Twitter’s headquarters as a photo op and changed his profile to “Chief Twit” before news broke that the deal had been completed.
