Twitter and Past Issues and Drama

 Twitter and Past Issues and Drama

    Twitter being one of the largest social media platforms comes with a lot of issues, both within the app as well as in management. Ensuring that user freedom is maintained while also managing potentially harmful messages is a very thin line to walk and there will inevitably be slip-ups that make users unhappy. However, that is not the sort of issue to be addressed here, rather, identifying the instabilities in the core of the company and their roots are far more important.

    On April 14th, 2022, Elon Musk made a buy offer to Twitter executives for $44 billion. This offer came after he had purchased a large amount of stock from the company, making him the highest shareholder in the company as well. The offer was accepted on the 25th, followed by Musk's reform plan for the platform, headlining changes such as making the algorithm open source, removing bots, and promoting free speech. Issues arose when Elon Musk attempted to back out of the deal in July citing that the company had broken the contract, leading to a lawsuit and eventual retracting of Musk's claims. 



    On October 27th the deal was closed and Elon Musk became Twitter's new CEO. Immediately following this, Musk took to implementing many changes, firing multiple executives, laying off half of the company's employees, and imposing a hardcore work plan for the remaining employees, leading to yet another wave of resignations. These rapid changes led to massive instability in the platform, with many users becoming incredibly concerned about the direction it was heading in. 

    Elon Musk's management of the platform has been incredibly personal, with many of his policies being announced and "voted for" on his personal Twitter account. This personal approach leads to him asking Twitter users their opinions on potential changes, responding to tweets concerning issues, and most importantly his poll relating to if he should step down as CEO, a poll that received 17.5 million answers. Musk has also instituted changes such as making account verification a paid service and boosting engagement for those accounts as a move towards the free speech ideal he promised upon taking his position as CEO.


    This personal approach has led to many users feeling as though their free speech is in fact in jeopardy due to their unwillingness to pay the verification fee. Their tweets and accounts would be suppressed and thus their voices would be silenced, potentially making them casualties in Musk's war against "spambots". On top of these changes with the release of the Twitter algorithm, users being able to see exactly what's going on behind the scenes along with the discovery of the censoring of the Ukrainian war, Twitter users are becoming increasingly uncertain about the future of the platform as well as worried about their tweets potentially getting suppressed without warning or reason.


Sources:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk

https://aakashgupta.substack.com/p/the-real-twitter-files-the-algorithm

https://news.yahoo.com/analysis-twitter-algorithm-code-reveals-072800540.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon_Musk

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html

  

Comments

  1. amour narcisse thompsonApril 6, 2023 at 11:40 AM

    Elon Musk’s influence on twitter users and the company as a whole in a way show that wealth can enable individuals with great power to influence the aspects of other people’s lives.

    ReplyDelete

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