How Elon Musk is altering Twitter, from mass layoffs to verify marks

Elon Musk has solely been accountable for Twitter since late October. However already, he’s turned the corporate and its platform the other way up.

Within the days after Musk took over, he booted high executives, slashed rank-and-file headcount by 50 p.c, pushed engineers to work more durable, and started fast-tracking a hodgepodge of doubtless revenue-generating options, together with charging customers to get or maintain a verification verify mark.

Musk’s new verify mark system — his first main product replace — induced chaos within the hours after its launch, as newly checkmarked customers flooded the app with pretend accounts, impersonating figures from Nintendo’s Mario character to former US President George W. Bush. Including to the chaos, by November 11, lower than per week because the new paid checkmark system was launched, it appeared that the Twitter Blue subscription service that allow you to purchase a checkmark was now not working for many individuals.

And whereas Musk didn’t instantly change any of Twitter’s insurance policies in opposition to offensive content material, within the hours after Musk took over there was a notable surge in hate speech on the app. A number of the customers posting felt emboldened by Musk’s “free speech absolutist” angle, and actively tried to check the bounds of what they might say on Twitter below the corporate’s new management. Others have examined the bounds of Musk’s free speech stance by making enjoyable of him personally.

Many present and former workers, social media lecturers, and human rights advocates are involved that Musk might change Twitter for the more serious, turning it into an much more intense cesspool of detrimental content material than it already is. However others hope Musk can breathe new life right into a platform that was already bleeding its most prolific customers and, for years, has struggled to show a revenue. In a employees assembly on November 10, Musk mentioned chapter was not out of the query if Twitter doesn’t work out a means to make more cash.

Listed here are among the most vital methods Musk has modified the corporate up to now.

Making individuals pay for blue verify marks

The primary official product change Musk confirmed after taking up Twitter was to begin charging $8 per 30 days for “blue verify marks,” the verification badges that Twitter at the moment offers to public figures like journalists, politicians, and celebrities. Musk needed to open up verify marks to extra individuals, so long as they’re keen to pay that worth.

Twitter can even give your account extra precedence in replies, mentions, and search in the event you subscribe for the brand new service — which means that those that don’t pay up might lose visibility on the platform.

Twitter’s verification program was initially designed to verify individuals actually are who they are saying they’re on-line. Earlier than you bought a verify mark, you needed to apply for one and present ID proving your actual id matched your Twitter identify. That helped Twitter’s person base make it possible for the account they have been taking a look at wasn’t an imposter.

Now, Musk has eliminated any sort of ID verification from Twitter Blue. Which means anybody who pays $8 a month can fake to be another person, with a verify mark subsequent to their identify. That’s induced main trolling, with some Twitter Blue accounts impersonating well-known individuals like LeBron James, George W. Bush, and even Mario, the Nintendo character. Most of the new pretend accounts use reasonable profile pictures, names, and handles, and have a verify mark subsequent to their identify, so it’s arduous to inform who’s actual or who’s pretend.

Elon appears to seek out all this amusing, replying with crying-of-laughter emojis to a number of tweets declaring the pretend accounts.

This alteration additionally induced main debate amongst notable figures who obtained their verify mark without cost — many of whom mentioned they aren’t keen to pay to maintain their verification. Fellow billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban criticized the brand new characteristic, saying Musk “killed essentially the most invaluable a part of Twitter” by making it more durable for him to seek out reliable details about breaking information occasions.

After a gaggle of individuals together with comic Kathy Griffin started trolling Musk’s new coverage by altering their names to “Elon Musk” and making enjoyable of the tech CEO, Musk suspended their accounts and introduced new guidelines: Any Twitter accounts concerned in impersonation not clearly labeled as “parody” can be instantly suspended with out warning, and any verified person who modifications their Twitter identify will briefly have their verify mark eliminated.

Musk additionally made one other sudden change when he axed a brand new “Official” grey verify mark (along with the blue one) rolled out on Thursday — meant to differentiate verified customers who’re additionally notable public figures. Inside hours of the discharge, Musk tweeted that he “killed” the characteristic, and the brand new verify marks left as shortly as they arrived.

Shortly after the characteristic was pulled again, Musk tweeted this rationalization: “Please notice that Twitter will do numerous dumb issues in coming months. We are going to maintain what works & change what doesn’t.”

As of November 11, the subscription service for purchasing checkmarks — Twitter Blue —had stopped working for a lot of customers. It’s unclear whether or not that’s as a result of the service was damaged or if Twitter had pulled the characteristic.

Shaking up Twitter’s inner tradition

Musk has been operating Twitter in his personal means, much like how he runs his different firms: in an advert hoc and intense style. Relatively than speaking to his workers first, Musk usually tweets no matter he’s pondering, together with his plans for the corporate.

Elon’s first message to his employees was despatched on November 9 round midnight Pacific time, asserting that he was ending Twitter’s remote-work-for-all coverage, efficient inside hours.

“Sorry that that is my first e mail to the entire firm however there isn’t a option to sugarcoat the message.” started the e-mail, which warned that “the financial image forward is dire” and that the trail ahead is “arduous” and “would require intense work to succeed.”

Within the first week after Musk’s takeover was full, Twitter employees obtained little official communication, reminiscent of emails or corporate-wide Slack messages, from Twitter’s govt management since Musk formally took over. One worker who spoke with Recode on the situation of anonymity referred to as it an “data vacuum.”

That’s been an adjustment for a lot of Twitter workers who’re used to a extra measured, communicative, and structured work tradition. One nameless Twitter worker advised the Washington Publish that the work environment below Elon was like “working in Trump’s White Home.”

Staff are turning to non-public or nameless communication platforms like Blind, Sign, and Discord to commiserate, a number of workers advised Recode, since they now not really feel they are often candid on inner Slack or e mail.

One other main change Elon is making to Twitter’s inner tradition is to drastically ramp up the tempo at which new options are developed.

Usually, product modifications like those that Musk is proposing — reminiscent of charging customers for verification — would take months and even years to implement at Twitter. Now, workers are being requested to execute them virtually in a single day.

This might drive the sort of innovation that Twitter, a money-losing enterprise, may want. However it might additionally depart employees demoralized, or worse, compromise the reliability and safety the app supplies to its a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of customers. Twitter already has current issues on this entrance: Former Twitter head of safety and inner whistleblower Peiter Zatko warned that the platform “was over a decade behind trade safety requirements” in September.

Gutting Twitter’s employees

Musk started his reign as Twitter’s chief by firing high executives. Inside hours of the deal closing, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of authorized coverage, belief, and security Vijaya Gadde have been proven the door. On November 10, Twitter’s high privateness and safety executives resigned, together with Chief Data Safety Officer Lea Kissner, the corporate’s chief privateness officer, and chief compliance officer, based on a number of studies. On the identical day, Twitter’s head of belief and security, Yoel Roth, who in current days had publicly reassured those that Twitter was nonetheless following its content material moderation insurance policies, additionally left.

The week after he took over, Musk continued firing executives, together with Twitter’s advert chief, normal supervisor of core tech, and chief advertising and marketing officer Leslie Berland (who just some days earlier despatched a cheery notice asserting that Musk was visiting the San Francisco places of work). He additionally pulled in additional than 50 Tesla engineers to work for Twitter and assembled his personal circle of trusted advisers.

Now, Musk is shifting on to gutting Twitter’s rank-and-file employees. He has reportedly laid off an estimated 50 p.c — upward of three,700 workers — from the corporate. Twitter knowledgeable its employees that layoffs would occur by 9 am PT on Friday in a company-wide e mail. By late Thursday night, a number of workers advised Recode or posted publicly on Twitter that they’d already been locked out of their work email and Slack accounts with none formal discover of whether or not they had been laid off.

These cuts are the most important in Twitter’s historical past, and a number of other present and former workers Recode spoke with are involved that consequently Twitter’s operations as a platform might be in danger. Musk has additionally reportedly deliberate to slash $1 billion from Twitter’s infrastructure prices, reminiscent of server house, based on a report from Reuters, furthering these issues.

Whereas Musk hasn’t addressed workers instantly in regards to the cuts, on Friday afternoon Musk tweeted in regards to the layoffs and mentioned them at an investor convention. He framed the layoffs as mandatory as a result of earlier than the deal, “Twitter was having fairly critical income challenges and value challenges,” based on the New York Occasions.

Forward of the layoffs, some workers have been combating to maintain their jobs and show their worth to the corporate by engaged on particular high-priority tasks, a lot of them at Musk’s path.

A number of Twitter workers advised Recode that some colleagues labored 12-hour shifts over the weekend and slept on sofas within the workplace with a view to make Musk’s grueling deadlines.

“We’re making an attempt to shoot our shot,” mentioned one Twitter worker.

However many workers who have been pulled into particular tasks and labored grueling shifts have been nonetheless laid off, sources advised Recode.

One Twitter worker described the morale on the firm after the layoffs as low, and mentioned that many colleagues who survived this spherical of cuts want they’d gotten laid off and gotten severance as an alternative. Twitter is giving many laid-off workers full pay and advantages via no less than January, though it’s not clear if this utilized to all workers, notably these exterior the US, sources mentioned.

Shortly after the cuts, a gaggle of 5 workers sued Twitter in a class-action lawsuit, alleging the corporate did not notify them of the upcoming layoffs as required by the federal Employee Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act, that requires sure employers to provide a 60-day discover for mass layoffs within the US.

It appears that evidently Twitter has modified its thoughts about some workers. The corporate reportedly requested dozens of not too long ago laid-off workers in the event that they needed to return to work on the firm, based on a report from Bloomberg.

Emboldening the trolls

Musk has mentioned his main motive for purchasing Twitter was to make it a haven without cost speech. He’s echoed conservatives’ longstanding issues that Twitter is politically biased in opposition to right-wing speech regardless of the shortage of proof of that bias.

Conservative politicians like former president Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have celebrated Elon Musk’s possession of Twitter as a serious win, with Trump saying he’s glad that Twitter “will now not be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs.”

However Musk’s extra laissez-faire philosophy on content material moderation has additionally induced one other group of individuals to rejoice: trolls spreading racist, sexist, and in any other case hateful speech.

One instance: There was a 500 p.c improve in makes use of of the n-word on Twitter within the 12 hours after Musk’s deal was accomplished, based on a research from the Network Contagion Research Institute, regardless that none of Twitter’s guidelines have modified on the matter.

Twitter has mentioned it’s engaged on decreasing the visibility of those posts. However knowledge factors like this have spooked a number of main advertisers that don’t need their model affiliated with offensive content material, together with Normal Motors, Volkswagen, Audi, and Pfizer — who’ve are ready to see extra about what path the corporate will take below Musk’s management earlier than they resume adverts.

Musk has tried to relax advertiser issues by tweeting a public notice saying that he doesn’t need Twitter to show right into a “free-for-all hellscape.” On Thursday, Musk spoke with leaders of civil rights teams just like the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and Coloration of Change, promising them that Twitter takes hate speech severely, and that he received’t reinstate any banned accounts (e.g., Trump) till after he units up a content material moderation advisory council, which he mentioned will no less than take a number of weeks.

Musk additionally advised civil rights leaders he would reverse his determination to restrict the quantity of employees who can entry content material moderation programs, one other certainly one of their issues.

However by Friday morning, civil rights leaders organizing below the banner “#StopToxicTwitter Coalition” said that Musk had failed to carry true to his guarantees — and ramped up their calls for for main advertisers to pause all adverts on the platform, Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter had a “large drop in income” resulting from “activist teams” who he accused of making an attempt to “destroy free speech in America.”

It’s not simply advertisers which might be leaving Twitter due to Elon; there are additionally early indicators that Elon’s takeover and the ensuing negativity are inflicting some customers to depart.

One report in MIT Know-how Assessment estimated some 877,000 accounts have been deactivated within the week after Musk’s deal closed. That’s greater than double the same old quantity in that very same time interval, based on knowledge from the agency Bot Sentinel that MIT Tech Assessment cited.

In fact, these are all estimates, and solely from a brief window of time. Twitter has additionally been dropping its most useful “heavy tweeters” in droves for some time now, based on a leaked inner report lined by Reuters, and that predates Musk’s takeover. However time will inform whether or not Musk exacerbates Twitter’s current downside of customers fleeing the platform.

Throwing different concepts on the wall

Apart from charging for Twitter verification, Musk has been planning a complete new set of modifications to the platform. Whereas none of those are confirmed but, they’re reportedly within the works or being examined.

These modifications embrace making individuals pay for sure varieties of “excessive danger” video content material (many are speculating it could be grownup video content material), based on the Washington Publish; bringing again Vine, the short-form video app Twitter acquired and later shuttered; altering the login web page to the discover web page; charging individuals for sending DMs to high-profile customers.

Twitter is contemplating coming into the funds enterprise — an space Musk has expertise in going again to his pre-PayPal days — based on a New York Occasions report citing paperwork filed with the US Treasury Division. It might be a part of Musk’s acknowledged ambitions to make Twitter a “superapp” referred to as X, which might be much like WeChat in China that’s used not only for posting messages however for issues like making purchasing purchases or ordering meals supply.

In any other case, it appears as if Elon is throwing a bunch of concepts out to see which of them work. As one investor in Musk’s deal, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, mentioned on the Net Summit convention in November, he expects solely 10 p.c of Musk’s concepts “will stick.”

Up to now, a lot of Musk’s concepts (like Vine and paid movies) are previous ones that Twitter has already tried — and failed at.

Over time, it should turn into clear if Musk will have the ability to efficiently resurrect these previous concepts — and his new ones, like paying for a verify mark — with a really totally different work tradition and employees than Twitter had earlier than.

We’ll maintain updating this publish as Musk continues to form Twitter, for higher or worse.

Replace, November 11, 10:10 am: This story, initially printed on November 4, has been up to date with new particulars in regards to the Twitter Blue subscription service, Twitter govt departures, and Musk’s communication with employees.