Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, has been making a ton of changes to the social media app since his acquisition concluded on Oct. 27. Musk’s promise to “return comedy to Twitter” has been proven false. Instead, we’ve seen Musk promote the return and continuation of hate.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter seemed to start as a public gag and effort to push the platform to be more right-leaning. He attempted to back out of the deal, but after an extensive legal battle over the summer, Twitter eventually won out, and Musk agreed to a $44 billion buyout of the company.
Musk wasted no time making changes to the platform. He has already fired roughly half of Twitter’s 7,500 worldwide employees, including 90% of employees staffed in India. Musk claimed the cutbacks were needed because Twitter was losing millions of dollars a day.
Shortly after his acquisition was official, Musk tweeted that “comedy is now legal” on the platform. This tweet aged poorly as Musk quickly turned around and began suspending parody and comedy accounts.
Comedians and other accounts changed their profile pictures to unattractive photos of Twitter’s new owner as a joke. They were quickly suspended by the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist.”
Kathy Griffin was among the most notable accounts that saw suspension. Within less than a day of changing her picture and making jokes about Musk, her account was shut down.
“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk said in a tweet.
Many accounts who changed their name or picture to make fun of Musk were quickly shut down, even if they had “parody” written in their bio, like the account of influencer Ethan Klein.
The parody issue coincides with verification problems also brought on by Musk. Previously, public figures or institutions could apply for verification, giving them a checkmark next to their name certifying that they were the official account of said entity. However, Musk has changed the rules. Instead, accounts now have to pay $8 a month for their checkmark, and anyone can buy.
Many official accounts have already dropped their checkmarks rather than be forced to pay for them. With these new, strict impersonation rules, distinguishing the real accounts from the fake will be a huge issue. Many real accounts could be banned as a result. Additionally, Musk has publicly considered the idea of putting all of Twitter behind a paywall.
There is clearly part of Musk that does care about free speech, as he reinstated Kanye West’s Twitter account after his recent antisemitic controversy which resulted in many major brands and celebrities cutting ties with the rapper. Despite West’s hateful and dangerous ramblings on the app, Musk welcomed him back, once again giving him a platform for his hate and insanity. So, Musk promotes free speech on the platform, but only if it’s from the brains of hateful bigots rather than comedians criticizing his choices.
Twitter may finally be seeing it’s death after Musk’s takeover. His rapid changes, layoffs, paywalls and hypocritical views on free speech will deeply change and maybe even ruin the app for its nearly 300 million worldwide users.
Tracy Mullinax can be reached at [email protected]
Greg Palmer
Point of context. Griffin not only changed her pic to Musk, she changed her display name to Elon Musk, and was posting and replying as though she was musk. Other users had no idea it was not him - especially since she had a blue-check by her name. Additionally, he reinstated her account along with many other offensive lowlifes.