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The chaotic first month of the Elon Musk era on Twitter

2022-11-27T11:15:48.314Z


Mass layoffs, resignations, the flight of advertisers, the reinstatement of Trump and the failed launch of the subscription service have been broadcast live on the social network


Elon Musk, loading a sink at the Twitter headquarters the day he took control of the social network.AP

In part, Elon Musk has lived up to expectations.

In part, he has surprised everyone with his lurches, swings and hasty decisions.

Chaos has taken over Twitter in just one month, since on October 27 the tycoon closed the purchase of the social network for some 44,000 million dollars, an inflated price that he regretted having offered.

Mass layoffs, resignations (also massive), lurches in the policy of moderation, the failed launch of the new subscription model and the rehabilitation of former President Donald Trump's account have marked the first month of the new era.

As Ashlee Vance, Musk's biographer, said in statements to EL PAÍS, for the richest man in the world "chaos is the standard operating procedure."

He has shown it.

It's been a hectic 30 days since Musk showed up carrying a sink at Twitter headquarters.

The world's richest man had tried to undo his $54.20-per-share offer for the company, but was cornered in court.

He ended up agreeing to close the operation for good to avoid a trial that in the preliminary proceedings was already becoming embarrassing.

His first decision as the owner of the company was to fire the CEO, Parag Agrawal;

CFO Ned Segal;

to the legal and content manager, Vijaya Gadde, and the general counsel, Sean Edgett, armored with multimillion-dollar compensation.

After closing the purchase, the billionaire proclaimed: "The bird is released."

Users of the social network greeted the arrival of Musk with an increase in racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, sexist, homophobic and hate messages.

The Twitter buyer released a message to try to reassure advertisers: “Obviously, Twitter cannot become a free-for-all hell where you can say anything without consequence.

In addition to respecting the laws of the country, our platform must be warm and welcoming for everyone, where you can choose the desired experience according to each one's preferences," he told them in a tweet in which he said that Twitter aspired to be "the platform most respected advertising company in the world.

The facts have gone in another direction and advertisers have not believed Musk's message.

According to a report published last Tuesday, Twitter has lost half of its top 100 advertisers in less than a month.

Some (such as Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Merck, and Novartis) have declared it openly, but many more have simply stopped inserting ads without saying anything.

Among these companies are giants such as American Express, AT&T, Coca-Cola, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Dell, Diageo, Chanel, Heineken, HP, Meta, Marriott, Nestle, Verizon or Wells Fargo.

Some other major advertisers haven't pulled out entirely, but they have slowed the pace of investment.

The day after closing the purchase, the billionaire born in Pretoria (South Africa) announced, again through the social network, that "Twitter will form a content moderation council with very diverse points of view."

"No major content decisions will be made or accounts will be reset before the council meets."

Another broken promise.

But he himself added to the disinformation by tweeting a hoax that weekend about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Later, he deleted the tweet.

The first assignment to the programmers of the social network was to create a subscription model with which to charge for the blue verification mark, which certifies the authenticity of the account.

On Tuesday, November 1, he announced that he had decided to charge 8 dollars a month for that distinction plus other services.

The next day, Wednesday the 2nd, it emerged that Musk planned to immediately lay off approximately 3,700 employees, half of the workforce.

On Thursday the 3rd, the notice became official: "This action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the success of the company in the future," the company said.

On Friday, November 4, the layoff messages arrived as Musk was shutting down the headquarters for fear of some kind of internal sabotage.

Musk has transferred programmers and engineers from Tesla and SpaceX, two of the companies he founded,

Without truce

There was no truce.

On Saturday, November 5, the Twitter app began offering the checkmark subscription service at $7.99 per month in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

It didn't last long.

On Tuesday there were legislative elections in the United States and Musk decided to postpone the launch to avoid an avalanche of misinformation from verified accounts.

The tycoon asked for the vote for the Republicans on the eve of the electoral appointment.

After the election, Twitter launched pay-for-verification again and chaos ensued.

Musk's haste prevented the proper filters from being in place.

The social network was filled with celebrities with the blue mark who were actually impostors.

A verified fake LeBron James asked to leave the Los Angeles Lakers.

A fraudulently certified Lockheed Martin announced that it stops selling arms to the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia and has plummeted 5% on the stock market.

Pharmaceutical Eli Lilly collapsed after announcing another fake Twitter profile that insulin was going to be free.

A new George W. Bush said he missed "killing Iraqis."

There was even a "verified" Jesus Christ.

The chaos unleashed by the impostors with the blue mark led the company to discontinue that option.

Musk initially said that the service would return on November 29, but this Friday he has delayed it again until December 2.

There will no longer be a single blue mark that certifies the authenticity of the account, but now there will be three differentiated categories with colors: blue (people), gold (companies) and gray (official accounts).

Musk has also rectified his policy of giving the mark without any control and it will be manually checked again that it corresponds to the person who registers it.

resignations

Parallel to the chaos in the network, there was another one inside the offices.

Musk sent an ultimatum that expired on Thursday, November 17: “In the future, to build a groundbreaking Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will have to be extremely tough.

This will mean working many hours at high intensity.

Only exceptional performance will constitute a pass ”, he said and invited to accept those conditions or leave the company with a three-month severance pay.

Hundreds of employees rejected the ultimatum to assume a new corporate culture and preferred to leave the company, whose workforce was already underperforming due to the first wave of layoffs.

"The best stay, so I'm not super worried," Musk responded, though he later tried to convince engineers and programmers to retain them.

That night, the employees decided to attack Musk with a projection on the facade of the company's headquarters in San Francisco: "Mediocre child, petty racist, supreme parasite, apartheid profiteer, cowardly billionaire," some of the messages read. projected.

As chaos ensued at Twitter headquarters, the mogul forgot about his promise to create a moderation council and launched a poll to see if he would return Trump's account, suspended since the days after the January 6 assault on the Capitol. 2021 for his messages inciting violence.

“The people have spoken.

Trump will be reinstated.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God, in Latin]”, the businessman tweeted after a survey in which 15 million Twitter users voted, 51.8% of them in favor of the return of Trump.

Following that decision, Musk launched a new poll: "Should Twitter offer blanket amnesty to suspended accounts, as long as they haven't broken the law or

egregiously

spammed ?"

3.16 million Twitter accounts voted, less than 1% of users of the social network and less than 3% of Musk's own followers.

72.4% supported the “amnesty” and 27.6% opposed it.

Musk sentenced again: “The people have spoken.

The amnesty starts next week.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God, in Latin]”.

The tycoon boasts that Twitter is breaking records for daily active users.

Twitter's problems are discussed on Twitter and the social network does not stop grabbing headlines.

Added to this is the World Cup, one of the busiest periods.

This Friday, Musk has released his latest announcement, in a response tweet to another user of the social network: the return of payment for verification with these three categories, for people (blue), companies (gold) and official accounts (grey). , on December 2.

So for next week there will still be news: the start of the "amnesty" and more detailed explanations on how the new verification system works.

That, while waiting for new ideas, occurrences or tweets from the businessman.


Source: elparis

All business articles on 2022-11-27

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