The Time to Close: The Bid to Buy Twitter from Musk at a Cost of $43 Billion vs $37 Billion
The deposition was moved after Musk moved his previous deposition from late September to October 6th and 7th. It was just days before the deposition that he announced that he was honor the contract his lawyers had negotiated. That deposition was probably going to be uncomfortable; a judge found that Musk likely deleted Signal messages that were relevant to the case. Musk received a court order to stop proceedings so he could close the deal by October 28th.
Anyone who’s been in the market to buy a house knows about “best and final” offers. In his opening salvo, Musk claimed his bid to buy Twitter was exactly that. He was offering Twitter’s shareholders a pretty fair premium: $43 billion for a company with a $37 billion market cap.
The Musk-Putnam Trial Revisited: Trump Is Trying to Win or Fail: Trump Will Not Perturbate Twitter
As it stands, the trial is still scheduled to proceed on October 17th. The Delaware Chancery Court judge overseeing the case wrote that there had been no request for a stay or a stipulation to stay the action. “I, therefore, continue to press on toward our trial set to begin on October 17.” But given the current negotiations, Bloomberg notes that the trial is “almost certain” to be put on hold.
Musk is expected to share more about his plan for Twitter with employees on Friday. After news broke that he was firing executives, he took to social media and said the following:
Perhaps most immediately, many will be watching to see how soon Musk could let former President Donald Trump back on the platform, as he has previously said he would do. Depending on the timing, such a move could have major implications for the upcoming US midterm elections, as well as the 2024 Presidential campaign.
The acquisition will give Musk more power. The billionaire already owns and has a significant stake in companies developing cars, rockets and satellites as well as more experimental ventures such as brain implants. Now he controls a social media platform that shapes how hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news.
The fake and scam accounts that are involved in replies to Musk’s messages are the ones that he pledges to defeat or die trying.
The Twitter Abundance of Musk and the Capitol Debate: a Tribute to the CEO of the Wall Street Collapse Incident
The departures come just hours before a deadline set by a Delaware judge to finalize the deal on Friday. She threatened to schedule a trial if no agreement was reached.
Such a move could also have ripple effects across the social media landscape. Although smaller than some of its rivals,Twitter has a role to play in how the industry handles problematic content, such as it did in the January 6 Capitol riot where it was the first to ban President Trump.
Musk and his brain trust will have to do something to increase revenue, as they have to deal with a huge debt burden and Blue that is backward economics. And whatever they choose, it seems increasingly clear that Twitter will never be the same.
Many employees at the service noted the absence of the current CEO who Musk soured on after he started talking about joining the board. A current person at the company said that he had been completely absent for weeks. One person said that he had ghosted them. There are some similar comments about Argawal in the employee section of Blind and the anonymous message board for tech workers.
The execs received handsome payouts for their trouble, Insider reports: Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million, and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was for Musk’s takeover, got $11.2 million.
X, the Everything App: The Silicon Valley Turns Its Owns on Micro-Blogging, Inc. Musk tells an Angry Bird
The Supreme Court will take on cases that will determine whether or not to hold the micro-publishing service responsible for illegal content.
More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create “X, the everything app.” This is a reference to China’s WeChat app, which started life as a messaging platform but has since grown to encompass multiple businesses, from shopping to payments and gaming. In June, Musk said to employees: “You live on your phone in China.” “If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success.”
It’s all over, the man is the owner of the micro-blogging site. How did that happen? The billionaire is now in control of the company and several former executives were forcibly escorted out of the building, waiting for the first ever updates from their new leader.
The Rise of Twitter: Peter Zatko and the False Narrative of the Musk ‘Negative’ Nugget
This is a huge story with a lot of fast-moving parts to it. It’s also a story that will likely stretch out over the next few months, maybe even longer. As things continue to unfold, we thought we could update this guide for you, our readers. Because, like Elon, we ❤️ you.
A few days later, Twitter responded the way it always does: your argument is invalid, Twitter hasn’t breached its side of the deal, and so you can’t either.
Zatko said that he knows that there is truth to Musk’s claims that Twitter lied about bot metrics, but that he did not support those allegations. The accusations were called a false narrative by the micro-dott.
Peter “Mudge” Zatko was fired in early 2022 from his position as Twitter’s head of security. In July, he filed a whistleblower report saying Twitter has hidden negligent security practices, misled federal regulators about its safety, and failed to properly estimate the number of bots on its platform. Zatko is a long-tenured and well-respected voice in the hacker and security community, and his allegations are sure to have a huge impact in and out of Twitter. Congress has said that it is investigating Zatko’s claims.
Some of the most well-known individuals in the tech industry, such as Larry Ellison, Scottrade, Dorsey, and many others, have been subpoenaed ahead of the trial. It was a surprise that Dorsey was the head of the company, but he’s likely to have some important information due to his tenure at Twitter and the fact that he wanted Musk to buy the company.
We don’t usually tell people that it’s worth reading a 162 page legal filing that talks about bot measurement procedures. This case was filled with a lot of legal fighting that clearly was written to be read by a wide audience. It is a good yarn.
What Will Tesla CEO Do next? Employee complaints about Musk’s Twitter ad-light plan in the wake of an all-hands meeting
Other employees have warned about a secondary feature of the new Blue that Musk added at the last minute: reducing ad load in the Twitter app by half. Estimates showed that Twitter will lose about $6 in ad revenue per user in the United States by making that change, sources said. Factoring in Apple and Google’s share of the $8 monthly subscription, Twitter would likely lose money on Blue if the ad-light plan is enacted.
Hours after he announced his bid, Musk was on stage in Vancouver for an interview with Chris Anderson of TED Talk. Musk spoke about his obsession with the truth and how he wants to protect free speech and democracy.
The first all-hands meeting was weird after Musk made his bid public. The company said after serenading employees that they would continue to evaluate the offer.
Employees told Alex Heath that they were frustrated by the lack of a more detailed response. They’re concerned about the future of the social media platform, as well as the possibility of layoffs.
Musk needs to convince his shareholders that his offer is in their best interests. What are we doing here?
Musk said that they had to go private in order to make the necessary changes. These included an edit feature, an open-source algorithm, less moderation, and a higher bar for removing offending tweets.
Casey was right in positing that Twitter’s poison pill provisions may not be enough to stop Musk. He assumed Musk would continue to troll the company through his social media accounts.
Although they came quickly, the major personnel moves had been widely expected and almost certainly are the first of many major changes the mercurial Tesla CEO will make.
The Harassment of Twitter After Musk and Agrawal Collisioned in April, and the Times Revealed in Court Files
Musk privately clashed with Agrawal in April, immediately before deciding to make a bid for the company, according to text messages later revealed in court filings.
About the same time, he used Twitter to criticize Gadde, the company’s top lawyer. He followed that with a wave of harassment from other accounts. For Gadde, an 11-year Twitter employee who also heads public policy and safety, the harassment included racist and misogynistic attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her. On Thursday, after she was fired, the harassing tweets lit up once again.
The message appeared to be aimed at addressing concerns among advertisers — Twitter’s chief source of revenue — that Musk’s plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderating content will open the floodgates to more online toxicity and drive away users.
He continued that there is a danger that social media will become far right and far left wing echo chambers in order to generate more hate and divide our society.
But it’s also a realization that having no content moderation is bad for business, putting Twitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers, she said.
“You don’t want a place where consumers are bombarded with things they do not want to hear about, and the platform takes no responsibility for that,” Yildirim said.
The New York Stock Exchange informed investors overnight that it would suspend trading in the Twitter shares before the bell on Friday due to the company going private.
The Twitter ad business went too far, and so did the Twitter employees who were laid off during the weekend of November 22 — the first day of Twitter+3
Top sales executive Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer, said she had a “great discussion” with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.
Musk’s apparent enthusiasm about visiting Twitter headquarters this week stood in sharp contrast to one of his earlier suggestions: The building should be turned into a homeless shelter because so few employees actually worked there.
At press time, no message has been delivered to the company’s employees. And with Musk reportedly intent on making cuts before Tuesday, when many employees are set to receive new stock grants, it appears that any such decisions will come down to the wire.
The weak economy, months of uncertainty around Musk’s proposed takeover, and changing consumer behaviors all make him want to avoid a shakeup of the ad business for now, said Jasmine Enberg.
The process has been frightening and disorienting, according to conversations with eight employees today and over the weekend. In the absence of official communications, workers have been hunting for clues in Slack and gathering in private Discords to share the latest rumors.
Several teams were wiped out completely. As it turned out, though, the company went too far. As soon as I was the first to report on Saturday, some managers were told to ask the employees who were laid off if they wanted to return to work.
One thing that made people nervous was the instruction on Friday afternoon that engineers print out the last 30 to 60 days of code they had written, as Platformer was the first to report. It was part of a set of measures Musk and his team have undertaken in an effort to identify Twitter’s highest and lowest performing employees as a precursor to layoffs.
As today began at Twitter, there were essentially two groups at the company, one employee told me: those working on projects that Musk has been deeply involved in, such as the revamped Twitter Blue subscription, and everyone else.
What should you do now? Why you don’t have to give up, but do what you can do. What you should do now if you can’t tell me what to do
since no leadershippy type appears willing or interested in filling the void: if you’re feeling bleak and dismayed right now, just want you to know you’re not alone. This sucks.
Another employee told us that in other channels, employees are sharing contact information if they lose access to their communications.
Musk has pressed engineers to work on at least two major projects, and to complete them within days or weeks. One change to twitter blue requires users to pay to retain their verification badges, possibly as high as $20 a month We can definitely confirm that the second report is a plan to revive the short form video appVINE as a stand alone product or part of the coreTwitter app. Our colleague at The Verge Alex Heath reported that, in the case of changes to Blue, the features must ship by November 7th or the team will be fired.
We are told the project has generated moderate enthusiasm so far. More than a dozen engineers volunteered to be part of the project after Musk gave it the go-ahead Sunday night.
All of this took place against the backdrop of a company that still has yet to hear anything official from Musk, via email or a companywide meeting. Many employees didn’t know who their managers were after the loss of their colleagues.
Similarly, on Monday, Behnam Rezaei, senior director of software engineering at Twitter, sent a note to his team acknowledging “big changes” were coming. “I think most important change is going to be cultural change,” he said, according to a copy of the email obtained by Platformer. “Some good, some bad.”
So if you ask what should I do now: do good engineering work. Write code. Fix bugs, keep the site up. I know the criteria for being at a micro-blogging site. It’s not working on a fancy project for Elon. The good culture change is, it’s shipping and delivering. I believe you should be doing more on coding and shipping, but less on documentation, planning and strategy. If you want to be in a group that’s special this week, then code and ship 5x as usual. Sexy is not the criteria for building something. Being impactful and changing product and helping our users is the criteria. So you don’t need commands from me. You are all software engineers. You know what should be written and improved. Do it. You are in charge.
When Musk was at a Linear Collider: What Has he Learned about Twitter? The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times
Musk’s attention can be frightening. One employee we talked to said that they had a mixture of feelings about working on a project Musk is known to be focused on.
Nick Caldwell, general manager of core technology, changed his profile on social media to look like a former executive from Twitter, while Jay Sullivan, general manager of consumer and revenue products, removed the company and his title from his profile. The New York Times also reported Tuesday that Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland had left the company; on Tuesday night she tweeted a single blue heart.
Calacanis was in New York to meet with the marketing and advertising community. He asked about the subscription and bookmark features on the platform.
The new owner of that social networking website said he will set up a new content moderation council that will consist of people with differing views. For now, he has stressed that the platform’s policies have not yet changed.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the Social Media Era: A Class Action Action Lawyers Against Facebook for Failure of the Employer Development Notification
Steve Jobs told me at Apple headquarters in May 1998 about his plans for reviving Apple. He was interim CEO for almost a year, after returning to the company he’d been fired from a decade earlier. Greeting me in the boardroom of his suite at One Infinite Loop, he went to the whiteboard and began scrawling out his solution to the company’s business woes. He had a new product plan, a new product, and a workforce revitalized by an inspiring ad campaign.
Musk need not look farther than his own successful enterprises to realize the absurdity of his haste. When he took over Tesla in 2008, the company was already five years old. Musk came up with a brilliant plan to turn the company around—but it didn’t post an annual profit until 2020, 17 years after incorporation. Musk deservedly gets a lot of credit for what Tesla has achieved—and for, among other things, his persistence. Musk’s other company, the private one, didn’t report earnings. But making rocket ships is the ultimate test of patience—it takes years to even launch successfully, and cutting corners to go faster can wind up killing people.
In a letter to employees obtained by multiple media outlets, the company said employees would find out by 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time if they had been laid off. The email did not say how many people would lose their jobs.
Some employees tweeted early Friday that they had already lost access to their work accounts. The email to staff said job reductions were necessary to the company’s success.
He also removed the company’s board of directors and installed himself as the sole board member. Many employees of social media site took to the platform to show their support for each other with a variety of messages, from blue heart emojis to salute in replies.
Barry C. White told the employment development department not to get any new notifications from the social network.
A class action lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one employee who was laid off and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It accuses the social networking site of violating the law by not giving the required notice about the lay offs.
Twitter: How loud am I? Donald D. Trump Tweets @elon musk during the Ad-time Ears of Facebook
Meta Platforms Inc., Facebook’s parent company, recently posted its second quarterly revenue decline in history and its shares are trading at their lowest levels since 2015. Meta’s disappointing results followed weak earnings reports from Google parent Alphabet and even Microsoft.
Big pharma created the Covid Plandemic to silence me. Everybody tries to silence me,” she said. I want you to speak at a lower volume. I’m sorry, am I too loud for your precious intensive care unit? You aren’t even sick!”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/media/snl-donald-trump-twitter-elon-musk/index.html
Where am I? The Twitter Abuse Policy on Mastodon, an Alternative Social Media Platform for Celebrities Who Change Their Screennames and Their Social Media Accounts
I’m located here. Your profile is so funny. I love funny guys,” Schumer, dressed in a red dress, said as the bot. “They said I was a bot, which is crazy. I love funny men like you, I am all woman. In fact, you should check out this website where me and some other girls hang out.”
But the most notable person to speak in front of the council: former president Donald Trump, played by James Austin Johnson. Trump’s account was barred in 2021, the year of the Antichrist.
“Yes, we’ve all moved to Truth Social, and we love Truth Social. It’s very great,” Johnson’s Trump said. In many ways, it’s terrible. It is very bad. It was very bad. It’s a little buggy in terms of making the phone screen crack, and the automatically draining of the Venmo.”
The platform’s owner warned celebrities and others not to change their names on the platform after some celebrities changed their name to protest the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts for $8 a month.
Musk said Twitter will still suspend some accounts according to the policy but “only when that account’s (asterisk)primary(asterisk) purpose is promotion of competitors.”
Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk. She told the reporter she had used his profile photo as well.
Not all the content moderators were let go, I guess? On Mastodon, an alternative social media platform where she set up an account last week, she joked.
Twitter Turns It Up: When Donald Trump and Valerie Beverly Change Their Name to “Oh-dokey,” Aftermath of the 2021 Presidential Election
After mimicking Musk’s screen name with a series of posts in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday, actor Valerie Beverly changed her name back to her real one. “Oh-dokey.” I’ve had a good time. and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.
The accounts are verified for $8 and Musk claims they are democratizing the service. Users who sign up for the new blue check next to their names can be just like celebrities, companies and politicians, according to the Saturday update foriOS devices on the Apple app store.
It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would go live. Esther Crawford told The Associated Press that it was coming soon but it hadn’t launched yet.
If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn’t happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Workers are afraid that they will not be paid if they leave their jobs, because Twitter will fire them for abandoning their jobs.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said that the company’s front-line moderation staff was the most affected by the job cuts.
The aftermath of the last major election cycle in the United States played out like a car crash on Twitter. In late 2020 and January 2021, as Donald Trump riled up his supporters through his Twitter account after roundly losing the presidential election, the social media company felt paralyzed about how to act. After Trump used his account to tell a mob to storm the Capitol and take politicians hostage, the platform decided to move.
Until September, Edward Perez was director of product management at Twitter, overseeing the product team devoted to civic integrity. Joining the company in September 2021, after more than three decades working in election integrity, Perez’s role was to keep Twitter safe during times of great upheaval—such as elections—from a product perspective. Perez feels he has to speak out as Musk guts the staff and allows users to pay in order to get a blue check on the platform.
The OSET Institute, a nonpartisan group devoted to election security and integrity, is concerned that the drama around corporate takeover feels like it is taking all the oxygen in the room. That focus on the Musk psychodrama “is resulting in potentially inadequate attention on these election-related issues,” he adds.
Meanwhile, Musk’s increasingly erratic leadership, coupled with his habit of tweeting in eye-watering bad taste, gave many current and former employees I spoke with a sinking feeling about the future of their company.
Today let’s talk a bit more about how the company botched its layoff process, what happened inside Twitter on Monday, and what that paywall might look like.
A tale of two companies: how many of them will come back? A message from a former employee on Blind, an attempt to protect the most vulnerable among employees
Managers agonized over the decisions, and jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve employment for the most vulnerable among them: pregnant women, employees who have cancer, and workers on visas among them, a former employee told me.
It started as a rumor on Blind, an app where employees of various companies can chat discreetly with their coworkers. But within a day it was being posted in public Slack channels.
Sorry to everyone on the weekend. but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4 PM PST on Sunday,” one such message from a manager to employees read. “I’ll do some research but if any of you have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate before 4.”
The manager thought we could use help from the two operating systems. The company has been reaching out to both engineers and designers over the past day in an effort to get them back, Platformer is told.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23446262/elon-musk-twitter-paywall-possible
Sacks’ Podcast: Managing Musk’s Transition with Co-Founders Michelle Calacanis and VC Chamath Palihapitiya
The managers are bracing themselves for a bigger workload than they were used to. According to a person I spoke with, any technical manager should be able to manage at least 20 individual contributors while also spending at least half their time writing code. Others have been given much higher numbers of direct reports.
“The couple of teams that are on his pet projects are doing 20-hour days,” one employee told me. Most of the company is sitting around. Many of the times, there was no organization chart, no chain of command, and no one knew who your manager or team was.
Meanwhile, the health team was told to listen to Musk adviser David Sacks’ podcast for insights into why they had just lost half their colleagues, according to a former employee. Sacks, a venture capitalist who has been helping to manage the Musk transition, co-hosts the “All-In” podcast with fellow Twitter adviser Jason Calacanis and VC Chamath Palihapitiya.
Thevice president told employees that themost recent podcasts covered the current layoffs happening across tech and provided insight into why this was necessary. “I think it is worth listening to in order to understanding the macro environment we are operating in.”
Most employees were more interested in their health benefits, which had suddenly become a question mark. The company’s open-enrollment period was supposed to begin today, according to its global calendar, but no information was available in the company’s human-resources system. Employees posted several questions about benefits inside Slack today, but all went unanswered by management.
I was told at least some teams began to hold meetings for employees to discover who their managers are, what their organization charts look like, and what their priorities will be.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23446262/elon-musk-twitter-paywall-possible
The Twitter Blue X-ray subscription crisis: why the new version is a big mistake? Why the Twitter CEO didn’t answer the Twitter employees’ questions
On one hand, the company is telling advertisers that it is thriving, The Verge’s Alex Heath reported, adding 15 million daily users since the end of the second quarter.
The new version of the Twitter Blue subscription has been a disaster since it was announced.
But the new Blue likely faces larger problems. The existing version only had a little more than 100,000 active subscribers, Platformer has learned. The new version will be 37.5 percent more expensive, and its value seems murky for most regular users of the platform. It is not known how the company will persuade enough people to subscribe.
Then, after a debate about the potential effects of unleashing thousands of new verified accounts onto the platforms in the middle of the US midterm elections, the company postponed the launch.
Twitter employees tried to sell Musk and Sacks on the idea of asking business accounts to pay for extra features, since many of them use Twitter to reach large audiences. I am told that they were dismissed because they wanted to do broad-scale verification first.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23446262/elon-musk-twitter-paywall-possible
Blue, Twitter, and the Age of Mobile Social Media: Why Do We Have a Blue? How Do Slack and Google are Feeling the Squeeze?
Musk has been heavily involved in the chaotic launch of Blue, participating in standup meetings and exchanging regular emails with Esther Crawford, a director of product management at the company. “There is one decision-maker and that is me,” Musk told workers, according to meeting notes shared with employees in Slack.
It could not be learned how serious Musk and Sacks are about the paywall; Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. It is not imminent because the Blue team is focused with the launch of expanded verification.
Under the leadership of Musk, he is said to have told staff that if they don’t start making more money, then the company might be forced to go bankrupt.
Investment firm Wedbush Securities said the deal represented “one of the most overpaid tech acquisitions in history,” pegging Twitter’s fair value at closer to $25 billion.
Adding even more pressure on the company is the mayhem unfolding internally, with the departure of a slew of top executives, some of whom were responsible for things like the safety of the platform and complying with federal regulations.
Musk and his co-investors are driven by values and in addition to that, my sense is that they’re ideologically driven,” she said.
It was not changed by that fact that Musk sees the company’s main problem as its sole way of making money: online advertising.
It is unfortunate that the company is in this position, since it is a poor time to be in the online advertising business. The tech industry has been hit by a large drop in ad spending. A lot of people have been laid off by Facebook. Snap let go of 20% of its staff. Other ad-reliant tech companies like Spotify and Google’s YouTube are feeling the squeeze.
The Tobac-Monte Carlo Show on Twitter: How the Blue-Check-for-Sale option spreads a culture of deception
So far, the program’s launch has had the exact opposite effect. A flurry of accounts impersonating star athletes like Lebron James, former President Trump and companies including Eli Lilly and Pepsi, put a spotlight on just how quickly the blue-check-for-sale option could be used to spread deception.
Imagine, Tobac said, if an emergency service account with a blue check was opened by an impersonator and began dispending harmful advice about, say, where to seek shelter during a natural disaster.
Tobac also fears disinformation agents paying $8 to sow confusion and discord in connection with an election — something fresh on her mind, as the country awaits the final outcome of a number of key midterm election races.
“Right now, we have people making jokes, impersonating the president, impersonating Nintendo and Elon Musk is laughing at those jokes because he thinks they’re funny right now,” she said. “What’s not going to be funny is someone impersonating an election official and meddling and causing interference within the election results.”
Several of the reporters suspended Thursday night had been writing about the new policy and Musk’s rationale for imposing it, which involved his allegations about a stalking incident he said affected his family Tuesday night in Los Angeles.
“Again, the suspension occurred with no warning, process or explanation — this time as our reporter merely sought comment from Musk for a story,” Buzbee said. By midday Sunday, Lorenz’s account was restored, as was the tweet she thought had triggered her suspension.
Most of the accounts were back early Saturday. The only exception was Business Insider’s Linette Lopez, who had no explanation after she and the other journalists were suspended.
The same day, she cited reports that Musk was reneging on severance for laid-off Twitter employees, threatening workers who talk to the media and refusing to make rent payments. Lopez referred to his actions as a type of behavior known as “ELEON-going-for-broke behavior.”
U.N. Sen. Dujarric’s Decline of Mastodon in the wake of Musk’s alleged stalking incident
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. said the move sets a dangerous precedent as journalists all over the world are facing censorship, threats and even worse.
The official account for Mastodon, an alternative social network where many users are fleeing, was also banned. The jet- tracking account had its own account and the reason was not clear. Users were not allowed to post links to Mastodon accounts in some cases as they were flagged as being potentially harmful.
The Washington Post’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, said technology reporter Drew Harwell “was banished without warning, process or explanation” following the publication of accurate reporting about Musk.
CNN said that the suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’ Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising.
Matt Binder of the technology news outlet, Mashable, said that he was banned immediately after sharing a picture with O’Brien, who was suspended for the same thing.
The screenshot showed a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department sent earlier Thursday to multiple media outlets, including the AP, about how it was in touch with Musk’s representatives about the alleged stalking incident.
He has promised to let free speech reign and has reinstated high-profile accounts that previously broke Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct or harmful misinformation. He has said he would suppress hate and Negative thinking by eliminating accounts of freedom of reach.
She said the new regime has the same problems as the old, and she didn’t like it in either case.
If the suspensions lead to the exodus of media organizations that are highly active on Twitter, the platform would be changed at the fundamental level, said Lou Paskalis, longtime marketing and media executive and former Bank of America head of global media.
CBS briefly shut down its activity on the platform due to uncertainty about new management, but media organizations mostly remained on the platform.
“We all know news breaks on Twitter … and to now go after journalists really saws at the main foundational tent pole of Twitter,” Paskalis said. “Driving journalists off Twitter is the biggest self-inflicted wound I can think of.”
The suspensions may be the biggest red flag yet for advertisers, Paskalis said, some of which had already cut their spending on Twitter over uncertainty about the direction Musk is taking the platform.
On Thursday night, Twitter’s Spaces conference chat went down shortly after Musk abruptly signed out of a session hosted by a journalist during which he had been questioned about the reporters’ ousting. Musk later tweeted that Spaces had been taken offline to deal with a “Legacy bug.” Late Friday, Spaces returned.
Advertisers are trying to find out if there will be a loss of Twitter users. Twitter is projected to lose 32 million users over the next two years, according to a forecast by Insider Intelligence, which cited technical issues and the return of accounts banned for offensive posts.
Mastodon had 3.4 million users on Friday, nearly double the number it had on the day Musk took ownership. On many of the thousands of confederated networks in the open-source Mastodon platform, administrators and users solicited donations as disaffected Twitter users strained computing resources. “instances” are crowd-funded networks. The platform is designed to be ad-free.
The Collapse of Elon Musk and the Times of his Chaotic Leadership of Twitter: A Reassessment and an Empirical Poll
A poll asking if Musk should step down as Twitter’s head ended early Monday morning, with most of the respondents voting in favor.
In reply to a follower who claimed he would take the CEO job, Musk said he wasn’t happy with his new job.
After haphazardly establishing a ban on links out that put his site at odds with both The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz and his own supporters, like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Paul Graham, Elon Musk’s doxxing, banning, and moderation outburst ended — predictably — with an apology and a promise it “won’t happen again.”
His $44 billion takeover of the company — that he tried desperately and unsuccessfully to get out of — started with a poll, and it would be both appropriate and timely if his time as its CEO ended the same way.
With his decision making under fire from his supporters who supported him, and a journalist ghosting his pleas for public support, Musk may be considering putting his overpriced toy in someone else’s hands for a little while.
The Musk Rules can be unpredictable, even though Musk mostly acted in line with the polls posted to his own account. He also promised previously that “No major content decisions or account reinstatement” would happen without convening a content moderation council, then retroactively claimed that no longer applied due to activist groups that “broke the deal.”
The informal referendum on his chaotic leadership of Twitter was attended by more than seventeen million votes, and was marked by the mass layoffs, the replatforming of suspended accounts, the suspension of journalists, and the reversal of policy changes in real time.
The results of the poll come at a time when its business faces renewed challenges. Since Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October, a number of brands have paused advertising on the platform. Musk has said that Twitter’s finances are bad. Twitter is on pace to lose $4 billion a year after the advertiser exodus, estimates Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities.
Twitter had said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that include the banned websites in their profile — a practice so widespread it would have been difficult to enforce the restrictions on Twitter’s millions of users around the world. Links and attempts to pass the ban off as legitimate could have caused a suspension, the company said.
The decision to make the change generated so much opposition that Musk promised not to make any changes without an online survey of users.
Musk was attempting to cut down on certain speech after shutting down the account that tracked his private jet, in order to block competitors.
Musk permanently banned the @ElonJet account on Wednesday, then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He went after the journalists who wrote about the account on other social media sites by saying they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.”