Since completing a deal to purchase the company for almost $44 billion on Oct. 27, Elon Musk, the company’s new owner and CEO, has made significant changes.
Even before Musk assumed control of Twitter, which he also operates for the automaker Tesla and the aerospace firm SpaceX, things were chaotic. He committed to buying the business in April, but when he tried to back out, Twitter sued him. Musk completed the transaction only in time for a court-imposed deadline following months of pre-trial scuffles.
After firing half the workforce, he issued the remaining workers last week an ultimatum: Either agree to work under his new, strict culture, or leave. Many, it appears, made the decision to depart. The departure of thousands of Twitter employees has raised concerns about outages and disruptions.
The bans on more previously suspended accounts were gradually lifted. Ten months after being permanently suspended for breaking Twitter’s COVID misinformation policy, US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal Twitter account was unlocked on November 21. Musk asserted that one prohibition would stand despite the parade of accounts that had been restored: that of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation.
Will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022
Musk tweeted later that day that Twitter is “putting off” reintroducing paid verification through its Twitter Blue subscription service until “there is great confidence in stopping imitation.” The new verification system was put on hold by Twitter earlier in November after people bought the verified blue check marks and used them to impersonate well-known corporations, politicians, athletes, and other personalities.
On November 29, Twitter was supposed to relaunch paid verification. Some users are given the option to purchase a Twitter Blue membership plan for $8 per month, which allows them to have their accounts verified with a blue check mark. Musk stated that the business presumably won’t use the same color check mark for people versus companies.
More suspended accounts, including Kanye West‘s, returned to service the day after Musk overturned former US President Donald Trump‘s decision to permanently ban him from Twitter. Ye, as West is now known, tweeted to his 32 million followers on Sunday for the first time in two weeks after being barred for making antisemitic remarks. West changed his name last year.
Twitter added 1.6M daily active users this past week, another all-time high pic.twitter.com/Si3cRYnvyD
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2022
The conservative activist group Project Veritas, known for its covert recordings, was also reinstated after being suspended the previous year for allegedly revealing the personal information of its viewers.
The FIFA World Cup began separately. People from all over the world congregate to enjoy the real-time information and posts linked to the matches, which usually causes Twitter usage to increase during the event.
Concerns continued that Twitter would be hampered by outages and interruptions due to the surge in demand as it manages to function with a small portion of its typical employees. But the first day of the competition seems to go off without any significant issues occurring on Twitter.
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