elon musk
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Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.
In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”
But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday (Nov. 5) that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.
It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live. Crawford told The Associated Press in a Twitter message that it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”
“So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money,” he said.
But many fear widespread layoffs that began Friday could gut the guardrails of content moderation and verification on the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed.
The change will end Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter now has about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.
Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether accounts they get information from are authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes and influencers, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists, businesses and brands, and Musk himself.
“He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. “He needs to earn the trust of the people before he can sell them anything. Why would you buy a car from a salesman that you know has essentially proved to be chaotic?”
The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system. So far, the update is not available on Android devices.
Musk, who had earlier said he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating they are posting from an official government account.
President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”
Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, who has 7.8 million Twitter followers, told the AP, “I could actually just delete my Twitter account, I never use it. I find it really healthy to delete social media from my phone for periods of time.”
“But it’s also a really powerful tool to connect with people, so I appreciate that and I try to use it as that and not as something that’s veering me off course of the journey that I’m on in life,” he said.
The announcement comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how the platform will operate under its new owner.
About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.
He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey took blame for the job losses.
“I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that.”
Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.
He also said Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” as advertisers face pressure from activists to get off the platform, which heavily relies on advertising to make money.
United Airlines on Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, joining companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.
Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.
But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Saturday urged Musk to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter.” In an open letter, Türk said reports that the company’s whole human rights team and much of the ethical AI team were laid off was not “an encouraging start.”
“Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” Türk said. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution.”
Meanwhile, Twitter cannot simply cut costs to grow profits, and Musk needs to find ways to raise more revenue, said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush. But that may be easier said than done with the new subscription program for blue checks.
“Users have gotten this for free,” Ives said. “There may be massive pushback.”
He expects 20% to 25% of Twitter’s verified users to sign up initially. The stakes are high for Musk and Twitter to get this right early and for signups to work smoothly, he added.
“You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression,” Ives said. “It’s been a train-wreck first week for Musk owning the Twitter platform. Now you’ve cut 50% (of the workforce). There are questions about just the stability of the platform, and advertisers are watching this with a keen eye.”
Employees braced for widespread layoffs at Twitter Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the social platform. In a letter to employees obtained by multiple media outlets, the company said employees would find out by 9 a.m. PDT (noon EDT) 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. They and others tweeted messages of support using the hashtag #OneTeam. The email to staff said job reductions were “necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”
Twitter’s roughly 7,500 employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm of the company. Already, the billionaire Tesla CEO has fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, on his first day as Twitter’s owner.
He also removed the company’s board of directors and installed himself as the sole board member. On Thursday night, many Twitter employees took to Twitter to express support for each other — often simply tweeting blue heart emojis to signify Twitter’s blue bird logo — and salute emojis in replies to each other.
As of Friday, Musk and Twitter had given no public notice of the coming layoffs, according to a spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department. That’s even though the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification statute requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, regardless of whether a company is publicly traded or privately held.
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 alleges that Twitter intends to lay off more employees and has violated the law by not providing the required notice.
The layoffs come at a tough time for social media companies, as advertisers are scaling back and newcomers — mainly TikTok — are threatening the older class of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
In a tweet sent Friday while employees were learning if they’d lost their jobs, Musk blamed activists for what he described as a “massive drop in revenue” since he took over Twitter late last week. He did not say how much revenue had dropped.
Big companies including General Motors, General Mills and Audi have all paused ads on Twitter due to questions about how it will operate under Musk. Volkswagen Group said Friday it is recommending its brands, which include Skoda, Seat, Cupra, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche and Ducati, pause paid activities until Twitter issues revised brand safety guidelines.
Musk has tried to appease advertisers, but they remain concerned about whether content moderation will remain as stringent and whether staying on Twitter might tarnish their brands.
“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” he tweeted.
Billionaire Elon Musk is already floating major changes for Twitter — and faces major hurdles as he begins his first week as owner of the social-media platform.
Twitter’s new owner fired the company’s board of directors and made himself the board’s sole member, according to a company filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He’s also testing the waters on asking users to pay for verification. A venture capitalist working with Musk tweeted a poll asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue check mark that Twitter has historically used to verify higher-profile accounts so other users know it’s really them.
Musk, whose account is verified, replied, “Interesting.”
Critics have derided the mark, often granted to celebrities, politicians, business leaders and journalists, as an elite status symbol.
But Twitter also uses the blue check mark to verify activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, as an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts that are impersonating people.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted Sunday in response to a user who asked for help getting verified.
On Friday, meanwhile, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said he and his Kingdom Holding Company rolled over a combined $1.89 billion in existing Twitter shares, making them the company’s largest shareholder after Musk. The news raised concerns among some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut.
Murphy tweeted that he is requesting the Committee on Foreign Investment — which reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign buyers — to investigate the national security implications of the kingdom’s investment in Twitter
“We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting U.S. politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy tweeted. “There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should do a review.”
Having taken ownership of the social media service, Musk has invited a group of tech-world friends and investors to help guide the San Francisco-based company’s transformation, which is likely to include a shakeup of its staff. Musk last week fired CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives. There’s been uncertainty about if and when he could begin larger-scale layoffs.
Those who have revealed they are helping Musk include Sriram Krishnan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which pledged back in the spring to chip in to Musk’s plan to buy the company and take it private.
Krishnan, who is also a former Twitter product executive, said in a tweet that it is “a hugely important company and can have great impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen.”
Jason Calacanis, the venture capitalist who tweeted the poll about whether users would pay for verification, said over the weekend he is “hanging out at Twitter a bit and simply trying to be as helpful as possible during the transition.”
Calacanis said the team already “has a very comprehensive plan to reduce the number of (and visibility of) bots, spammers, & bad actors on the platform.” And in the Twitter poll, he asked if users would pay between $5 and $15 monthly to “be verified & get a blue check mark” on Twitter. Twitter is currently free for most users because it depends on advertising for its revenue.
Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April but it wasn’t until Thursday evening that he finally closed the deal, after his attempts to back out of it led to a protracted legal fight with the company. Musk’s lawyers are now asking the Delaware Chancery Court to throw out the case, according to a court filing made public Monday. The two sides were supposed to go to trial in November if they didn’t close the deal by the end of last week.
Musk has made a number of pronouncements since early this year about how to fix Twitter, and it remains unclear which proposals he will prioritize.
He has promised to cut back some of Twitter’s content restrictions to promote free speech, but said Friday that no major decisions on content or reinstating of banned accounts will be made until a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints is put in place. He later qualified that remark, tweeting “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.”
The head of a cryptocurrency exchange that invested $500 million in Musk’s Twitter takeover said he had a number of reasons for supporting the deal, including the possibility Musk would transition Twitter into a company supporting cryptocurrency and the concept known as Web3, which many cryptocurrency enthusiasts envision as the next generation of the internet.
“We want to make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Monday. “And there are more tactical things, like we want to help bring Twitter into Web3 when they’re ready.”
He said cryptocurrency could be useful for solving some of Musk’s immediate challenges, such as the plan to charge a premium membership fee for more users.
“That can be done very easily, globally, by using cryptocurrency as a means of payment,” he said.
Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter after a protracted legal battle and months of uncertainty. The question now is what the billionaire Tesla CEO will actually do with the social media platform.
Musk ousted three top Twitter executives on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the deal who said he was in charge. Such a shakeup was widely expected, but Musk has otherwise made contradictory statements about his vision for the company — and shared few concrete plans for how he will run it.
The people wouldn’t say if all the paperwork for the deal, originally valued at $44 billion, had been signed or if the deal had closed. A Delaware judge had ordered that the deal be finalized by Friday.
Late Thursday, Musk tweeted, “the bird has been freed,” a reference to Twitter’s logo.
Twitter’s users, advertisers and employees are parsing Musk’s every move in an effort to guess where he might take the company — but the mercurial tech executive has not made the job easy.
He has criticized Twitter’s dependence on advertisers, but made a statement Thursday that seemed aimed at soothing their fears. He has complained about restrictions on speech on the platform — but then vowed he wouldn’t let it become a “hellscape.” And for months it wasn’t even clear if he wanted to control the company at all.
After Musk signed a deal to acquire Twitter in April, he tried to back out of it, leading the company to sue him to force him to go through with the acquisition.
Friday’s deadline to close the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. The New York Stock Exchange notified investors that it will suspend trading in shares of Twitter before the opening bell Friday in anticipation of the company going private under Musk.
Musk has been signaling more recently that the deal is going through. He strolled into the company’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink, changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit,” and tweeted “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”
The people familiar with the deal said Musk has fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde. Both people insisted on anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deal.
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.
Around the same time, he publicly criticized Gadde, the company’s top lawyer, in a series of tweets. A wave of harassment of Gadde from other Twitter accounts followed, including racist and misogynistic attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to get rid of her. After she was fired, the harassment on the platform began again.
In his first big move earlier on Thursday, Musk said that he is buying the platform to help humanity and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
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.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk wrote in an uncharacteristically long message for the Tesla CEO, who typically projects his thoughts in one-line tweets.
He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
Musk has previously expressed distaste for advertising and Twitter’s dependence on it, suggesting more emphasis on other business models such as paid subscriptions that won’t allow big corporations to dictate policy on how social media operates. But on Thursday, he assured advertisers he wants Twitter to be “the most respected advertising platform in the world.”
The note is a shift from Musk’s position that Twitter is unfairly infringing on free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content, said Pinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
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 do not want a place where consumers just simply are bombarded with things they do not want to hear about, and the platform takes no responsibility,” Yildirim said.
As concerns rise about the direction of Twitter’s content moderation, European Union Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted to Musk on Friday that “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.”
Breton and Musk met in May and appeared in a video together in which Musk said he agreed with the 27-nation bloc’s strict new online regulations. Its Digital Services Act threatens big tech companies with billions in fines if they don’t police their platforms more strictly for illegal or harmful content such as hate speech and disinformation.
Musk is expected to speak to Twitter employees directly Friday if the deal is finalized, according to an internal memo cited in several media outlets. There is internal confusion and low morale tied to fears of layoffs or a dismantling of the company’s culture and operations.
The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told prospective investors that he plans to cut three quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 workers when he becomes owner of the company. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberation.
Musk has spent months deriding Twitter’s “spam bots” and making sometimes conflicting pronouncements about Twitter’s problems and how to fix them.
Thursday’s note to advertisers shows a newfound emphasis on advertising revenue, especially a need for Twitter to provide more “relevant ads” — which typically means targeted ads that rely on collecting and analyzing users’ personal information.
Yildirim said that, unlike Facebook, Twitter has not been good at targeting advertising to what users want to see. Musk’s message suggests he wants to fix that, she said.
Elon Musk plans to lay off most of Twitter’s workforce if and when he becomes owner of the social media company, according to a report Thursday by The Washington Post.
Musk has told prospective investors in his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly 75% of Twitter’s employee base of 7,500 workers, leaving the company with a skeleton crew, according to the report. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations.
San Francisco-based Twitter and a representative for Musk attorney Alex Spiro did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
While job cuts have been expected regardless of the sale, the magnitude of Musk’s planned cuts are far more extreme than anything Twitter had planned. Musk himself has alluded to the need to cull some of the company’s staff in the past, but he hadn’t given a specific number — at least not publicly.
“A 75% headcount cut would indicate, at least out of the gates, stronger free cash flow and profitability, which would be attractive to investors looking to get in on the deal,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. “That said, you can’t cut your way to growth.”
Ives added that such a drastic reduction in Twitter’s workforce would likely set the company back years.
Already, experts, nonprofits and even Twitter’s own staff have warned that pulling back investments on content moderation and data security could hurt Twitter and its users. With as drastic a reduction as Musk may be planning, the platform could quickly become overrun with harmful content and spam — the latter of which the Tesla CEO himself has said he’ll address if he becomes owner of the company.
After his initial $44 billion bid in April to buy Twitter, Musk backed out of the deal, contending Twitter misrepresented the number of fake “spam bot” accounts on its platform. Twitter sued, and a Delaware judge has given both sides until Oct. 28 to work out details. Otherwise, there will be a trial in November.