The Twitter Dictator

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk, as many know, recently bought and now is the new CEO of Twitter. This has been the cause of several controversies and rumors. One of the most controversial rumors sends all eyes towards former President Donald Trump. Over the years from their money to their fame, they have had their own love-hate relationship towards each other. When Trump was banned from twitter Elon had quite a bit to say about it. Musk’s view on how twitter should be run is “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.” He viewed Trump’s banning as an over step on censorship. Despite several twitter users being happy about the banning, what really made everyone’s mouth drop is when after Musk allowed Trump back on twitter Trump decided to decline! This is surprising due to Trump being one of the greatest trolls previously on twitter.

Along with that, Musk now having twitter in his hands led to him letting go of about half of the employees. He did this in a “bid to cut costs.” This firing included the letting go of Frohnhoefer, a software engineer that was part of helping the app move faster. So since then the app has been moving very slowly. Many of the employees that stayed are now quitting. This is because they are mad at the firing of their coworkers who have been their friends. At the moment there is no common respect that used to be between the old CEO and employees.

Many of the advertisers on twitter view Musk’s actions as hurting “brand safety” with twitter’s now relaxed view on censoring. These companies are scared that their ads will show up next to harmful comments, altering customers’ perspective on the company.

Influencers are aggravated with the new blue checkmark system. What used to be earning a blue checkmark for being a notable figure and verified was changed to anyone being able to get a blue check by paying eight dollars a month. This also is hurting many figures that are wrongly being verified. A George W. Bush account was created by a random stranger and verified. This account made a comment joking about being nostalgic for killing Iraquis. A fake Pespsi account even said that Coke was better reported The Atlantic. Overall this new policy is a complete mess.

A popular hashtag going around by users is called, “#riptwitter.” They believe that the strong franchise of twitter is going down for good. These long time followers are planning their switches to other platforms. Musk has really messed up in their view, and now because of his actions the long empire of twitter has come to an end. Ultimately he will have to live with millions or maybe billions of dollars that will be lost. Moral of the story- if you are rich do not ruin your economic status just because you are offended by politics on social media.