Six Sweeping Changes Elon Musk Is Making at Twitter
Industrialist Elon Musk has big plans for Twitter now that he owns the social media juggernaut. From a subscription service to possibly reviving the video app Vine, Musk wants the platform to reach its “extraordinary potential” following his $44 billion takeover.
While change is coming, how will the San Francisco-based company be different now that Musk is in charge of the social network? Here are six sweeping changes that he has proposed:
Content Moderation Council
The self-described “Chief Twit” confirmed in an Oct. 28 Twitter post that Twitter will be establishing a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” He confirmed that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements” will happen before the council convenes.
He later clarified with a Twitter post that “we have not yet made any changes” to the company’s content policies.
“Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on the platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks,” Musk wrote. “Twitter’s content moderation council will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.”
The details remain unclear. Meanwhile, there are many questions, such as what will the council’s guiding principles be, how many people will serve on the council, how they will be appointed, and how it will be different from Twitter’s current content moderation program?
Musk has said before that he’s open to restoring accounts of individuals who have been given lifetime bans, including former President Donald Trump.
$8 Monthly Fee
The biggest change could involve an $8-per-month subscription service that would allow subscribers to obtain the much-desired blue checkmark.
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bull[expletive],” Musk wrote on Twitter. “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
In a Twitter thread on Nov. 1, he revealed that users would receive “priority in replies, mentions & search,” which he says is “essential to defeat spam/scam.” Subscribers also would be given the option to post long audio and video and enjoy a “paywall bypass” for publishers willing to partner with Twitter. Paid users would also see “half as many ads.”
“This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” he noted in a Twitter post.
Musk wrote in a separate Twitter post, “Essentially, this raises the cost of crime on Twitter by several orders of magnitude.”
The proposal has caused quite a stir on the social media platform.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), for example, mocked the idea in a Twitter post as “a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a [sic] $8/mo subscription plan.”
Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that “free speech” is actually a $8/mo subscription plan
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 2, 2022
Musk replied, “Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8.”
The new service also garnered the attention of best-selling novelist Stephen King, who warned that he would be “gone like Enron” if a purported $20 monthly fee were implemented.
Musk told King that “we need to pay the bills somehow.”
“Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” he wrote in a Twitter post.
Workforce
The New York Times reported on Oct. 30 that the new Twitter owner ordered job cuts across the company. According to the newspaper, layoffs would occur before Nov. 1, when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation.
Musk denied the report, responding in a Twitter post that “this is false.”
This comes soon after The Washington Post reported that Musk had plans to terminate 75 percent of the Twitter workforce, which also was denied by the billionaire CEO. However, a separate Bloomberg News report noted that Musk would slash Twitter’s payroll by 50 percent—3,700 jobs—as early as Nov. 4 to help cut costs. The report, which cited anonymous people close to the situation, also suggested that the company’s work-from-anywhere policy would be rescinded, as most of the remaining staff would be required to work from the office.
Musk has yet to confirm or deny the Bloomberg story.
But while it’s unclear whether Musk has intentions to hand out pink slips to large numbers of personnel, one of his first acts consisted of firing several executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, finance chief Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
The ‘Everything App’
Another idea that Musk has floated around is turning Twitter into something akin to a Swiss Army knife. It would transform into an all-in-one tool to do anything, comparable to China’s WeChat. That app has more than a billion monthly users, as it allows the participants to social network, send money, reserve a restaurant table, book ride shares and airplane tickets, and execute e-commerce transactions.
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” Musk wrote in a Twitter post.
He told Twitter employees in June, “You basically live on WeChat in China.”
Tech experts agree that it would be a challenging ecosystem to develop, mainly because of the logistical issues requiring enormous in-house infrastructure and broad partnerships with other companies. Privacy concerns would be another hurdle, as a super app would allow the company to know everything about its users.
Open-Source Algorithm
Musk has repeatedly expressed his goal to open-source Twitter’s algorithm. This would foster greater transparency and trust in the website, as opening up the algorithm allows users to learn how Twitter promotes or demotes content. An open-source algorithm would essentially show how platform engineers maintain the social media outlet and let users make suggestions.
In March, he published a poll that found 82 percent of respondents agreed that the Twitter algorithm should be open source.
‘Bring Back Vine?’
Could Twitter directly compete with TikTok by bringing back the video app Vine?
In 2016, Twitter discontinued the looping-video app after purchasing it in 2012. Reportedly, Musk has instructed Twitter engineers to possibly reboot the service by the year’s end.
Speculation was further fueled by Musk, who polled his audience with “Bring back Vine?” The survey garnered nearly 5 million responses, and 70 percent thought it should be resurrected.
MrBeast, a popular YouTube star, said it would be “hilarious” if Musk relaunched Vine and competed with Tik Tok.
Musk replied, “What could we do to make it better than TikTok?”
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Andrew Moran has been writing about business, economics, and finance for more than a decade. He is the author of “The War on Cash.”
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