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The Things That’ve Happened Since Musk Bought Twitter

Zachariah Kelly Avatar
Zachariah Kelly
The Things That’ve Happened Since Musk Bought Twitter

Oh boy, it’s been a bumpy ride since Elon Musk bought Twitter back in October. Although he tried to weasel out of the deal, he ended up owning the social media site and Musk’s two months as chief twit have not been without controversy and embarrassment. Huh, someone should make a timeline of that.

With the Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla CEO threatening to step down from the role, let’s go through his tumultuous two months on the job. Whether or not the bad news will continue, who knows?

27/10/22: Let that sink in

On October 27, Elon Musk showed up to Twitter HQ with a sink, putting up the now famous “let that sink in” tweet, carrying a sink into the lobby. On this same day, the sale was closed and Musk became the owner of the company. Several top executives were fired, including Twitter’s former CEO Parag Agrawal.

4/11/22: Company-wide layoffs begin

It wouldn’t take long for Musk to start cutting costs across the company. Thousands of employees have been layed off since this event, including PR teams around the world, the ethical AI team and a range of other teams. The company was reduced to roughly half its previous size, with some employees quickly asked to come back once their importance was recognised. 80 per cent of contractors were also laid off.

8/11/22: Twitter Blue relaunches (part one)

Musk’s first major change to the platform was with Twitter Blue, a subscription service that previously gave users access to an edit button. Now, users could buy the blue ‘verified’ tick for $US8 per month, effectively allowing them to impersonate major brands and public figures. This ran rampant for some time before it was discontinued.

12/11/22: Twitter Blue relaunch is cancelled

Lol.

15/11/22: Microservices start to shut down

Musk took to Twitter on this day to say that the company was shutting down a lot of microservices, claiming that less than 20 per cent of them are necessary for the site to function. After this happened, users began to notice problems with two-factor authentification on the website and that their accounts were inaccessible.

16/11/22: Migration to the payments industry

Musk revealed that his grand plan for Twitter included a migration into the payments industry by monetising content on the website.

17/11/22: Musk’s ‘hardcore’ ultimatum

Musk announces via email that he expects employees to adopt a ‘hardcore’ work ethic or be let go. Many decided to leave.

20/11/22: Donald Trump’s account is unbanned

After running a Twitter poll on resurrecting the account, Musk unsuspended the former U.S. president. His suspension was originally due to the Capital riot, his link to which is currently being investigated.

23/11/22: An amnesty for suspended accounts

Musk uses a Twitter poll to decide if a “general amnesty” should be granted to suspended accounts. The pole ended with ‘Yes’, and accounts began to be unbanned.

25/11/22: Twitter loses half of its top 100 advertisers

A report published on this day claimed that Twitter had lost half of its top advertisers since Musk took over. Yikes.

26/11/22: Musk tries to fight with the app stores

Obviously having completely missed the Epic v Apple court battle that dominated the tech news cycle last year, Musk decided to play chicken with Google and Apple, threatening to make his own phone if Twitter was banned from app stores. This continued for a few days and Musk claimed that Apple threatened to “withhold Twitter from its app store”. It was eventually resolved with a romantic little date to the Apple campus.

30/11/22: Twitter drops its COVID-19 misinformation policy

Why?

3/12/22: Hate speech skyrockets

New research shows that hate speech on the platform has skyrocketed since Musk’s acquisition.

5/12/22: The Twitter files

Musk and writer Matt Taibbi put out a long Twitter thread covering some behind-the-scenes stuff happening on Twitter involving Hunter Biden. The news wasn’t especially groundbreaking.

7/12/22: Hotel Twitter

Photos emerge online of offices and rooms set up at the Twitter HQ that look like hotel rooms, with employees claiming that they’re sleeping at the office.

10/12/22: Musk says Twitter will tell you if you’ve been shadowbanned

Musk announced on Twitter that a future update would tell users if they’re being shadow banned. It’s yet to be actioned.

12/12/22: Twitter Blue relaunches (part two), character limit increase and auctioning begins

One month later, Twitter Blue came back, this time costing $US11.99 (and more for iOS users), with verification checks. Additionally, Musk announced that character limits were being bumped up to 4,000 characters per tweet, and Twitter’s unused office items were announced for auction (beginning in January).

13/12/22: Piss checkmarks roll out and Musk gets booed at a Dave Chapelle show

As a part of upcoming changes to Twitter Blue, it was announced that company checkmarks would become gold and political checkmarks would become grey. Musk also showed up as a special guest at a Chapelle comedy show, and got booed hard by the crowd. He then claimed on Twitter that it was 90 per cent cheers. You can’t make this stuff up.

14/12/22: Twitter disbands its trust and safety council

Again, why?

15/12/22: Musk changes doxxing rules and claims he’s being stalked

Backing up his change to Twitter doxxing rules, Musk posts on Twitter claiming that he was being stalked by someone using his flight travel data. Since this event, however, police have said there’s no link. He also announced that he was taking legal action against the guy running the Elon Jet Twitter account (it tracked the travel of Elon Musk’s private jet).

16/12/22: Musk bans competitors and journalists

Starting off December 16, Twitter banned the Twitter account for Mastodon (it has since been reinstated). This was linked to the suspension of Elon Jet, with a new policy that prohibited the tracking of users’ travel data. By extension, several journalists who reported on the news were also banned, and links to Mastodon were also prohibited. Twitter Spaces was also killed after journalists directly questioned Musk following their suspensions (somehow they were still allowed to access Spaces).

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19/12/22: Twitter’s new anti-competition policy, Musk’s resignation Twitter poll

With the new rules to be actioned in 2023, Twitter announced that links to Linktree, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and some other social media sites would be banned on Twitter, as would profile descriptions indicating that your content is available elsewhere. Sometime after, Musk apologised for the policy and said it wouldn’t happen again (the policy was also removed from the website).

He also put up a Twitter poll, letting users decide if he should remain the head of Twitter.

That’s the latest from Musk’s Twitter episode, all the while Tesla’s stock has been tanking.

We’ll be updating this timeline as Musk’s Twitter tantrums continue. If you think we’ve left anything major out of this timeline, shoot me an email.

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