Why Twitter Users Are Ripping Into Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover
Elon Musk has officially taken over Twitter and things are already off to a rough start.
Musk recently purchased Twitter after securing it for $44 billion, a deal he previously tried to back out of. Shortly after, Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who had succeeded Jack Dorsey. Chief financial officer Ned Segal was also let go, and Musk reportedly scrapped the company's entire board of directors.
Musk's rampant firing and near-immediate staff shakeup is just one of the many reasons people are ripping into the tech mogul's controversial takeover of the social media platform.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Musk intends to lay off roughly 3,700 staff members at Twitter by the end of this week alone. He also intends to end the company's remote work/"work from anywhere" policy.
Meanwhile, CNBC reports that employees who do stay are currently expected to work grueling 84-hour weeks — the equivalent to 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Reportedly, this has caused some managers at the company to sleep on site instead of going home after work in order to meet Musk's demands and deadlines.
Individual Twitter users should brace for some big changes as well.
Musk announced he’ll soon be charging Twitter users $8 a month to remain verified on the platform.
However, many have already said that they will not pay for the app's iconic blue check when it was free before.
"Elon musk discovering most people think paying for arbitrary status symbols is incredible loser behavior is so funny," one Twitter user wrote.
Regardless of the criticism, Musk has doubled down on his plan.
Twitter verification (i.e. the blue check) was initially meant to serve as a checks and balances function and protect public-facing users' identities on the social media platform. Now that users will be able to pay for it, some journalists and other professionals are worried that source-checking will become a challenge and that misinformation will spread.
"Blue check has been one way for journalists to separate out fake accounts from real ones (one example that springs to mind was when Carlos Ghosn created an account after jumping bail). Also a way for people to identify journalists themselves, many of whom will not be able to pay," one Twitter user explained.
"We joke about 'blue checks,' but this will legitimately hurt people like freelance journalists, where every bit of institutional legitimacy helps," another tweeted.
Another concern is the potential rise in harassment and hate speech on the social media site, as many users who were previously banned from Twitter for hate speech might soon be able to return.
For example, Musk has already positioned himself alongside anti-LGBTQ views and many are worried about the future and safety of LGBTQ+ users and communities on Twitter.
According to TechCrunch, Musk has said that Jordan Peterson, who was previously suspended from Twitter for deadnaming trans actor Elliot Page and calling Page's surgeon a “criminal physician," can return to the platform.
According to Insider, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao expects that 90 percent of Musk's new Twitter functions will fail. However, only time will tell.