Elon Musk and his Twitter Saga

Elon is one of the wealthiest man in the world who has acquired the Twitter and made it private
Elon has faced a lot of pushback with the acquisitions of Twitter.

During early 2022, rumors swirled about on the internet that Elon Musk wanted to acquire Twitter. He had previously shown fondness for the platform and admitted that he was impressed by its model and wanted to expand its “free speech” policies.Despite Twitter having less than half the market share of FaceBook, Instagram and YouTube, it is one of the most popular and controversial social media platforms in the world.In its ten years of existence, it made profits in only two years, and the future looked bleak. However, the primary reason Musk announced his desire to buy the micro-blogging site was its problem with spam accounts and impersonators.

Musk struck a deal with the board to buy the micro-blogging site for $44 billion but backed out later. The board sued him, and after dilly dallying for a few months, he went through with the deal. Things turned interesting after Elon Musk joined the board of directors. Jack Dorsey, the founder and former CEO of Twitter, was impressed with Elon and said that he could “help in immeasurable ways”. He previously tried to get Musk a seat on the board of directors, but the board refused. Apparently, Musk had tense conversations with then CEO Parag Agarwal due to the performance of Twitter.

Musk’s first order of business was to deal with the company’s finances. He just took out a $13 billion loan, and he will have to pay at least $1 billion every year, just in interest payments. This is in addition to selling his $20 billion worth of Tesla shares. With that in mind, he had to either cut expenses to increase revenue, either by a large margin. His plan included both. In his first week at the company, he dissolved the entire board of directors. He also fired several top executives, including but not limited to the CEO, CFO, and Head of Policy. He also laid off hundreds of employees whose work he considered ‘insignificant.’ By the end of the first week, less than 50 percent of the workforce was left.

The Layoffs And The Pushback

This was his attempt to patch up the deficit created by large wage packages of high-level executives. This wave of massive layoffs led to a class-action lawsuit by his former employees. According to his calculations, even with severance packages and some lawsuits, the company would still be saving up money. Adding to these losses, several members of top management stepped down to protest against Musk’s actions. To compensate for the loss of manpower to ramp up Twitter’s infrastructure, Musk brought in engineers from his other companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company. Also, some of the employees that were laid off were asked to return.On November 7, 180 employees of Twitter India staff were laid off out of a total of 230. Staff was laid off in Brazil, Australia, and several other offices to cut costs.In December, Reuters reported that Twitter was being sued again, this time for disproportionately laying off women. Of those who left, he gave them the ultimatum to work at the same wage rate – eighty hours a week – or quit. Musk wanted to change work culture at Twitter wherein only passionate people can survive. However, this proposal was rejected by more than 1200 employees who left. At this point, the number of employees was critically low, and former employees were concerned that the site would crash due to the lack of engineers.This employee shortage also caused panic amongst advertisers. Some big ticket companies that advertised on Twitter including General Mills, General monitors, Pfizer, and Audi, suspended their ad-campaigns. As of January 2023, half of over 100 advertisers still haven’t returned.To deal with spam accounts, Musk paywalled the blue tick feature. Now, the blue tick costs $8 a month. Needless to say, the move was not very popular among users. It is widely believed that putting the verification feature behind a paywall would not contribute anything significant to revenue.Impersonators spread false news, mocking the policy of paywalling content. For example, an impersonator announced that Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, had made insulin, an essential drug, free. This caused the company’s stock to crash.

After these events, this new feature was scrapped and is under review. Apparently, Musk had locked horns with Apple over the new data and privacy features of the MacOS and iOS.

Later in the year, Musk, Matt Taibi, and Bari Weiss released internal Twitter documents that have now come to be known as Twitter Files. These files reveal the internal turmoil surrounding Joe Biden’s son, right-wing politics in the United States and the bid to keep them from surfacing. The files also revealed that more FBI agents were deployed to Twitter for mass surveillance purposes, and Twitter executives confirmed that Twitter handed over a large amount of data to the FBI. It was also revealed that multiple branches of the US Government were involved with Twitter for reasons concerning mass surveillance.

Elon Musk’s entire tenure at Twitter has been marred with controversy. Among other controversies includes the ban on all accounts that made amusing comments while impersonating him, a ban on sharing links to other social media websites, and also a ban on the accounts of those journalists who were associated with other social media sites. At the end of 2022, he conducted a mass poll on whether he should back out as the CEO of Twitter, and the answer was unequivocally, Yes.In the aftermath of Twitter files and all the controversy surrounding it, stock prices of Musk’s other businesses have fallen sharply. Tesla’s shares dropped by 70%. That company is currently facing an investigation by the US Securities and Exchanges Commission(SEC).While hearings are currently taking place and Elon Musk has been called to testify, Tesla has accused the SEC of harassment. This marks the latest confrontation between Musk and government regulators. The SEC sued the company back in 2018 for discrimination against employees.

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing