Elon Musk officially acquired Twitter today for $44 billion — then promptly fired several executives as soon as he stepped in the door. Between his relatively relaxed attitude toward content moderation and his assertions that up to 75 percent of Twitter’s workforce will be cut, the reign of Musk is likely to bring numerous changes to the microblogging platform.
Understandably, not all of them will be welcome.
Twitter’s denizens had been apprehensively watching Musk’s looming approach for months, some no doubt hoping the deal wouldn’t end up going through. Now that it has, the reactions are pouring in.
Some users are suggesting everyone abandon Twitter for the greener pastures of LinkedIn or literally anywhere else. Others are proposing they stay and deliberately tank the website’s value, much like Tumblr after Yahoo acquired it in 2013. Meanwhile, those celebrating Musk’s takeover are taking full advantage of his promises of less discerning moderation by tweeting a whole bunch of slurs. This helps explain the first two reactions.
As Musk acknowledged in a recent open letter to advertisers, letting Twitter become a “free-for-all hellscape” would not be ideal. Socially, such a result could have a devastating impact on matters like democracy and health education. At the very least it would put off some advertisers, which is probably more important to Musk considering advertising is Twitter’s primary source of revenue.
Yet despite this, Musk’s statements have clearly emboldened some edgelords of the internet who believe he is their champion in their fight to post racist tweets without consequences.
And, of course, exactly what constitutes a “hellscape” is extremely subjective.
