The acquisition of Musk’s Silicon Valley telecommunications company, TWA, sparks debate and ridicules about the use of social media
Musk has begun to meet leaders across the company now that he is buying it. He showed up to San Fransisco headquarters with a kitchen sink and held an impromptu discussion at the coffee bar. There he downplayed a recent report that he was about to lay off 75 percent of his employees.
Within weeks of the acquisition agreement, Musk started raising concern about the use of fake accounts on TWA and attempted to pull the plug on the deal.
In taking those steps, Musk was able to upend the media and political community and disrupt the conservative- leaning social media properties that existed because of grievances about ban and restrictions on mainstream services.
Musk will be able to extend his influence with the acquisition. The billionaire already owns, oversees or has significant stakes in companies developing cars, rockets, robots and satellite internet, as well as more experimental ventures such as brain implants. Hundreds of millions of people communicate and get their news via social media, and he has control over it.
The accounts with large followings on the platform, and the fake and scam accounts that are especially active in the replies to Musk’s tweets, were all promised to be defeated or die trying.
The Twitter Firefight: Tesla’s Case for a No-Go Theoretically Inflating Wall Street Orbit on Twitter
The departures come just hours before a deadline set by a Delaware judge to finalize the deal on Friday. She threatened to schedule a trial if no agreement was reached.
“Even slightly loosening content moderation on the platform is sure to spook advertisers, many of whom already find Twitter’s brand safety tools to be lacking compared with other social platforms,” Enberg said.
Musk and his brain trust will have to do something in order to increase revenue, even though they have a large debt burden. And whatever they chose, it’s pretty clear that the service will never be the same.
Many Twitter employees have recently noted the absence of Parag Argawal, their current CEO, who Musk soured on after the two initially started talking about Musk joining Twitter’s board. One current employee of the social network said that he had been completely absent for weeks. “He has ghosted us,” said another. Both Twitter’s Slack and the Twitter employee-only section of Blind, an anonymous message board for tech workers, are full of similar comments about Argawal, according to screenshots seen by The Verge.
Although they came quickly, the major personnel moves had been widely expected and almost certainly are the first of many major changes the mercurial Tesla CEO will make.
Musk privately clashed with Agrawal in April, immediately before deciding to make a bid for the company, according to text messages later revealed in court filings.
He criticized one of the company’s top lawyers on micro-fiche. A wave of harassment of Gadde from other accounts followed histweet. For Gadde, an 11-year Twitter employee who also heads public policy and safety, the harassment included racist and misogynistic attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her. The harassing tweet went up once again after she was fired.
Yildirim stated that Facebook was good at targeting advertising to what users wanted to see. Musk’s message suggests he wants to fix that, she said.
He said that there was great danger that social media would splinter into far right and far left wing echo chambers.
The note is a shift from Musk’s position that Twitter is unfairly infringing on free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content, said Pinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
She said that not having content moderation is bad for businesses and putsTwitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers.
“You do not want a place where consumers just simply are bombarded with things they do not want to hear about, and the platform takes no responsibility,” Yildirim said.
What Will Twitter Do to Make Sense of the Post? The Baby Boom is Coming: The Twitter Crisis a la Musk and the White House
And overnight the New York Stock Exchange notified investors that it will suspend trading in shares of Twitter before the opening bell Friday in anticipation of the company going private under Musk.
Sarah Personette was the company’s top sales executive and said she supported Musk’s message to advertisers.
Musk said that the building should be turned into a homeless shelter because few people actually worked there.
The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told prospective investors that he plans to cut three quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 workers when he becomes owner of the company. The documents and unnamed sources were cited by the newspaper.
As was the case for the Blue roll out, advertisers seem to have a better understanding of what needs to be done in order to make money on social media. Massive cuts to the content moderation team, a paralyzing code freeze, and open hostility between the “goons” and the pre-Musk Tweeps have created a company that continues to court a larger crisis.
Social Media and the Post-Democracy Cyber-Politics Scenario of the First U.S. Presidential Election
“The Covid PLANdemic was created by Big Pharma to silence me. Everybody tries to silence me,” she said. “Ma’am, please speak at a lower volume. I’m sorry, am I too loud for your precious intensive care unit? You aren’t even sick!”
Hi, I am here. Your profile is hilarious. Schumer, dressed in a red dress, said that she loves funny guys. “They said I was a bot, which is crazy. I love funny men like you, I’m all woman. In fact, you should check out this website where me and some other girls hang out.”
But the most notable person to speak in front of the council: former president Donald Trump, played by James Austin Johnson. Trump’s account was banned in 2021.
We all moved to Truth Social, and we love it. It’s very great,” Johnson’s Trump said. It was terrible in many ways. It is very bad. Very, very bad. It’s a little buggy when it comes to making the phone screen crack and the draining of the Venmo.
The aftermath of the last major election in the United states was like a car crash on social media. In late 2020 and January 2021, as Donald Trump riled up his supporters through his Twitter account after roundly losing the presidential election, the social media company felt paralyzed about how to act. The platform moved only after Trump used his account to direct a mob to attack the US Capitol and take politicians hostage.
For Perez, the matter at hand isn’t simply the job losses that have decimated his former coworkers, nor the ability for people to say what they want on Twitter. It’s about upholding and protecting democracy. “It’s not entirely clear to me—particularly in the political context—that Elon Musk fully understands the degree of social responsibility that rests on his shoulders, and the very real harm, political harm, political violence, and division that can come from social media platforms.”
Perez is a member of the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan group that is devoted to election security and integrity and he is concerned that the drama around corporate takeover is taking away from the real issues of the day. He says the Musk psychodrama’s focus on election- related issues is potentially inadequate.
Musk has been heavily involved in the chaotic launch of Blue, participating in standup meetings and exchanging regular emails with Esther Crawford, a director of product management at the company. “There is one decision-maker and that is me,” Musk told workers, according to meeting notes shared with employees in Slack.
The First Wave of Layoffs: Twitter’s Contract Workers for the Most Abrupt Among the Most Vulnerable Employees, Discriminated Employees
The first wave of layoffs had been reported a week ago and the second wave has hit the company. This time, the cuts were aimed at Twitter’s contract workers. 80% of the contractors had lost their jobs by the next day, and that’s on a percentage basis.
Managers agonized over the decisions, and jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve employment for the most vulnerable among them: pregnant women, employees who have cancer, and workers on visas among them, a former employee told me.
Some teams were cut more than others. As it turned out, though, the company went too far. As I reported on Saturday, some managers were already being told to ask some employees if they wanted to return to their old jobs.
It began as a rumor on Blind, the app where employees of various companies can chat anonymously with their coworkers. Within a day, it was posted on the public channels.
ELON-MUSK Twitter Twitter Paywall Possible? Employees’ Concerns in an Efficient Technicolor Employer
“Sorry to @- everybody on the weekend I wanted to tell you we have an opportunity to ask those people if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4 PM PST on Sunday,” one such message from a manager to employees read. If any of you have been in touch with people who might help us, please let us know before 4.
“I think we might use some Android and iOS help,” the manager added. The company reached out to both engineers and designers over the past day in an effort to get them back.
If they do not return willingly, they will lose their threemonth pay and it is feared that they will be fired for abandoning their jobs.
Some workers have begun to consult with lawyers over their options in the event that they are recalled. Some are angry about the mess that has been done to the organization after the Musk layoffs debacle.
Meanwhile, remaining managers are bracing themselves for a much higher workload than they were previously used to. A person I spoke with said that any technical manager should be able to manage at least 20 individual contributors, and also spend 50% of their time writing code. Others have been given higher numbers of direct reports.
“The couple of teams that are on his pet projects are doing 20-hour days,” one employee told me. The majority of the company is sitting around. No chain of command, no priorities, no organization chart, and in many instances, no idea who your manager or team is, is what it is.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/7/23446262/elon-musk-twitter-paywall-possible
The Twitter Employees of Musk’s Bounds on Impersonation: The Case Against a Great, Noisy Social Lobby
To find out what they are supposed to do, employees looked to strange sources. A new policy was announced by Musk that anyone who impersonates someone else would be permanently banned. That was news to what remains of Twitter’s policy team, I’m told, and afterward some employees began discussing how to implement Musk’s edict.
According to a former employee, the health team was told to listen to David Sacks, a Musk adviser, for insights into why they had just lost half their colleagues. Sacks, a venture capitalist who has been helping to manage the Musk transition, co-hosts the “All-In” podcast with fellow Twitter adviser Jason Calacanis and VC Chamath Palihapitiya.
A vice president told employees that the current layoffs happening across tech covered in the most recent, and most informative, podcast they could find. It is worth listening to understand the macro environment we are operating in.
Most employees were interested in their health benefits which suddenly became a question mark. The open-enrollment period was supposed to begin today, but no one had access to the company’s human resources system. The questions the employees posted were unanswered by management.
By the day’s end, I’m told, at least some teams had began to hold meetings in which employees were informed who their managers are, what their organization charts look like, and what their priorities will be.
On the one hand, the company is boasting that it is thriving, and on the other hand, they are adding 15 million daily users since the end of the second quarter.
After a full day of chaos on his account, Musk stopped new users from joining the Blue subscription service. Offering anyone the chance to impersonate government officials, corporations, and celebrities had been the reason behind the large number of impersonations. The resulting mayhem, which led to memorable hoaxes from accounts misrepresenting themselves as Eli Lilly, Tesla, Lockheed Martin and others, had triggered an advertiser pullout and a general sense that the platform had descended into chaos.
But the new Blue likely faces larger problems. The existing version only had 100,000 active subscribers, according to Platformer. The new version will have a bigger price and it appears to be unclear for most regular users of the platform. It’s unclear how the company will persuade enough people to subscribe to justify the effort.
Then, after a debate about the potential effects of unleashing thousands of new verified accounts onto the platforms in the middle of the US midterm elections, the company postponed the launch.
A person familiar with the matter states that Musk and Sacks have discussed the idea in recent meetings. One plan would allow everyone to use 140 characters a month, but they would have to pay to continue browsing, the person said.
Other employees have warned about a secondary feature of the new Blue that Musk added at the last minute: reducing ad load in the Twitter app by half. Estimates show that by changing the name of the micro-blogging site, they will lose about $6 in ad revenue per user. Factoring in Apple and Google’s share of the $8 monthly subscription, Twitter would likely lose money on Blue if the ad-light plan is enacted.
It wasn’t known how serious Musk and Sacks are about the paywall;Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. The launch of expanded verification is one of the reasons why it does not seem imminent.
The significance of all this began to register with Musk and he said that satirical accounts need to include “parody” in their names and bio. But if any of the fallout had come as a shock to Musk and his team, they can’t say they weren’t warned.
It was presented to Esther Crawford, a director of product management at the company who in recent weeks has risen to become one of Musk’s top lieutenants. Sources told me that Alex Spiro was briefed as well. And while Crawford appeared sympathetic to many of the concerns in the document, sources said, she declined to implement any suggestions that would delay the launch of Blue. Crawford didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Twitter Inside Warnings Ignored: When Musk’s Legacy Verification Costs $399 a Year to Subscribe for Blue
The team labeled the concern in the highest risk category P0 in the document, which was a reference to the fact that bad actors could be willing to pay to achieve their ends.
The team found that the assassination of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials, and other high profile individuals represented another P0 risk. The loss of Legacy Verification will likely lead to an increase in impersonation of high-profile accounts on the platform.
On November 1st, when the document was circulated internally, Musk was considering a $99-a-year annual subscription for Blue; only later, after an exchange online with writer Stephen King, did he lower the cost. The move wound up increasing the risk for scams, as the desire to make fun of brands and government officials became an impulse buy at $8.
Other risks that the team identified for Twitter have yet to be solved. For starters, the company lacks any automated way to remove verified badges from user accounts. “Given that we will have a large amount of legacy verified users on the platform (400K Twitter customers), and that we anticipate we’ll need to debadge a large number of legacy verified accounts if they decide not to pay for Blue, this will require high operational lift without investment.”
The company’s trust and safety team did win support for some solutions, including retaining verification for some high-profile accounts using the “official badge.”
For the most part, though, the document offers a wish list for features that would make the product safer and easier to use, most of which have not been approved.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored
The Twitter “Blue Velve” Campaign: The Case for Child Sexual Exploitation in the Light of Musk’s Unfair Twitter Effort
The launch continued as planned despite the warnings. After the prediction of the trust and safety team was largely realized, Musk stopped the roll out.
Functions affected included content moderation, recruiting, ad sales, marketing, and real estate, among others. At the moment, it’s unclear how the loss of what may have been thousands of moderators will affect the service. But it seems clear that Twitter now has dramatically fewer people available to police the site for harmful material.
One of my contractors was cut off in the middle of making critical changes to our child safety workflows, that’s why I let him go. This is particularly worrying because it shows the difficulty in policing child sexual exploitation material on the platform, as we previously reported.
The day began with similar messages on Blind, an app for coworkers to chat anonymously about their work environment, and on external websites that employees have established to have more candid discussions.
Several workers said they had learned about their employment status after seeing our tweets, attempting to log in to Gmail and Slack, and finding that they no longer had access.
Some employees told us that they had been bracing for cuts ever since the layoffs earlier this month. The sudden nature of the cuts means that many former contractors will have no choice but to search for a job, as their medical benefits are going to end today.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored
What Twitter has to Learn About T-Mobile: The First Three Months of Musk’s Social Media Effort at the Boring Company
In a couple of weeks, we have gone from being the most welcoming and healthy workplace that I have ever known to the most hostile and degrading.
Employees are showing great deal of solidarity. The goons are the volunteers and on-loan engineers from the Boring Company who have been carrying out Musk’s orders.
One employee responded that T-Mobile had requested to “pause the campaigns due to brand safety concerns.” John Legere, who was the CEO of T-Mobile at the time, asked Musk three days later to run the world’s fifth largest social media network.
This time, however, engineers were told they couldn’t even write any code — “until further notice,” according to an internal email obtained by Platformer. If there is an urgent change that needs to be made to resolve an issue with a production service, employees will get approval from the VP level and be explicitly stated that the change needs to be made.
Engineers who were at the late night meeting were confused. An engineer who was being tasked with implementing the freeze asked, “Is there a ticket I can reference?” I don’t see any context. “We don’t have much context as of now,” a colleague responded. “But this is coming from Elon’s team.”
“I’d like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!” Musk tweeted on Sunday morning, referring to remote procedure calls. Musk also complained about the number of microservices Twitter employs, which are generally understood to prevent the entire site from breaking every time one part of it goes down.
Instead, the experience is not great in India, for example. That’s because the payload gets delivered from further away (laws of physics come into effect) and that back-and-forth data transfer between the phone and the data center starts compounding.
There’s a higher concentration of low power phones in India than in the US, and that makes them perform worse in general.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored
The Code is Frozen, but the Twitter Ad Team is in a Lurch: Why Eli Lilly and GroupM are High Risk Media Buyers
The code is frozen. No one knows for sure, but some are speculating that Musk has grown paranoid that some disgruntled engineers may intend to sabotage the site on their way out.
Eli Lilly stopped its ad campaigns on Friday because of the Blue debacle. The Washington Post says the move could cost millions of dollars in revenue. (A “verified” fake account impersonating Eli Lilly had said insulin would now be free, and it took Twitter six hours to remove the tweet.)
The news has left Twitter’s ad teams — particularly those responsible for managing ad agency relationships — in a lurch, according to internal screenshots and conversations with current employees.
“I know that many of your markets and clients are seeing large declines in Q4 and in particular L7D,” wrote Twitter’s global business lead in Slack. Please provide any commentary, questions, issues in this thread and I’ll try to raise as many as I can!
Another employee said General GM asked them to stop campaigns. “The initial reason they gave is elections, but it looks like an open-ended pause, because the team requested to meet next week to help them make a case to global on why they shouldn’t.” The same employee said that the GM would be paused til the end of the year. Brand safety is the reason right now.
GroupM, the largest media-buying agency in the world, with $60 billion in annual media spend, told its clients that Twitter was a high-risk media buy, according to Digiday and an email obtained by Platformer. Twitter’s agency partnerships lead explained the situation in Slack: “Given the recent senior departures in key operational areas (specifically Security, Trust & Safety, Compliance), GroupM have updated Twitter’s brand safety guidance to high risk. They understand that the policies we have remain in place, but they don’t know how long it will take to manage our violations at fast pace.
The commitment to moderation, the enforcement of current rules and hate speech all make up the commitment.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23459244/twitter-elon-musk-blue-verification-internal-warnings-ignored
Two-Factor Authentication and the Musk/Yang-Mills Announcement: When Are There New Cracks?
Some people said two-factorAuthentication stopped working as a result of Musk’s announcement. Some people reported being able to access their archives but experiencing partial site disruptions.
There are people that know how to fix those things who no longer work for the company, or they have been told not to ship new code. The question haunting engineers at the end of the day was not whether there would be any new cracks in the service, but how many and when.