This is the reason many people left Twitter earlier this year and began the search for a replacement. Elon Musk officially bought Twitter last week for $44 billion. One reason for the mass departure is that the Tesla head is known to not agree with preventing users from posting fake news. To no one’s surprise, Musk wasted no time instituting changes.
Tip: are you looking to jump ship? Some former Twitter users have found a new home on Mastodon.
Twitter Homepage Change
The first change Elon Musk made was to the Twitter homepage. What visitors to Twitter.com see is now completely different: they are redirected and shown news stories, trending tweets, and sports scores.
Previously, if you were not signed in to an account and landed on the Twitter homepage, you would just see a signup form. This would encourage non-users to sign up for an account to see more. This method was pulled when the change went into effect late Friday.
Twitter Top Executives Fired
There were also plenty of changes behind the scenes. Musk tweeted, “The bird is freed,” after officially signing on the dotted line of the $44 billion acquisition and after months of legal wrangling. He celebrated by clearing out the top executive offices.
Immediately after taking over Twitter, Elon Musk fired Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. Agrawal and Segal were escorted out of the San Francisco headquarters. Of course, Twitter’s many employees are worried they are next.
Before he even put ink to paper, Musk walked into the headquarters carrying a porcelain sink, then tweeted, “Let that sink in,” and changed his profile description to read, “Chief Twit,” and that moniker could be something at least a few people would agree with.
Musk’s Changes to Twitter Content
Musk has been very open that he wants to change policies and content, but so far hasn’t done that, other than the homepage, which seems like it may have just been a toy to him to show that he could now do what he wanted.
It’s known that he doesn’t favor bans on users and content moderation. Yet, he sent an open letter to advertisers on Thursday that spelled out, “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”
Yet, Musk will still need to abide by the rules of other countries and regions. The EU industry chief Thierry Breton tweeted on Friday morning, “In Europe, the bird will fly by our EU rules,” which is a reference to the EU’s Digital Services Act. Under this rule, Twitter will be fined if it doesn’t control illegal content.
Find out how Elon Musk started making changes to Twitter more than six months ago when he bought his initial controlling interest in the social network.
Image credit: Unsplash. all screenshots by Laura Tucker.
