Elon Musk turned Twitter into X

He dreamed of returning freedom of speech, but made propaganda, fakes and hatred from the social network. How did it happen?

American billionaire Ilon Musk has been at the Twitter helm for a year. During this time, the newly made media manager changed the company's logo, fired almost the entire state, divided users into rich and poor and turned the social network into a nursery of fakes and hatred. Advertisers do not want to cooperate with the new Twitter, and Elton John and Gigi Hadid have already deleted their accounts. But the innovations of the mask were approved by the editor -in -chief of RT Margarita Simonyan and ultra -right activists, who can now incite without restrictions. X instead of a blue bird - in the material "Cold".

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Twitter went to Ilon Mask according to the results of several months of legal disputes on October 27, 2022. The social network cost the head of SpaceX and Tesla $ 44 billion. Almost immediately, he announced large -scale changes. As planned by the mask, the new Twitter was supposed to be a universal application - EVERYTHING App. Maskwanted to create its own version of Chinese WeChat - “Super Apples” in which you can arrange video chat, exchange messages and pay for purchases.

By the end of 2024, Musk plans to make a full -fledged bank account replacement from the account in the social network so that any financial transactions are carried out through X (so now called Twitter). In the coming months, the social network shouldreceive a license for money transfers. “When I'm talking about payments, I actually mean the whole financial life of a person. If it comes to money, our platform will work with this. Money, securities or something else. This is not just sending $ 20 to a friend. I am saying that we no longer need a bank account, ”Musk explained his idea.

At a meeting with employees, Muskspoke about the success of X in the development of the video management. According to him, now you can upload long rollers in the social network, including entire films and series. The next goal is to add video calls to the application: Muskintends to integrate into the X analogue Facetime, and in the social network both personal and group video calls can be made. The function is already tested in beta versions, assures Musk.

Superwear for the super -application

For the sake of such goals, the social network should change - and first of all, the changes touched the company's staff. After the sale of Twitter, mass dismissals began, which Musk himself was talking about. According to him, out of eight thousand employees, only one and a half places retained their places. Some experts were reduced, and some left of their own free will because of the new working culture. At the same time, some employees were fired without the payments due to them.

“In the future, in order to create a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and achieve success in the world with growing competition, we will have to act extremely tough. This will mean long hours of work with high intensity. We will consider only exceptional performance for the passing score, ”the mask said in a letter to employees.

In addition, Musk fired those who criticized his decisions. It is known about two dozen people who have lost their jobs because of unflattering statements about the new boss (and, both public and made in private). With one of these employees, Musk even entered an open skirmish on Twitter. “Lol, I was just fired for shitposting. I said this before and say again: kiss me in the ass, Elon, ” wrote a former software engineer of the social network Sasha Solomon. “The tragic case of a tourist syndrome in adults,” Musk wrote in response.

The flowering of humiliation

After the reduction of 80% of the state in the new Twitter, there were almost no employees who would engage in moderation and fight against misinformation. According to the former employee of the company Ray Serrato, the detected state propaganda team on Twitter decreased three times, and there was no less work. “Several key experts left the team who were engaged in specific regions, the so -called threat subjects, from Russia to China,” says Serrato.

Due to record layoffs, the content design department also suffered . Its employees were responsible for pop -up tips that warned users about fakes or aggressive posts. Researchers revealed that Hate Spech is distributed on the social network. После прихода Маска число постов со словом «ниггер» выросло в три раза: с 1282 в день до 3876. Похожая ситуация со словом «faggot» («педик» или «пидор») — после прихода миллиардера в соцсети этого слова стало на 58% больше. At the same time, Musk himselfinsisted in November 2022 that there were fewer insults and the “language of enmity” in X.

For the sake of the experiment, the BBC correspondent published an insulting tweet: “Twitter employees are lazy losers, jump the golden gate from the bridge and die.” The social network did not display the hint with the proposal to edit the text before the publication, and it was for such cases that filters on Twitter were developed. “A total of 60% of users either deleted or edited their answers when they opened these tips. But what is even more interesting, having received them once, users then wrote 11% less offensive messages than before, ”the Twitter internal study says about the effectiveness of the function. The employee who introduced this tool also left the company.

They paid attention to the dismissal on Twitter even to the UN. The head of the Committee on Human Rights, Folker Turk sent an open letter to the mask in which he condemned mass reductions, especially in the department responsible for observing human rights. The Turk had to remind the mask that freedom of speech does not give a carte blanche to do anything. “As the new owner of Twitter, you are very responsible, given the influence of the platform as digital space, where people discuss their ideas, their worries and their lives. Twitter should be a safe place where people's rights are respected, ”the UN representative wrote.

Public criticism of the UN, in principle, a rare phenomenon , and even more so - usually the organization turns to the leadership of the country where the company is registered. Such conflicts, as a rule, were left without wide publicity.

Golden checkmark for fakes

The spread of misinformation has become one of the main problems of Twitter under the leadership of Ilon Mask. This was facilitated not only by the dismissal of specialists, but also by new rules for users. Previously, on Twitter there were verified accounts - pages marked with a blue tick. Thus, those media and personal accounts that could be trusted were denoted, since the social network checked the authenticity of their data. Mask began to sell blue checkmarks: now the “legitimacy” of its posts can be bought for only eight dollars a month - this is how much it costs a subscription to X Premium, which automatically gives the account a blue checkmark.

As a result, the owners of verified steel accounts, for example, prominent neo -Nazis. Among accounts with a blue checkmark was a ultra -right activist and organizer of racist rallies in Charlotsville Jason Kessler. Now he is actively leading his account and even reprost by the tweet of Ilona Mask. On his Twitter, Kessler, for example, called the “stunning problem of national security” the presence of ethnic Jews at leading posts to the United States and admired the fact that there were no dark -skinned ones in Budapest. He called for cooperation with Iran and Russia in order to stop the conflict, and also proposed to take out all the Jews who want to live in a mono -ethnic society, to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Russia. It is noteworthy that in 2017 his account was also verified, but subsequently Twitter selected a blue checkmark from many people of right and ultra -conservative views, including Cessler.

“Let's see: use the“ icon policy ”, to censor those who do not worship Twitter's liberal dictatorship, and introduce procedures to destroy conservatives on the Internet? It seems that Twitter offers his own “final decision” for conservatives, ” wrote Laura Lumer, the ultra -right activist. In 2017, she was also deprived of a blue checkmark, but after the mask arrived, she returned it.

Now the verification of the account in X does not mean that he can be trusted. This is also shown by statistics: “proven” accounts distributed 74% of the most viral fake news about the war between Israel and the Palestinian movement of Hamas. For example, in X, Fake gained popularity that Ukraine sold weapons to Hamas - such publications were viewed 100 million times. Before the war in the Middle East, misinformation spread on other significant topics. In particular, under the leadership of the mask, Twitter stopped the fight against fakes about Covid and restored about 11 thousand previously blocked accounts that wrote on this topic.

Especially from the new policy of the mask, Russian propagandists won from whom restraints were removed. According to the study of the European Commission, the materials of the Russian state media began to come across in the ribbons of users more and more often. In the Russia Today account, the “state edition” label was removed , and in return the main propaganda channel about Russia for abroad received not just a blue checkmark, but a gold. For this, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan personally, “in a part” and “sincerely”, thanked the mask.

“Due to the removal of the labels of the state media, these accounts can now work without forcing users to notice that the information is probably a bias,” said Feikov researcher Lisa Kaplan. However, access to RT account in X is still prohibited in the European Union and Great Britain; Also, it is impossible to go from the territory of Europe in their telegram channel.

“Ilon Musk completed his transformation from the defender of freedom of speech into a champion of misinformation. Most of his decisions led to the strengthening of misinformation manufacturers and weakening access to reliable news and information on its platform, ”the international organization“ Reporters without Borders ” believe .

Escape from a sinking ship

Researchers note three types of migration from Twitter: employees migration, developers migration and user migration. In 2023, the Twitter user base will be reduced by 3.9% and reach 353.9 million active users per month. Until 2022, the Twitter audience stably grew and reached an indicator of 368.4 million active users. On average, most of the most active users of social networks began to publish tweets less often (their number decreased by about 25% per month). A quarter of these users admitted that they are unlikely to use X in a year.

Some world celebrities announced that they would leave Twitter because of the new policy of the mask. Among them Elton John , Jim Kerry , Wupi Goldberg , Gigi Hadid - none of them still returned to the social network. “All my life I tried to use music to unite people. And I am sad to see how misinformation is now used to separate our world. I decided not to use Twitter anymore, given the recent changes in politics that will freely flourish misinformation, ” wrote Elton John in his last post on December 9 last year. On the same day, Musk wrote that he loves Elton John's music, and asked to give an example of misinformation that bothers him. There was no answer.

The outraged was caused by changes in the verification of the account. With a mask, the blue checkmark became not a sign of quality, but by privilege: the subscription system shared the platform users - the reflax of “proven” accounts is shown in the branch higher than the referma of users without subscription.

Less audience and money

The decline in the popularity of Twitter was also influenced by the unexpected rebranding of the network. The usual blue page design was replaced by black, and the bird usual for the whole generation of Internet users changed the logo from the letter X (which is very similar to the logo of another company Mask-SpaceX). From the point of view of marketing, this was a rather unsuccessful step , since the logo and design of any brand work primarily for its recognition. Lecturer at the Department of Finance at the University of Vanderbilt Joshua White notes that the former Twitter was a cultural phenomenon. The words “tweet” and “retweet” that appeared thanks to social networks became ordinary to describe communication between people.

“It took more than 15 years to earn such great capital around the world, so the loss of Twitter as a brand is a significant financial blow,” explains Steve Suzi, director of brands communications in Siegel & Gale. Twitter rebranding analysts call irrational. Some believe that his bloated ego speaks in the mask, not a calculation. Rebranding, according to various estimates, cost a mask from 4 to $ 20 billion.

The billionaire hoped that rebranding would allow to lay the foundation for a strong brand and increase interest in the platform, but this did not happen. It was an unexpected blow for the company, because Musksaid that he hates advertising and does not spend money on it (for example, on Tesla advertising in 2019, he did not spend anything, but the brand became one of the most recognizable in the world). However, Rebranding gave the opposite effect - new users are still looking for the previous Twitter, and many do not even know about the existence of brand H.

The analyst with Insider Intelligence Jasmine Enberg suggests that the Twitter brand force has already been partially lost among users and advertisers. Indeed, in July, Musk himself admitted that the social network began to receive half as much advertising income. In September, he reported that advertising revenue in the United States decreased by 60% compared to last year. True, he accused of this prostilly attacked activists who criticized the billionaire for anti -Semitism. According to preliminary estimates, the advertising business in 2023 will bring X 2.98 billion dollars (that is, almost $ 2 billion less than it was predicted).

“The mask failed to make a single significant improvement to the platform, and he did not become closer to his vision“ Application for everything ”than a year ago. Instead, X pushed users, advertisers, and now has lost his main value offer in the world of social networks: to be the main center of news, ” said the analyst at Insider Intelligence Jasmine Enberg.

The players in the market felt the outflow of users from Twitter and hastened to offer them an alternative. The situation was used by the German Mastodon, which develops software and the same decentralized social network. The company promised that the platform would never belong to billionaires, which allowed it to attract more than a million people to her platform (though most of them did not stay there). Part of Twitter users decided to try the Bluesky application, one of the creators of which is the former founder and general director of Twitter Jack Dorsie. In April, it was downloaded 628 thousand times, which is 606% more than a month earlier.

In July, the Threads social network appeared - a competitor from Instagram and Facebook, which in appearance and functionality resembles an old Twitter. According to Evercore ISI analysts, in two years the daily audience of Threads can reach 200 million active users per day. The head of META Mark Zuckerberg expects to attract about a billion users. True, so far such statements are somewhat diverge from reality - after a sharp surge, the active audience of the new social network fell by almost 80%.

Musk does not intend to put up with a new competitor. In X, he had already threatened the lawsuit against Meta for the fact that the old Twitter team supposedly works on the new social network.