Twitter has been offering since Monday again a payment model – and so far no glitches are known. This is a success after the first attempt ended in disaster. Much ridicule and half a dozen postponements later, the restart seems to have been successful. But that’s where the good news for Twitter ends. Chaos has been the only constant since Elon Musk took over the company at the end of October. But what happened in the past few days represents a new low even for Twitter.
Musk borrowed $13 billion from banks to buy it. After just one and a half months, the financial institutions are adjusting to the fact that they will at best get part of the money back. Reuters reportsthat Morgan Stanley and other banks are expecting billions in losses because they don’t think they can sell their shares to investors.
More than half of the top 100 advertisers have canceled all bookings on Twitter, the Outlook for 2023 is bleak. On a platform that courts conspiracy ideologues and reactivates en masse right-wing extremist accounts, nobody wants to advertise. In part, that’s directly due to Musk’s decisions, who personally announced an amnesty for suspended accounts. The radical austerity measures that make Twitter an unsafe place for users are sometimes taking their toll.
Musk does not tolerate dissent
More than two-thirds of the 7,500 employees were fired or have resigned voluntarily. Important departments are decimated or completely gone. Musk, who declared the fight against child exploitation as “the number one priority”, has almost completely disbanded the responsible team. Previously, thousands of people who viewed and deleted illegal tweets on behalf of Twitter lost their jobs.
Anyone who dares to stand up for colleagues who have been fired will be kicked out themselves a day later. The new Twitter boss promised to create radical transparency. On the one hand, he himself passes on internal documents to right-wing reporters, who come from the so-called Twitter files construct an alleged scandal – actually but reveal nothing new. on the other hand he threatens employeeswho speak to the media and reveal internals, with claims for damages.
The most obvious example of Musk’s disdain for those who disagree with him is Yoel Roth. In November, the then Twitter security chief resigned and justified his decision in one Guest post for the New York Times. Now Musk falsely accuses him of sympathy for pedophiles and made several allusions, which activated supporters of the extreme right-wing and violent QAnon movement. Within hours, Roth and his family received so many death threats that they had to leave their home.