The new controls are part of Twitter’s effort to reassure and lure back advertisers that have pulled ads off the platform since it was purchased in October by billionaire Elon Musk, amid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has risen since the acquisition and after several banned or suspended accounts were reinstated.
In the month after Elon Musk bought Twitter, the microblogging platform’s decentralized rival social network Mastodon not only received widespread coverage from the media, but saw traffic explode
Under Elon Musk, the company has cut its financial expectations as some advertisers request discounts and are offered incentives.
Exclusives
Elon Musk reinstated former President Donald Trump’s account on Twitter Saturday, reversing a ban that had kept Trump off the social media site for more than 22 months — since a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was poised to certify President Biden’s election victory. Musk made the announcement after holding a poll that asked Twitter users to click “yes” or “no” on whether Trump’s account should be reinstated. The “yes” vote won, with 51.8%.
A list of things that journalism will lose, and ways that it will change, if Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter leads to its shutdown.
The drama surrounding Elon Musk’s chaotic reign of Twitter kicked up a notch on Thursday night, as reports filtered out of an exodus of key staff at the company leading to genuine fears over the future viability of the platform.
Early on Tuesday, Musk’s team ordered nearly two dozen Twitter employees who had pushed back publicly and privately against him to be fired, three people with knowledge of the matter said. The billionaire, who completed a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last month, later confirmed the exits on the platform and mocked the former employees.
Workers who survived last week’s mass layoffs are facing harsher work conditions and growing uncertainty about their ability to keep Twitter running safely as it continues to lose high-level leaders responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity and complying with regulations. The FTC said in a statement Thursday that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern. No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” said the agency’s statement. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”
Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another. The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names — not their account names — and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts to all comers for $8 month as he simultaneously laid off a big chunk of the workforce.
Twitter is holding back the rollout of account verifications for its paid Twitter Blue subscription plan until after the midterm elections, a source with knowledge of the decision confirmed. The decision to push back the new feature came one day after the platform launched an updated version of its iOS app that promises to allow users who pay a monthly subscription fee to get a blue checkmark on their profiles, a feature that CEO Elon Musk has proposed as a way to fight spam on the platform.
The San Francisco-based company told workers by email Thursday that they would learn Friday if they had been laid off. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety & integrity, confirmed in a tweet. The speed and size of the cuts also opened Musk and Twitter to lawsuits. At least one was filed alleging Twitter violated federal law by not providing fired employees the required notice.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, acknowledged that ad spending on the platform had slumped. He blamed the drop on pressure from activists.
Twitter has reportedly sent out a company-wide email warning its estimated 7,500 employees that layoffs will start Friday. The culling is not unexpected, as new Twitter owner Elon Musk has said repeatedly that the company needed a reduction in force and had too large a management layer. Workers were instructed to go home and not return to the offices on Friday as the cuts proceeded. The message, came from a generic address and was signed “Twitter.” The email did not specify the number of cuts, but previous reports have indicated it will be in the thousands.
Interpublic Group, the advertising giant, has suggested to clients that work with its large Mediabrands ad-buying group to “pause” spending on Twitter for the next week, according to a person familiar with the matter. Executives at the media-investment firm want to get more clarity, this person says, on Twitter’s trust and safety policies, as well as its “organizational capability” under Elon Musk, the new owner. Musk last week closed a $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter.
A CNBC reporter who was duped by a man posing as a fired Twitter engineer apologized live on-air Monday to viewers for not doing her due diligence in checking the veracity of the story. CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa tweeted Friday that an “entire team of data engineers” was let go after Elon Musk officially took over Twitter. She later apologized, saying the two men were actually faking it.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, fired the company’s board of directors and made himself the board’s sole member, according to a company filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He’s also testing the waters on asking users to pay for verification. A venture capitalist working with Musk tweeted a poll asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue check mark that Twitter has historically used to verify higher-profile accounts so other users know it’s really them.
Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter promises to supercharge the battle over content moderation, which is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court
Elon Musk sought to reassure jittery advertisers that he has no plans to make Twitter a “free-for-all hellscape,” as Madison Avenue is reportedly uneasy about his plans to loosen content moderation rules once he takes control of the social network.
Silicon Valley moguls used to buy yachts and islands. Now they are rich enough, and perhaps arrogant enough, to acquire companies they fancy.
Two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night said that Elon Musk is in charge of the social media platform and has fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and General Counsel Vijaya Gadde.
For a second time, Musk offered to buy the San Francisco company at $54.20. Twitter’s stock jumped nearly 13% to $47.93 Tuesday before trading stopped on the New York Stock Exchange, which listed “news pending” as the reason for the halt.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case that challenges tech companies’ broad immunity to lawsuits over content hosted on their platforms. The case marks a new focus for the highest court to weigh in on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects platforms from being sued over most third-party content on their sites. The court will decide in the case of Gonzalez v. Google LLC whether those protections are too far-reaching when it comes to Google’s recommendations of terrorist videos.
Some major advertisers including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes and PBS Kids have suspended their marketing campaigns or removed their ads from parts of Twitter because their promotions appeared alongside tweets soliciting child pornography, the companies say. DirecTV and Thoughtworks also told Reuters late on Wednesday they have paused their advertising on Twitter.
Twitter investors backed Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover that the billionaire is trying to abandon on the day a whistleblower who leveled charges of widespread security failures at the social-media company testified at a Senate hearing Tuesday. Former Twitter security executive Peiter Zatko, who was fired by the company in January, told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that Twitter executives’ “incentives led them to prioritize profits over security,” echoing his whistleblower complaint.
The whistle-blower also said Twitter had lied to Elon Musk, who is trying to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the social media service.
Musk disclosed in series of regulatory filings that he unloaded about 8 million shares of his company Tesla Inc. in recent days. “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday.
Twitter, In Midst Of Musk Fight, Posts Surprising Drop In Revenue
The latest quarterly earnings figures offered a glimpse into how the social media platform has performed during a months-long negotiation with billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk after he said that he would buy the company, and then changed his mind. It was worse than industry analysts had anticipated.
Twitter had asked for an expedited trial in September, while Musk’s team called for waiting until early next year because of the complexity of the case. Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the head judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, which handles many high-profile business disputes. said Musk’s team underestimated the Delaware court’s ability to “quickly process complex litigation.”
Twitter’s lawsuit opens with a sharply-worded accusation: “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.” As part of the April deal, Musk and Twitter had agreed to pay each other a $1 billion breakup fee if either was responsible for the deal falling through. The company could have pushed Musk to pay the hefty fee but is going farther than that, trying to force him to complete the full $44 billion purchase approved by the company’s board.
Shares of the social media company have lost a third of their value since April 25, when Musk’s offer to buy the company was accepted by the company’s board.
