Twitter/Musk purchase

Elon Musk's 2022 purchase of Twitter

About

After months of "will he won't he", Elon Musk finally purchased Twitter in October 2022 for some inhuman amount of money, and immediately proceeded to start wrecking the place in the name of freeze peach.

This in turn resulted in a large number of users fleeing to Mastodon.

Musk promptly banned a number of reputable science sites from being linked in tweets, including Mastodon instance https://climatejustice.social

Links

to file

2022-11-10 Thu

• The verified brand situation is getting out of control. Quick thread of twitter blue brands, and brands who might be pissed off at Elon right about now. This is what happens when you remove protective regulation (in this case, from a social media venue rather than a legal jurisdiction -- but that just shows the universality of the principle).
• Elon Musk tells Twitter employees ‘bankruptcy is not out of the question’ «Twitter hasn’t turned a profit since 2019, and ad revenue has declined significantly since Musk’s takeover as advertisers pull back from the platform.» He also seems to believe that charging users for blue checks is not only a solution but the only solution, and that ending remote work will somehow improve things.
• Elon Musk is putting Twitter at risk of billions in fines, warns company lawyer (h/t)
  • «The company’s chief privacy officer Damien Kieran, chief information security officer Lea Kissner, and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty have all resigned, according to two employees and an internal message seen by The Verge. Kissner confirmed their departure in a tweet on Thursday.»
  • «If Twitter doesn’t comply with that agreement, the FTC can issue fines reaching into the billions of dollars, according to the lawyer’s note to employees. The note goes on to say that its author, who The Verge knows the identity of but is choosing not to disclose, has “heard Alex Spiro (current head of Legal) say that Elon is willing to take on a huge amount of risk in relation to this company and its users, because ‘Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC.’”» So... if the FTC comes after him, he'll just move to Mars? Bold plan. We here at Issuepedia wish him Bon Voyage.
• Top privacy executives quit Twitter, raising questions about data security $ (h/t)

2022-11-08 Tue

• Elon Musk sells at least $3.95 billion worth of Tesla shares after Twitter deal «In addition to pouring billions of his own capital into taking Twitter private, the Tesla CEO relied on partners, including equity investors Binance, Ron Baron’s BAMCO, Andreessen Horowitz, Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, to finance the deal, or to roll their existing shares into his holding company for Twitter.»
• Here’s how a Twitter engineer says it will break in the coming weeks (h/t) (archive.ph)

2022-11-07 Mon

• Musk discusses putting all of Twitter behind a paywall (h/t) «Meanwhile, the company is scrambling to lure back employees who it laid off mere hours ago»...

2022-11-04 Fri

• @isadwatson on Twitter «The new guy at Twitter dissolved all ERGs. No more Twitter Women or Blackbirds. This is so unbelievably wild to watch.» (ERG = employee resource group): Musk clearly wants to rule over powerless serfs (like every other uber-capitalist, I guess)
• Let's talk about Musk, Twitter, and being brand safe.... (video, 12:01, Beau of the Fifth Column]
• Laid-off Twitter Employees Are Suing the Company for Violating CA Labor Law
• Twitter lays off staff as Musk blames activists for 'massive' ad revenue drop
• Twitter layoffs: anger and confusion as multiple teams reportedly decimated - as it happened (h/t)

2022-11-01 Tue

• Twitter restricts staff from policing content violations ahead of US midterms «Instead of hundreds of employees enforcing violations, there are now about 15.»
• Mastodon gained 70,000 users after Musk’s Twitter takeover. I joined them (h/t) «A server admin could also snoop on my private toots if they wanted to – or delete my account for any reason.» -- and this is different from Twitter exactly how?
• Elon Musk Tweet Sparks Flurry of Twitter-Themed Dogecoin Tokens «The price of some 67 tokens dropped more than 90% following their issuance, on-chain data shows.» «This cumulatively led to losses of thousands of dollars among investors who punted on the newly issued tokens in hopes of a long-term price appreciation. / Over 42 tokens were marked by PeckShield as honeypots, a term that describes illicit tokens that change permissions on unsuspecting users’ crypto wallets, with the goal of eventually transferring all their crypto tokens out of those wallets into one controlled by a scammer.»

2022-10-31 Mon

• Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 Tesla employees into his Twitter takeover
  • Musk «is asking employees of the social network to redesign their subscription and verification systems within one week.»
  • «Musk has authorized dozens of Autopilot software engineers, and other Tesla employees, to do code reviews and more at the social network.»
  • «Twitter employees say managers instructed them to work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week to hit Musk’s aggressive deadlines and that their jobs are at stake.»
• He’s going to kill Twitter, isn’t he? (via) «He has also informed Twitter engineers that they must get these boring new features implemented by 7 November, or they’ll be fired. Brilliant.»
• Twitter: Around 2,000 employees likely to lose jobs in first round of layoffs, reports suggest

2022-10-30 Sun

• Dogecoin Leaps 94% in Weekly Gains Following Elon Musk’s Twitter Acquisition
• Elon's first big move: pay to remain verified on Twitter$ (h/t) «Twitter is strongly considering making its users pay to remain verified on the service, Platformer has learned. If the project makes forward, users would have to subscribe to Twitter Blue at $4.99 a month or lose their badges.»
• Elon Musk, new owner of Twitter, tweets unfounded conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack (h/t) «Musk sent the tweet, which linked to a story on a website that has a history of publishing false information, to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Musk’s tweet had more than 24,000 retweets and 86,000 likes late Sunday morning.»

2022-10-29 Sat

• Elon Musk’s Day 1 at Twitter: Engineers asked to print out their code for review

2022-10-28 Fri

• By Buying Twitter, Elon Musk Has Created His Own Hilarious Nightmare (h/t)
• After Musk Takeover: Twitter bans links to climate scientist, activist and journalism websites, including many to alternative social networks (namely the Fediverse / Mastodon) (via)
  • I personally confirmed that climatejustice.social has been blocked; close friend confirms that the block had not gone into effect as of last night.
• Elon Musk now owns Twitter. Here’s what he could change
• GM temporarily suspends advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk takeover (h/t) «“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership,” GM said.»
• Not a great start (via) «You know, all the rich sociopaths have to buy their own social media site to make sure no one can talk about how awful they are. Facebook, Parler, Gab, Gettr, Truth Social, now all absorbed by greedy rich people trying to build cozy little nests for their abhorrent views. Well, Elon Musk now owns Twitter.»
  • We had a record-breaking influx of new users on TootCat last night, some of whom explicitly cited this event as their reason for joining.
  • Mark Cuban says he's looking forward to Twitter's Elon Musk era: 'he will flex his independence to show everyone who's in charge' (h/t via): Just who does Cuban imagine is oppressing Elon Musk?