A few days after buying Twitter for 44 billion dollars, billionaire Elon Musk has already launched a major internal overhaul of the blue bird social network. About half of the 7,500 employees worldwide have been asked to leave, according to an internal document seen by AFP on Friday (November 4). The Tesla founder also dissolved the board and fired ex-boss Parag Agrawal, as well as chief financial officer Ned Segal and chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde.
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The libertarian billionaire wants in particular to relax the moderation of content: “The bird is free”, he welcomed Thursday evening, to celebrate the acquisition of the social network. What arouse the concern of employees, many users and NGOs, who on the contrary call on social networks to better fight against abuse, harassment and misinformation. Twitter, which had 238 million so-called “active” daily users at the end of June, indeed attracts a smaller audience than a giant like Facebook, but many political decision-makers, businesses and the media.
“Twitter is now in safe hands, and will no longer be run by radical left crazies who genuinely hate our country”, greeted former US President Donald Trump whose account was suspended. The former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, for his part wished “good luck” to Elon Musk for “overcoming political prejudice and ideological dictatorship”. This takeover is also being closely monitored by the European Union and the social network will have to comply with the new regulations on major platforms, has already warned European Commissioner Thierry Breton.
From 2024, the Digital Services Regulation will require the rapid removal of any illegal content (according to national and European laws), as soon as a platform becomes aware of it. It will force social networks to suspend users violating “frequently” the law. The very large platforms, including Twitter, will have to display increased transparency on the algorithms they use and will be audited once a year by independent bodies. On Friday, Elon Musk announced his intention to provide the platform with a “content moderation board with very diverse viewpoints”.
“No major content decisions or account reactivations will take place without board input.”
Elon Musk, owner of Twitteron Twitter
Not enough to reassure advertisers, even though the platform is still struggling to generate profits. The American agrifood giant General Mills (Cheerios, Häagen-Dazs, etc.) has suspended its advertising expenditure on Twitter. “We will continue to monitor developments and assess our marketing spend”, said spokeswoman Kelsey Roemhildt. Earlier, automaker General Motors decided to temporarily stop paying ads on Twitter. And Mondelez International, Pfizer and Audi (Volkswagen) made similar decisions.
Advertisers, who account for 90% of the platform’s revenue, fear that the liberalization of moderation regulations will make it inhospitable. And they fear being associated with non-consensual content. Elon Musk tried to reassure them, promising that Twitter would not become a platform “hellish, where anything can be said without consequence”. Last Sunday, however, he himself relayed a conspiracy theory about the assault on the husband of elected Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Before changing his mind and deleting his message.
Twitter has “already had a committee of this type in the past, like other social networks. It never leads to much”, denounced to AFP Rebekah Tromble, professor at George Washington University. Tech companies have also developed sophisticated algorithms to filter out problematic content, “but in practice moderation is done by hand by tens of thousands of underpaid people”she adds.
Elon Musk, moreover, intends to review the authentication rules. Twitter engineers began work over the weekend on revamping the subscription and account verification system. Then the billionaire unveiled a subscription project at 8 dollars per month – an amount which will be adjusted according to the country – for users wishing to display the “blue badge” certifying their accounts. This package should also allow you to post longer videos and messages and be less exposed to advertisements.
Trash me all day, but it’ll cost $8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022
Because to finance the takeover of Twitter, the tempestuous billionaire had to take out loans in the amount of 13 billion dollars, which will have to be repaid by the company and not by the boss of Tesla. He also sold about $15.5 billion of his shares in the electric car maker in two waves, in April and August, and backed loans worth $12.5 billion to his Tesla securities.
In this delicate context, Twitter has decided to lay off around half of its employees worldwide, explaining to them in an email that the objective of this decision was “to improve the health of the company”. The social network has also announced the temporary closure of its offices in order to “to ensure the security of each employee and that of Twitter’s systems and data”. Elon Musk said there was “unfortunately no other choice when the company is losing more than 4 million dollars a day”and promised three months of compensation to the employees concerned.
A collective of nearly 50 democracy and anti-disinformation associations has sent an open letter to the 20 biggest advertisers on Twitter, including Coca-Cola, Google and Disney, urging them to threaten Elon Musk to stop all advertising if he set up his project “aimed at undermining brand safety and community standards, including the termination of content moderation.”
That shouldn’t stop Elon Musk from continuing to change the corporate culture at a forced pace, with Tesla developers called in to assess the work of Twitter employees. “We are witnessing the destruction in real time of one of the most powerful communication systems in the world”responded Nicole Gill, co-founder of Accountable Tech, one of the NGOs that wrote the open letter. “Elon Musk is an unpredictable and inconsistent billionaire, he represents a danger to this platform that he is not qualified to lead.”