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Elon Musk has been in the news for the past few weeks following his purchase of Twitter. For those who don’t know, Elon bought Twitter for an estimated $44 billion and made some hefty promises to the platform's users before he even purchased it.
In the few days, he’s been in charge of the company, there’s been a lot of controversy surrounding Twitter and the future of the platform following some questionable decisions made by the new boss.
On one hand, many so-called “Elon stans” are in support of the changes being made by him and some believe he’s thinking progressively in an act to save the platform from the clutches of cancel culture. On the other hand, a vast majority of Twitter users believe some of the choices he’s made regarding the company have been ill-advised and not thought through, only to the benefit of his own pocket and not the stability of the platform.
My Take
Since buying Twitter, Elon’s made some rash decisions such as bumping up the price of Twitter Blue and adding a verified checkmark to the subscription’s perks in order to recoup some of the money he spent on purchasing the company.
He’s also been very big on free speech and how he’s going to make Twitter a space where people are given the platform to voice their opinions without being banned and effectively silenced. On the surface level, these may seem to be inherently good things there has been a trend of people being de-platformed for having an opinion that goes slightly against the grain. But, some people who share false propaganda, spread hateful views and in my opinion deserve to be ‘cancelled’ now have a medium for sharing their dangerous views.
Elon has also made a few poor business decisions as Twitter is now down to its last legs employee-wise. This is because a significant number of workers who are integral to running the company resigned as they were not in favour of some of the decisions being made (by Elon), and some lost their jobs via email in a pretty brutal way. On top of that, Elon sent out an email to all remaining Twitter employees that they should be ready to “…be extremely hardcore” and if they wanted to be a part of the “New Twitter”, they should click ‘yes’ on a link that needed to be submitted by 5 pm the following day. A combination of some employees picking ‘no’ and some not submitting in time has made Twitter go from about 7,500 employees to around 3,700 which is astounding for a company of that size.
I think it’s clear to see that in the process of buying Twitter, Elon bit off more than he could chew and underestimated the amount of pressure he’d have now owning the company. Having said all of this, there’s a reason Elon’s the richest man in the world. He’s obviously a very intelligent man and I haven’t lost faith that he can turn the current situation with Twitter around and keep the platform afloat.