See the changes on Twitter since the beginning of the Musk era – 04/14/2023 – #Hashtag

Elon Musk revealed in an interview with the BBC that managing Twitter has been “extremely painful”. The billionaire says he is stressed, living a “roller coaster” and that “sometimes he sleeps in the office”, in a library “where nobody goes”.

A year after launching an aggressive campaign at the helm of the social network, in the best Musk style (with a tweet), he still feels that buying the company was the right thing, but says he would sell it if the right person came along.

The controversial negotiation that led to the acquisition of US$44 billion in October last year was followed by chaotic management, marked by massive layoffs, unpopular innovations and growing distrust regarding the future of one of the most relevant platforms on the internet.

Under Musk, Twitter laid off 80% of its workforce, going from 8,000 employees to 1,500 worldwide. The movement downsized engineering, curation and moderation teams and chased away advertisers. Communication with the press, meanwhile, was reduced to a poop emoji.

Musk claims that the measures were necessary to recover the company’s financial health and that now Twitter is close to the break-even point in its accounts, worth half the purchase price.

A year ago, he said that the acquisition was a way to “help humanity”. He placed as priorities in his project the increase of freedom of expression and the intention of transforming the platform into an “app that does everything”, similar to China’s WeChat.

Regarding the first ambition, it accumulated controversy for rivaling competitors and media outlets and loosening control over violent content. As for the second, it seems far from reaching it, investing for the time being in subscription services and changes in the timeline.

Check out the main changes on Twitter since the beginning of the Musk administration.

Timeline changes

In January, the network began offering users more than one feed model. In addition to the traditional timeline, which displays content published only by accounts followed by Internet users, the “For You” tab also shows publications recommended by the platform’s algorithm, based on what it infers about user interests. Also, it does not display posts chronologically.

The format resembles TikTok and received criticism from Internet users who, suddenly, began to receive “down their throats” content. After an order from Musk, for example, users began to suffer from overexposure to the tycoon’s own tweets. Some complain that, in this tab, they often see posts from people who have blocked or silenced them.

See how the algorithm decides which publications are recommended.

Freedom of expression and moderation

Twitter has drastically reduced content moderation teams since the acquisition by Musk. Users and experts point to the growth of hate speech and misinformation on the network.

Recently, for example, the Brazilian government detected hundreds of profiles and publications that praised the perpetrators of massacres and that made apologies for violence in schools. The platform initially refused to remove the posts, saying they did not violate the network’s rules.

To the BBC, Musk denies that there was an increase and says he believes there is less misinformation on the platform because “we eliminated many of the bots that were publishing scams and spam”. The tycoon also claims that it is not the role of Twitter to judge what is true or not.

Twitter Blue and Verified Organizations

Among Musk’s biggest bets to increase the company’s revenues are the Twitter Blue and Verified Organizations services, which offer exclusive features to users and organizations that pay monthly fees of R$42 and approximately R$5,233, respectively.

The programs face a lot of resistance from the public because they are considered expensive and impose charges on important features that were previously free, such as the verification seal and the security feature of two-factor authentication.

The end of free authenticity badges is also criticized by specialists for allowing the increase of misinformation on the network, since fake accounts can pay for the seal and pretend to be official.

Musk also implemented different seals for different types of profiles. Blue for personal accounts, gold for companies, and gray for government organizations. Companies can also make the stamps available to their employees, as long as they pay an extra fee.

views counter

Since December 2022, alongside the number of comments, retweets and likes, Twitter has displayed the number of people who have seen the publication. The tool was defended by Musk as a way to demonstrate how “the network is alive”, since many of the users do not publicly interact with the posts and only view them.

API changes

In February, Twitter promoted changes in the policy of its API (acronym in English for application programming interface) that harmed the work of researchers and developers who depend on data collected on the platform.

The tool is common on large sites and allows any programmer to create systems to interact with the network. With it, it is possible, for example, to extract mass posts, create robots to automatically share content or carry out research on fake news and hate speech.

Siege of competitors

In early April, Musk banned users from posting links to Substack and made it impossible for tweets to be shared on the rival network, days after the company launched an app that mimics Twitter.

The measure mainly displeased independent content producers who advertised their work on the platform. They point out that, although Musk praises freedom of expression, he is still restricting competitors and the content he does not like.

Before that, Twitter only restricted likes and retweets on posts that violated its policies. The measure was used, for example, to limit the reach of former President Donald Trump’s tweets, in which he made false claims about how votes would be counted in the 2020 election.

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