Elon Musk didn’t invent Facebook, but he seems to be living up to the social media company’s unofficial motto from its early years — move fast and break things.
The new Twitter CEO has already fired the company’s board of directors, announced some big changes and had several other plans leak.
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Verification to cost $8 per month
Musk was initially planning to charge $20 per month for Twitter’s famous blue checkmark, according to reports. However, he publicly changed his mind Monday in a back-and-forth with Stephen King.
“We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” the SpaceX and Tesla founder asked the horror writer. “I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”
On Tuesday, Musk made it official: The company’s subscription service Twitter Blue will be required for a verification checkmark, and it will cost $8 per month.
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bulls—t,” Musk tweeted. “There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.”
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About 25% of Twitter employees will be laid off, according to a report
Twitter employed about 7,000 people when Musk took over. He’s planning to cut 25% of those jobs, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The paper described the impending layoffs as the “first round” of cutbacks. Earlier this year, The Post reported that Musk told investors he would cut 75% of Twitter’s workforce.
Musk himself has not confirmed any job cuts.
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Content moderators were reportedly frozen out
Twitter employees in charge of taking down hate speech and other violations of Twitter rules were frozen out of their network tools on Monday, according to Bloomberg.
The moderators were unable to take action after receiving notifications about harmful content, the outlet reported. Content moderation was one of Musk’s main talking points ahead of his purchase, as he described himself as a free-speech absolutist — suggesting he didn’t want any content to be removed.
However, Musk disputed the Bloomberg report. He pointed to a tweet from the company’s head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth.
“This is exactly what we (or any company) should be doing in the midst of a corporate transition to reduce opportunities for insider risk,” Roth wrote. “We’re still enforcing our rules at scale.”
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Vine might make a comeback
Shortly after taking over, Musk created a simple yes/no Twitter poll with the question: “Bring back Vine?”
Twitter still has the rights to the video sharing app that looped 6-second clips. The company essentially shut Vine down in 2016. But now, Musk may want to bring it back. In his poll, nearly 70% of people voted yes.
Soon afterward, sources told Axios that Musk had asked employees to start work on rebooting Vine.
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Twitter Blue subscribers will no longer have access to ad-free articles
One of the perks of Twitter Blue, even before Musk bought Twitter, was the ability to read news articles without ads on platforms that partnered with Twitter.
Musk canceled that deal, according to The Verge.
However, on Tuesday he tweeted about a different plan. Under his new $8 per month Twitter Blue, subscribers will be able to bypass paywalls “for publishers willing to work with us.” He didn’t provide further details.
