Beloved social media platform Twitter has gone through a tumultuous process after its acquisition by Tesla “founder” Elon Musk. After just two weeks of owning the platform, the new CEO is already warning of bankruptcy.
After purchasing the company for an obscene $44 billion, Musk has made sweeping changes to the platform. In just two weeks, the billionaire has allowed anyone to purchase verification for just $8, destroying the purpose of verification.
With paid verification available, the social media platform has been filled with troll verified accounts. Users posing as official Tesla mocked the car company’s constant crashes; a user pretending to be Nintendo posted images of Mario giving fans the middle finger.
Following Musk’s acquisition, hate speech on the platform has also skyrocketed, causing advertisers to pull out of the service. Furthermore, false accounts of major brands are sure to cause more issues with advertisers.
With the service up in flames, Musk has fired thousands of employees, as well as forcing remaining workers to abandon remote working. Despite this, the CEO has warned that the company is already facing bankruptcy.
Reported by Platformer journalist Zoë Schaffer, the CEO told employees that he’s unsure how much run rate Twitter has. Elon Musk reportedly told employees “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question.”
In order to combat the financial woes, Musk is banking on his fans buying into the Twitter Blue subscription service that gives our verification. However, the CEO will need 50% of the service to pay $8 a month to start making back money.
Following the two week saga of fire, Twitter users are convinced that Musk is intentionally destroying the service to silence haters. Of course, the social media platform is also where the multi-billionaire has some of his strongest supporters and yes men.
“He can't even run a social media app for a week yet there are people who think he can run a Mars colony,” said one user. “Day 2 would be like ‘ah, looks like we didn't account for the lack of oxygen here. Whoops.’”
At the time of writing, the Twitter social platform is still up in flames. The media empire is still going back and forth between allowing new verification methods and taking them away.
In response to the ongoing confusion, Musk has defended the continual sweeping changes.
“Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months,” Elon Musk said. “We will keep what works and change what doesn’t.”