[ad_1]
The remark capped a chaotic weekend in which Musk abruptly changed course on several major issues for the company, which he acquired for $44 billion a little over a week ago. After laying off about half of the workforce on Friday, Twitter began scrambling to rehire some who were let go. It postponed the planned launch of its new paid verification product until after the midterm elections.
And it suspended popular accounts for impersonating Musk, under a new policy that Musk announced Sunday.
To independent-minded voters:
Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022
Musk’s endorsement of GOP candidates to his 115 million Twitter followers, a day before midterm elections, is likely to intensify the partisan divide over his takeover of the platform. Lawmakers in the past have grilled executives of social media companies including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as to whether their decisions could have influenced election outcomes, even as those executives have studiously avoided signaling their preferences for a given party or candidate.
Meanwhile, Twitter started suspending accounts “engaged in impersonation” on Sunday after Musk announced that all accounts falsely using the names of real people without the “parody” label would be immediately banned from the platform. The move came after a flood of users changed their display names to match his.
“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended,” Musk tweeted Sunday afternoon. “Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning.”
“Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark,” he added, referring to the blue check mark next to people’s names, which indicates that their account is authentic and not an impersonation.
The new impersonation policy appeared to contradict Musk’s assurance last week that he would convene a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints” before making any major content decisions. In May, Musk had criticized permanent suspensions, saying that they “fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter.”
Musk had also previously indicated he would reinstate permanently suspended accounts such as that of former president Donald Trump, who was banned after the Jan. 6 riot under Twitter’s policies against inciting violence. But last week he said the company would not bring back Trump or other banned accounts prior to the midterms.
In yet another quick reversal, the company began reaching out over the weekend to try to rehire employees it had just laid off, according to multiple internal sources, including two with direct knowledge of the rehiring efforts who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Among the people Twitter is said to be seeking to rehire are engineers who worked on the company’s Android app,
Several Twitter users, some of whom are verified on the platform, started changing their display names to “Elon Musk” after the billionaire completed his $44 billion purchase of the platform in late October. Many, posing as Musk, mocked his controversial announcement that Twitter would soon charge users $8 per month for verification.
Among those apparently suspended from Twitter for changing their display names to “Elon Musk” was comedian Kathy Griffin, who, under Musk’s moniker, urged Americans to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections.
“I’ve decided that voting blue for their choice is only right,” she wrote shortly before her account was suspended. YouTuber Ethan Klein was also appeared to be suspended from the platform after he joined those impersonating Musk.
Griffin’s fans called Twitter’s move a crackdown on freedom of speech and parody, using the hashtag #freekathy to criticize the platform’s new policy. Later on Sunday, Musk, who is the world’s richest person, tweeted that Griffin could have her account back if she paid up.
“If she really wants her account back, she can have it,” Musk wrote. “For $8.”
Griffin, meanwhile, appears to have moved on to other platforms.
Soon after she was locked out of her Twitter account, she wrote on Instagram: “I’m trending on Twitter. Long story.”
She also joined Mastodon, the six-year-old social platform that has steadily gained new followers since Musk’s Twitter takeover.
On Monday, Mastodon’s founder, Eugen Rochko, said it was “pretty cool” that the social network had reached more than 1 million monthly active users and that the network had acquired almost half a million new users since Oct. 27 — the day of Musk’s Twitter takeover.
Last week, Mastodon acknowledged its servers are “under very heavy load,” a result of what it said was an “extreme spike in user numbers.”
Twitter’s crackdown on parody accounts is a long line of new policy changes introduced after Musk bought the platform. Shortly after taking over the platform, he fired several longtime Twitter executives and announced mass layoffs at the company.
Cat Zakrzewski contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link