On October 27, 2022, so-called free speech enthusiast and investor Elon Musk bought a 9.2% share of Twitter for an inflated price of $44 billion. This makes him the largest shareholder on the platform and, eventually, the CEO. Ever since then, Twitter hasn’t really been the same.
The platform, founded in 2012, was originally supposed to be a microblogging platform that ultimately turned into a cultural icon similar to Tumblr. A decade later, thanks to Elon Musk’s acquisition, the site’s massive popularity has significantly decreased. ExpressVPN found that over 6% of users in the US are expected to quit the platform this year.
In this article, we will check out the reasons why.
The large-scale firing of employees
Twitter currently has less than 1800 employees, a drastically lower number compared to back in 2012, when the platform was operating on a much smaller scale than it is today. This is because one of the first things Elon did after taking over Twitter was mass-fire several employees he didn’t deem necessary.
Before Musk bought the company, the workforce of Twitter stood at 7,500, which has reduced greatly now. This includes a number of product managers, data scientists, and engineers whose job was to ensure that the site ran efficiently and smoothly. This is to make up for the huge debt the company has inherited due to Musk’s takeover.
Unending technical issues
Thanks to firing several engineers, who were necessary to maintain the technical stability of the platform, Twitter experienced and continues to experience a hoard of technical issues troubling users.
The platform has crashed multiple times over the past months. There were issues with the Like button, problems with bookmarking tweets, and there are still issues with playing videos, which tend to stop midway. There was even a time when the Twitter Space icon disappeared for a day, coincidentally right after Elon got publicly harassed by some suspended journalists.
Making the blue checkmark accessible to everyone
The blue checkmark is a sign of verification, which lets important personalities like celebrities, politicians, and journalists get distinguished, thereby preventing them from being impersonated. However, Elon made it so that anyone who pays $8 a month for Twitter Blue can get a blue checkmark for themselves. This initially led to a hoard of impersonations, both malicious and trolling.
Suspending journalists and critics
It didn’t take long for Twitter users to find out that the free speech advocate is not so big on free speech when it’s used against him. Whether you are a professional criticizing him based on actual, solid evidence or a random person reacting to his tweet with an offhand comment,there is a good chance you will wake up the next day to find your account suspended for hate speech.
The rapid increase in hate speech
While critical speech against Elon Musk is met with suspension for “hate speech,” the same can’t be said for actual hate speech. The Network Contagion Research Institute states that there was a mammoth 500% rise in hate speech within the first 12 hours of Elon becoming in charge of Twitter. Let that sink in. This is attributed to the utter lack of content moderation within the platform.
Elon once tweeted, “I’m still fighting for free speech in America.” And in the name of free speech, he has altered the platform to give a voice to bigots, racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, Islamophobes, and even pedophiles and zoophiles.
Limiting the reach of users who aren’t subscribed to Twitter Blue
A fairly recent addition to the bandwagon is how the timelines of all Twitter users will be aligned in such a way that those who are subscribed to Blue will be in the most recommended tweets. The same goes for comment sections, which also prioritize Blue users.
This has limited the reach and interactions of small artists and businesses. The timeline of every user is now filled with people they don’t follow, not to mention seemingly hundreds of ads.
Conclusion
Considering all the problems mentioned above, it’s no surprise that Twitter is expected to lose around 3.6 million users this year, which will be estimated to increase to a whopping 51 million the next. Unless Elon Musk finds a way to solve these issues and give back the platform everyone loved, there’s a small chance of these predictions being wrong.
