Elon Musk Joins Donald Trump and Kanye West in Rich Idiot's Club
Money can't buy you sense.
You know, I thought we’d learned from Donald Trump that being rich does not mean you are intelligent or even remotely competent when it comes to business. But alas, here we are, discovering this all over again with Elon Musk.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, incarcerated or in a coma, you probably are aware that everyone’s favorite billionaire recently purchased Twitter for $44 billion. This transaction was first initiated back in April of this year but wasn’t completed until October 27. There was a lot of back-and-forth surrounding this, with Musk backing out of the deal due to a concern about bots. Ultimately, the social platform filed a lawsuit and intimidated Musk back into the deal.
Immediately upon solidifying the transaction, Elon canned three key players: Parag Agrawal, CEO, Ned Segal, CFO, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde after claiming that they had misled him regarding the number of fake accounts on the platform. This sparked a mass exodus for most of the remaining senior leadership. In addition, thanks to Elon’s radical free speech mentality, the platform was inundated with racist slurs. From there, things spiraled out of control quickly.
Mass Layoffs & Potential Privacy Issues
Following the firing of Agrawal, Segal and Gadde, Musk proceeded to lay off half of the company’s workforce (some say 75%), primarily folks who do not code, meaning they work in departments responsible for things like security, privacy and compliance. Pretty damn important people, if you ask me.
According to information obtained by The New York Times, these labor shortages will require engineers to “self-certify” so that their projects meet privacy requirements, potentially causing a major issue with the FTC. Previously, Twitter has conducted internal reviews to ensure its products for privacy issues before rolling them out to users. However, this is no longer possible given Musk’s dismissal of manpower and imposed rapid pace.
The Verification Badge Debacle
Considering Elon’s aforementioned concern with fake accounts, one of his first changes to the platform truly doesn’t make sense. The classic blue check verification badge became a feature available only with Twitter Blue, which at first was set to cost $20 per month. This feature would also now be available for any Average Joe who wanted one. Obviously, this poses many issues considering how easy it would then become to pose as any individual or business, increasing the risk of scams and other privacy issues.
Director of Product Management, Esther Crawford, was pictured sleeping on the floor at Twitter HQ, following Musk’s orders that her team must roll out Twitter Blue ahead of a November 7 deadline, otherwise she and her team would be fired. He’s ended remote work, effective immediately, telling employees to come in or face the chopping block.
Unsurprisingly, verified users like celebrities and journalists balked at the idea of paying for their badge, with many stating they’d happily let their blue check go. After receiving backlash, Musk lowered the monthly price to $8, completely missing the point. He stated in a company-wide communication that he intends to make subscriptions 50% of the platform’s revenue.
Soon, verified creators changed their names and profile pictures to impersonate the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutionist” (and other figures like Joe Biden), which he very much disliked. Twitter began suspending users parodying Musk shortly thereafter. He then adjusted the Twitter rules to reflect this, stating that any parody account that does not explicitly in the display name will be permanently suspended.
In much less amusing news, someone created an account impersonating the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, tweeting that insulin would now be free. The company had to clarify that this was not, in fact, true. Woof. Just hours later, the pharm giants stock fell dramatically.
Similarly, a fake Lockheed Martin account tweeted that the company was stopping weapons sales in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. Their shares took a nosedive as well.
Twitter Blue’s rollout has since been paused.
Advertiser Boycotts
The turmoil has caused the corporations which allocate a significant amount of ad spend to Twitter to reconsider their partnerships with the platform. Major brands like United Airlines, The Volkswagen Group and REI have pulled their ads, resulting in what, according to him, is a $4 million loss per day. “The economic picture ahead is dire,” he told his employees.
Elon clearly fails to understand the communications field in any capacity, which makes sense considering Tesla does not partake in traditional advertising.
Potential Legal Trouble
The Verge managed to obtain some receipts from Twitter’s Slack channel, in which an attorney for the company stated, “Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them,” and that they’d “heard Alex Spiro (current head of Legal) say that Elon is willing to take on a huge amount of risk in relation to this company and its users, because ‘Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC.’”
This very claim is what earns Elon his spot amongst Donald Trump and Kanye West. It represents his genuine belief that his net worth makes him not only above all others, but above the law.
The delusions of grandeur are of course a uniting factor as well, made evident on Monday when Musk claimed that Twitter usership was at an “all time high lol.” While the traffic is booming due to people like me wanting to know the tea, the platform actually saw 1.3 million users deactivate following Musk’s takeover.
While this circus has proven to hurt Elon’s pockets, it’s been just as satisfying watching it bruise his little ego. Where does Twitter go from here? Simply… under? Time will tell.
