shades fills you in

on october 27, 2022, elon closed his deal to buy twitter. elon’s first move? fire the ceo, the company’s policy chief, the general counsel, and the chief customer officer

but a few months later, in december, elon announced he’d step down as ceo after finding a replacement. but the nyt said since he’ll still own twitter, maybe not much will change

what’s been elon’s plan for twitter? elon himself tweeted that buying twitter is part of his plan to build “x: the everything app”. read his tweet here

the verge says the x app is probably something like china’s wechat. he wanted payments on the app, creators, and paid memberships

a bloomberg op says elon’s wechat idea isn’t bad, but it’ll be really hard to replicate wechat’s success. u.s. consumers don’t want it, and an all-in-one app would attract the attention of u.s. regulators

wired, otoh, writes that twitter 2.0 could look a lot like onlyfans. elon toyed with the idea of introducing a paywall that offers $$$ to creators. the change could inspire twitter to go all-in on porn

brookings: hate speech has soared on twitter since elon took over. if twitter continues rolling back content moderation, it’s only gonna get worse

national review doesn’t see it: the stats that claim hate speech has surged on elon’s twitter are questionable at best. so far, elon’s twitter is not that different from the og twitter

reason magazine agrees: elon booted kanye, didn’t he? so far, elon’s twitter looks a lot like the og twitter -- it’s dealing w/ the same free speech problems

in any event, in november 2022, major advertisers -- like general mills, pfizer, volkswagen, and audi -- all paused their twitter ads over concerns about elon’s content moderation

but part of elon’s plan has been to move away from ads to paid subscriptions anyway. tho cnbc says not having advertisers in the meantime is bad. elon himself said twitter could face bankruptcy if subscriptions don’t take off

a bloomberg op said musk is killing twitter: he’s posting wild conspiracy theories and using the platform to offend people on the internet. so much for the virtual town square!

an la times op agrees: twitter might be redeemed once elon steps down. twitter needs advertisers and users to survive. and elon continued to alienate them