This is the new Twitter: all the controversies that surround Elon Musk’s social network

Two months have been enough for Elon Musk to not keep his word. Although he assured that freedom of expression would be total in this ‘New Twitter’, there are more and more doubts about this issue. The reason? That a couple of months later, there are already six censored journalists. The disenchantment that the new aspect of the social network is arousing is such that a month after its arrival, at the end of November, Twitter had already lost half of its main advertisers.

You want to know more? It’s 2 min.

Because it is important? Since Elon Musk took over Twitter after a disbursement of 44,000 million dollars, the controversies and the disenchantment with the new direction of the social network have not ceased:

• Musk referred to himself as a “free speech absolutist.” In fact, he assured that the ‘New Twitter’ would restore the accounts of people who had been expelled, as has been the case of the controversial former president Donald Trump, censored for encouraging the assault on the capitol from his personal Twitter account.

• But it seems that Musk has changed his mind. Two months later he has already censored six journalists, curiously, six journalists who reported on him. Some of those affected include Keith Olbermann, The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and Mashable’s Matt Binder. Journalists with great weight inside and outside Twitter.

• And they are not the only victims, the Twitter account ‘Elon Jet’ has also been suspended, which follows, among other things, the live tour of his private plane and criticizes how polluting and unnecessary this medium is. Despite the fact that he himself assured a month ago that he would not suspend it, he has preferred to put an end to the controversy caused by the fact that he habitually uses his private plane.

You want to know more? But there are more controversial decisions. The first of these was to fire the great executives who had run the company up to that moment. Something that, at first, already caused having to assume million-dollar compensation:

• Threatening his employees not to leak information to the press, he sent an email (which was also leaked) in which he assured that “if you clearly and deliberately violate the confidentiality agreement (…) Twitter will immediately sue you for damages and damages”. The employees had a few hours to sign this commitment, all those who did not check their mail on the weekend (more than 100 employees), were fired seeing how their access to the system was cut off.

• Similar is the case of the letter sent to the employees in which he demanded more hours of work and more intense workdays. All those who did not respond were fired in the same way, cutting off their access. Even so, others who did do so were also fired days later for no apparent reason.

How does it work now? For the average citizen there have also been changes. First of all, the possibility of paying for the verified, the well-known blue check, was added. The cost for Android users is 8 euros per month, while for Apple users it is 11 euros per month:

• Little by little we will also begin to see some accounts with a gray check and others with a gold check. In the case of the former, for institutional accounts, such as public administrations. In the case of the golden ones, for companies.

• Despite the fact that this measure is a way to restore value to official accounts (lost as the blue check is already accessible to anyone who pays), an American study carried out by Capterra states that 53% of brands do not want to pay for that golden check

For note… Twitter faces another big challenge: financial debt. Musk assumed a debt of 13,000 million dollars. In addition, the executive himself stated through his Twitter account that the social network was running losses of four million a day.

• All the controversies surrounding Musk don’t help. Twitter receives a lot of money from advertising, but advertising companies have increasingly distanced themselves from this platform since the arrival of the mogul.

• According to an article in The New York Times, in their cut plan they propose to dismantle several departments of the company and stop paying the rent of some offices, in order to reduce expenses. This medium also points out that the managers would have considered not paying the compensation of the dismissed workers.