on february 12, 2023, elon musk was at the super bowl, and he was confounded by the fact that president joe biden's tweet in support of the philadelphia eagles was outperforming his own similar tweet.

that night, musk had a team of twitter engineers figure out how to tweak the algorithm so that musk's tweets could be boosted on users' feeds.

this drastic measure angered users, and it highlights musk's obsession with his online presence.

why did elon musk take over twitter?

was it to create a better, more dynamic and innovative platform for everyone?

or were the reasons more personal?

in the sections ahead, we'll look at what happened when musk took over twitter in october 2022.

we'll see how his impulsive leadership style alienated advertisers, users and regulators, and why it led to a significant loss in twitter's revenue.

this is the story of one of the greatest fiascos in the history of silicon valley.

a dream of x marking the spot.#

a dream of x marking the spot.

elon musk's journey with twitter got its humble start way back in 2010.

he tweeted to simply confirm that his handle, at elon musk, was indeed him, making sure everyone knew the real musk from the fakes.

it would be completely forgettable if not for the fact that, for the next decade plus, he would continue to have an obsession with fake twitter users.

musk's rise to fame and fortune started earlier, in 1999, when he sold his startup zip2 to compaq for a cool $300 million.

with his new wealth, musk bought a mclaren f1 sports car and invested heavily in x.com, an online financial services startup that eventually became paypal.

despite being ousted from paypal, the sale to ebay in 2002 netted him a significant sum, fueling his next big dream, space exploration and the colonization of mars.

even as musk ventured into the final frontier with spacex, on earth he stayed rooted in tech.

he invested heavily in tesla, becoming a central figure in the electric car company's success.

by 2020, tesla was the world's most valuable automaker and musk had become the richest man in the world.

during this time, his influence on twitter grew, although not without controversy.

one of his tweets about taking tesla private at $420 per share led to a significant legal battle and hefty fines from the sec.

twitter, on the other hand, had its own storied and tumultuous history.

founded by jack dorsey and his co-founders in 2006, it became a hub for influential voices in politics, sports and media.

but despite its cultural impact, twitter struggled to turn a profit and faced challenges with its business model and content moderation, especially as it became a battleground for political discourse and disinformation.

by the 2020 us presidential election, it was clear that a reckoning was on its way.

employees including yoel roth, who focused on platform governance, found themselves at the center of debates on free speech and content moderation.

the tipping point came in the wake of the january 6th capitol riot, which resulted in the, at the time, permanent suspension of donald trump's twitter account on the grounds that he had used the platform to incite violence.

content moderation was always an important part of the greater twitter team.

the company made most of its money from advertisers, and no advertiser wants to see a screenshot that is one of its ads featured next to a tweet that is promoting violence or hate speech.

meanwhile, elon musk saw himself as a crusader for free speech, who chafed at the idea of twitter censoring or suspending accounts.

in early 2022, he began buying twitter shares in significant amounts and was considering the ways in which he might transform the platform.

at the same time, he still held on to his early dream of x.com, an all-in-one platform where messaging, banking, and commerce could all coexist.

a bumpy acquisition on april 4th, 2022, elon musk disclosed the fact that his buying spree of twitter shares equaled a 9.1% ownership of the company.

a bumpy acquisition.#

but at this point, it still wasn't clear what all of this was leading up to.

at first, musk seemed content to play along, accepting an invitation from twitter ceo parag agarwal to join the company's board of directors.

but this didn't last long.

musk quickly grew frustrated, feeling that agarwal lacked the aggressive leadership twitter needed.

he was annoyed by the platform's persistent bot problem and the lack of active engagement from twitter's top executives.

how could someone like agarwal, who barely tweeted at all, understand what the platform needed?

at the same time, musk's public interest in twitter caused the stock to surge by 27%, making everyone happy.

however, some weren't so thrilled.

many employees, known internally as tweeps, were concerned about his controversial reputation and how it aligned with twitter's values.

as one employee wrote, we know that he has caused harm to workers, the trans community, women, and others with less power in the world.

how are we going to reconcile this decision with our values?

does innovation trump humanity?

another tweet was a former employee of tesla and warned everyone that once musk became the ceo of that company, awful changes in company culture followed.

musk wasn't concerned about this.

in fact, he was already toying with the idea of taking over twitter entirely.

by mid-april, musk made an offer to buy twitter outright for $54.20 per share, valuing the company at around $44 billion.

the board eventually accepted musk's offer on april 25, locking in a seller-friendly agreement with a hefty $1 billion reverse breakup fee.

agarwal was now aware that his days at twitter were numbered.

he accepted the situation, partly comforted by the $57.4 million severance package he'd receive if musk fired him.

but then musk seemed to get an immediate case of cold feet.

it was as though twitter had called his bluff.

his initial enthusiasm turned into a bitter concern over the amount of bots and spam on the platform, despite the fact that these were the very issues he'd claimed he was going to fix.

twitter threatened a lawsuit if musk failed to follow through on his deal, due in part to the fact that twitter's share prices were dropping steadily as musk aired his grievances.

throughout the summer, musk's legal team tried to find a way out of the deal.

but as the october court date approached, musk realized he had no viable escape route.

on october 4, he agreed to proceed with the original terms of the acquisition if twitter dropped its lawsuit.

finally, on october 26, musk made a dramatic entrance into twitter's headquarters, carrying a porcelain sink and punning, let that sink in.

this grand gesture was designed to go viral rather than ease any concerns.

indeed, employees remained uncertain about what the future under musk's leadership would hold.

deep cuts and a blue backlash.#

deep cuts and a blue backlash when musk finally took over twitter, he didn't come alone.

he arrived with a team of advisors and engineers from his other ventures like tesla, spacex, and neuralink.

the tweeps dubbed this transition team the goons as they quickly became a constant presence in the office.

there were a few who remained optimistic.

emmanuel cornett, known as manu, was a former google engineer who was open-minded about musk's influence.

it was true that twitter could be overly bureaucratic about implementing new ideas, and musk's willingness to quickly move forward with innovative ideas might be just the thing the company needed.

but at the forefront of musk's concerns were cutting costs, and one of the quickest ways to save money is to pay fewer employees.

so despite manu's belief that twitter's culture was inextricably tied to the tweeps who worked there, musk fired about half of twitter's staff overnight, which amounted to around 3,700 people.

to expedite this process, the goons gave managers a list of their employees and tasked them with quickly coming up with one sentence to explain why each one shouldn't be fired.

on his first night, he also fired key executives, including ceo parag agarwal, cfo ned siegel, chief legal officer vijaya gadi, and general counsel sean edgett.

the cuts went deep, affecting the trust and safety team, brand safety team, and the team responsible for ftc compliance.

whole departments were eliminated, such as the ethical ai team.

in india, 90 percent of the staff were laid off, leaving just a dozen employees to manage a crucial market.

the cuts to brand safety and content moderation were perhaps felt the most.

and remember, prior to musk's tenure, twitter was financially stable thanks to advertisers who'd come to trust and rely on these very teams.

but now there was a sense of unpredictability, an increased chance that a brand could have their ad appear next to hate speech from toxic users.

indeed, major brands like general motors, general mills, audi, and pfizer began to pull back their advertising spend, which hit twitter's revenue hard.

from the start, musk was also keeping everyone at twitter on edge and insecure while pushing for them to work tirelessly on changes that weren't tested or thought through.

one of the biggest projects was twitter blue, which would tie verification to a subscription model, meaning anyone who paid could get the blue verification check attached to their account.

musk felt that the prior version of verification was too elitist and that a subscription model might solve the advertising problem and increase revenue.

musk assigned the new twitter blue subscription project to a team and gave them a deadline of november 7th to finish it.

if they failed, they'd be fired.

companies were under immense pressure to prove their worth, and they were urged to focus on execution rather than strategy.

it didn't help that when twitter blue was launched in november, it was a fiasco.

the service saw fewer than 61,000 subscribers in its initial days, with many already verified accounts posting tweets that questioned the logic behind the idea that literally anyone could pay to be verified.

the plan immediately resulted in a flood of fake accounts, such as the one that claimed to represent the pharmaceutical company eli lilly.

the account tweeted that the company was now selling insulin free of charge.

this caused the company's stock to drop 4.37% and eli lilly to pause all advertising on twitter.

in those first days, the subscription model was potentially costing the company millions in ad revenue, while only bringing in around $488,000.

twitter blue was rolled back, but despite internal pushback, musk's strategy remained firm.

it would be relaunched.

this culminated in an email titled, a fork in the road, where musk demanded employees commit to an extremely hardcore work ethic or leave with severance.

the tweets were given 36 hours to decide their future with the company.

champion or hypocrite?#

champion or hypocrite?

for the most part, the extremely hardcore email did not go over well.

only around 25% of twitter's software engineering team planned to stay, while nearly 1,000 employees used it as their reason to leave.

twitter's staff went from 7,500 in october to just 2,700 in november.

musk knew that some wouldn't sign up, but he didn't anticipate losing so many developers.

musk also implemented a round of in-person, code reviews.

an employee lawsuit, arnold vs. xcor, later claimed the reviews were a deceitful pretext to come up with for-cause firings, thereby allowing him to forgo costly severance packages.

throughout the initial two months of musk's reign, at least one engineer remained optimistic.

randall lynn always believed that twitter could be more efficient, and he saw musk's distaste for bureaucracy as an opportunity.

lynn won musk over when he pitched him on the idea of having twitter buying their own gpus instead of spending money on a google cloud contract.

musk, impressed by the potential cost savings, agreed immediately.

still, that didn't stop him from firing lynn for erroneous reasons shortly thereafterward.

to put it simply, musk didn't like spending money on things like contracts and rent.

in fact, he refused to pay rent for their san francisco offices and fired the janitorial staff, which quickly led to unsanitary conditions.

more lawsuits and resignations from employees followed.

musk also reinstated accounts from controversial figures like the neo-nazis andrew anglin and patrick casey.

by late november 2022, ad bookings plummeted by 49 percent.

was elon musk a true champion for free speech?

or did he only take this stance when it suited him?

this became a question once musk banned the atelonjet account, which used public data to track musk's private jet.

not only that, he suspended the accounts of reporters who simply covered the story behind the banned account for their publications.

musk also complied with censorship requests from the turkish government to suppress tweets from certain political candidates during their elections, which further highlighted musk's hypocrisy.

these actions alienated even his supporters, leading to more employee resignations and firings.

the end of twitter.#

the end of twitter by the end of 2022, it was clear that musk's decision to prioritize speed over safety wasn't working out very well.

it was causing numerous platform outages.

and despite his efforts to shift to a subscription-based model, it failed to gain traction, generating minimal revenue compared to the company's needs.

and yet, musk was determined to make twitter blue a thing.

in march 2023, he announced the relaunch and said that blue checkmarks would soon be removed from users who didn't subscribe.

only blue subscribers would get preferential algorithm treatment, making their tweets more likely to be recommended.

was this just a different version of the hierarchy that musk had been denouncing before?

another backlash ensued, with celebrities like lebron james and halle berry openly stating they wouldn't pay for the subscription.

undaunted, on april 20th, twitter started removing legacy checkmarks from celebrities and journalists.

chaos ensued as impersonations of high-profile figures once again proliferated, and prominent users led campaigns against the new blue checks.

it drove home the point.

the blue badge wasn't the elitist symbol that musk suggested it was.

it had merely been a reliable symbol of legitimacy.

but in 2023, it became a mark of endorsement for elon musk, which many saw as a badge of dishonor.

despite the spike in twitter blue signups, the financial impact was minimal, with a net increase of just 28 new subscribers.

by may 2023, internal documents revealed that only 535,000 had signed up for blue.

meanwhile, over at meta, executive adam massary released his twitter competitor, threads, which quickly gained 100 million users.

musk's attempts to downrank rival tech firms didn't help.

threads' rapid growth underscored twitter's struggles, with users and engagement metrics dropping significantly.

all of this led to the big rebranding.

in july 2023, musk announced that twitter would now be known as x. some employees were relieved to finally put the name behind them and acknowledge that musk's vision bore little resemblance to what they'd been working on before.

they also had a new ceo, former nbcuniversal chairman linda iaccarino.

but as the months went on, the problems continued.

by most reliable metrics, hate speech and disinformation had been on the rise since the rebranding, and the platform's value continued to plummet.

musk's legal battles with former employees also continued.

by october 2023, x faced numerous lawsuits and arbitration claims.

and despite efforts to revitalize the platform, monthly ad revenue continued to decline.

musk often said that he envisioned twitter as the important town square where all voices and opinions could be heard and debated.

but once he took over the platform, he did little to bring this egalitarian vision to reality.

in speaking to numerous employees who were there when it all happened, the agenda was clear.

rather than fostering a creative and collaborative environment, it was all about appeasing musk or getting fired.

final summary#

Conclusion

in this chapter to extremely hardcore by zoe schiffer, you've learned that the period following elon musk's acquisition of twitter was tumultuous, to say the least.

musk's drastic and often controversial measures to transform the platform, which included mass layoffs, algorithm manipulations and a fervent crusade against censorship, alienated employees and advertisers alike.

his leadership style forced many of twitter's employees to make difficult moral decisions about the kind of conditions they're willing to tolerate and the kind of company they want to work for.

it also resulted in a number of lawsuits claiming unsafe work conditions and deceptive firing practices.

this story also raises questions about the responsibilities a company has toward free speech and the moderation of hateful, misleading and harmful content.

ultimately, it's a cautionary tale about the consequences of billionaire intervention in influential tech companies and the ripple effects it can have on politics and culture.

okay, and that is it for this chapter.

we really hope you enjoyed it.

and if you can, please take the time to leave us a rating.

we always appreciate your feedback.

thank you so much for listening and see you in the next chapter.

bye.

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