Just 20 mean-funny tweets that sum up Elon Musk’s Twitter problem

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Tesla boss and neo-Twitter owner Elon Musk fired more employees this week, unblocked Donald Trump’s profile and announced that all banned accounts will be unblocked again in the coming week, provided they haven’t explicitly broken the law. Earlier, he had a fraction of Twitter users vote on the “general amnesty” in an unrepresentative poll. It is unclear how many votes were cast from automated accounts.

Twitter before Musk versus Twitter after Musk pulled out his checkbook

Migrate the first users

Alternatives such as Mastodon are growing

Twitter ad revenue plummets and Tesla shares plummet

Musk restored ex-US President Trump’s account, which had been blocked since early 2021, after a user vote

Musk announced in late October that a council should be formed on how to deal with controversial content before major Twitter accounts are reactivated. But last weekend, after an unrepresentative user survey, the tech billionaire had former US President Donald Trump’s account activated without commission. Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook after storming the Capitol.

Let Trump back on Twitter? What can go wrong

So far, Trump has reiterated that he wants to stick with his own Twitter copy, Truth Social

Trump is floundering Musk and hasn’t tweeted yet

After another user vote, Musk announced that there should be a “general amnesty” for all blocked accounts

Twitter if Musk reactivates the suspended accounts

According to Musk, only accounts that have explicitly violated the law should remain blocked. Homophobia, anti-Semitism, disinformation, conspiracy stories, etc. would be tolerated as long as the expressions are not explicitly prohibited in the country in question. Musk interprets this as freedom of speech. In this way, tech companies transfer the responsibility for the content on their platforms to the users and save costs because they need less content moderation.

Musk has fired thousands of content moderators

The EU wants to scrutinize Twitter. Brussels fears increasing problems with fake profiles and fake news, as Twitter fired thousands of temporary workers who specialized in detecting political disinformation. Musk is on a “collision course” with the EU and Brussels can ban Twitter in extreme cases in Europe or fine it regularly until the company complies with the new EU law against hate speech, disinformation and war propaganda.

Next week on Twitter:

First, Musk promised that a council would be formed on how to deal with controversial content before reactivating Twitter accounts. That is now outdated.

The Musk Effect

Computer scientists understand

Six months after Musk became CEO of Twitter

Who destroys fortunes even faster than Elon Musk

The problem with Twitter’s verification taps

Musk announced on Friday that different colored verification check marks will be coming in the future. There are gold check marks for companies, gray check marks for governments and authorities and blue check marks for individuals. Before the taps are activated, the accounts are manually verified.

At the beginning of the month, Twitter had already introduced a new order for character allocation. Under this model, anyone who paid $8 a month got the verification check. There was no identity check. After a spate of brand and celebrity fake accounts, the opportunity has been suspended again.

A Republican, a Russian soldier and a Twitter employee meet in a bar…

With material from the SDA news agency.

(oli)