On the ‘Elon’-pocalypse at Twitter
The Musk takeover of a major tech giant is stoking an ongoing revolt by the advertisers and older blue checks. The acquisition of Twitter by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk so far has not resulted in the nirvana many tech company reformers have been looking for. Despite Musk’s rep for being a super sophisticated innovator, he has made a hash out of the new policies he rolled out since the takeover. Some of these changes have even injured people and companies, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
Nuttin’ but Bots
Setting aside the thousands of rankled staff who have been let go since the deal was finalized, Musk’s initial moves have helped to destabilized the perceived value of the company. Among the first items his audit team examined (or alleged) was that the coding of Twitter (not third party hackers or blackhatters) used a load of bots to advance the reach of the community. If true, this promotion of the program was in essence no different than marketers who bot or create Twitter followers unnaturally (albeit via reputable firms).
To be fair, there has of course been a bot issue with the platform. It does appear Elon has discovered (from his team’s internal review) that it largely comes from the app itself, inflating the value and influence of its membership. This alone has caused a number of advertisers to pull out of using the platform towards the end of 2022, or to suspend its ad buys until the situation smoothes out.
Do the New Checkmarks Check Out?
But Musk notes there has also been a rampant “lords vs. serfs” problem on Twitter, where the former have taken liberties and get away with far more violations of the TOS than most of the other members, because they have had exalted ‘verified’ status courtesy of the blue check system. So the changes he’s making are designed to level the playing field so that everybody feels things are even. The main problem is his implementation has been ham fisted, or seems to be escalating instead of settling out.
I think Musk intended to work out the ways that value can be restored to Twitter with these changes. Getting rid of most of the botting will restore the faith advertisers have in the genuineness of the members they are supposed to be reaching. Dropkicking the endless wokeness will improve good will with members who’ve been banned or suspended for dubious reasons. And one of the nice things about the check marks is once you are verified, you can tweak the settings to receive tweets only from other blue members. This is big if you become very huge on the platform, and can’t keep up with all the members who try to tweet to you.
It remains to be seen if his new, “level playing field” perspective will be shared or accepted by most of the traditional blue-check members, who liked the perks that came with defacto VIP status. Whatever the eventual outcome, Musk’s entry into the tech giant arena has thus far resembled more of a “bull in the china shop” approach to reform, or else of a certain other mad alpha Titan who’s got an overdose of overconfidence.
