On Oct. 27 2022, billionaire and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, completed his purchase of 9.1% ownership of Twitter. The cost of this acquisition is estimated to be around 44 billion US dollars, per The New York Times. Since then Musk has made Twitter private and the app has seen many changes. According to The New York Times, these changes resulted in the once 44 billion dollar stake in the company devaluing to 20 billion dollars.
Stock price was not the only thing to drop under Musk. According to CNN, Twitter’s number of employees dropped from 7,500 at acquisition to 2,000 as of late February. These recent layoffs mirrored the decrease in advertisements across the platform. Twitter, which gets 90% of its revenue from advertisements, has seen a decrease since Oct. 27.
Musk’s changes to the app have not gone over well with Twitter users. Now, users who want to obtain or maintain a blue check indicating a verified account will have to pay $8 a month. Failure to pay this subscription rate means that unverified content will be less likely to show up on other users for you pages. This change has irked normal users as well as the rich and famous. On March 31, American born phenom, celebrity and legend LeBron James tweeted about his disgust: “Welp guess my blue check will be gone soon cause if you know me I ain’t paying.” Adding insult to injury, even those who do pay will still suffer from having advertisements on their for you page.
Recently, part of Twitter’s source code that runs their social networks was leaked online. This leak poses a threat to Twitter’s data. Hackers may now have the ability to steal users’ data and take down the site, per The New York Times.
Along with all new flaws in the app, Twitter has had countless problems for many years. With toxic communities and the spread of misinformation due to a lack of censorship, the app has generated a negative reputation. Overall, recent additions to an already faulty Twitter have caused the app to be the controversial mess that it is today.