I have never claimed to be a psychic, but if we take a look at my previous article about Twitter, “I downloaded Twitter for this?,” we can see that I ended with this: “If Twitter wasn’t already like this, I fear that with Musk in charge, it will become much worse. That is, of course, if Musk’s poor leadership doesn’t bring about Twitter’s downfall.”
Well, well, well, if it isn’t me being right. In case you have somehow missed the entirety of Elon Musk’s Twitter shenanigans, allow me to catch you up to speed.
In Oct. 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought the social media platform Twitter for a whopping $44 billion. After taking over the platform, he brought about changes that tanked the platform’s popularity. He unbanned users that were exiled from the app for hate speech and allowed users to pay for a verified account, which led to immediate impersonation of companies and celebrities.
Over the last nine months, Musk has fired a majority of his staff, banned users for talking badly about him and has implemented change after change to the social media site that have been consistently met with criticism, with many more proposed changes to come. Among the most criticized of these recent changes is an app-wide rebrand from Twitter into X.
The once beloved app has become a personalized playground for Musk, as he wishes to make it an “everything” app. Users would be able to make purchases, do online banking, watch videos, communicate with other users and virtually anything else you can do on the internet.
This sounds like a great idea, right? I mean who wouldn’t want to be able to do everything all in one place, especially if that one place did everything the best? However, with no staff, extremely poor leadership and no cohesive plan for the future it’s hard to see how any of Musk’s proposed plans will make it onto the app successfully.
To further prove this point, the recent logo change was sourced from X users as the company has no graphic design team. It seems as though Musk has many, many grand thoughts without any forethought for how he will actually set those plans into motion smoothly or successfully.
One of Musk’s most recent proposals – the removal of a block button – could result in the app’s removal from app stores. Due to the nature of the app being a communication platform, it is required that it has an option for users to block others users.
Beyond this, the company has found itself in immense legal trouble, which is no surprise as Musk’s entrance into the company started with a lawsuit. According to Forbes, Musk allegedly owes over $500 million in severance to the former Twitter employees.
While the list of problems with this app continues to grow, I have been fortunate enough to not have access to the app as users no longer gain access without logging in, and I, on principle, refuse to make another account.
Despite this, it is abundantly clear that Musk’s actions really just proves that billionaires simply have too much time on their hands and far too much ego for their own good. I mean, it’s one thing to transform an app to allow its users to gain more from it, but to have such audacity as to attempt to make X the only app that everyone should use while simultaneously running it into the ground?
In my opinion, Musk should have left the app alone and made an app of his own, where all the bots and Musk fanboys could run wild, doing whatever it is that they do. NFTs, maybe? I’m not sure, but I am sure that it’s probably in everyone’s best interest that X release the old Twitter from its basement.