Seven tweets that tell the story of the first few days of Elon Musk’s Twitter

It hasn’t even been a week since Elon Musk acquired Twitter and already there have been high-profile layoffs, major platform changes flagged and many influential accounts divided over whether they will stay or leave.

Here’s what you might have missed over the past five days as told by a handful of tweets.

Elon Musk acquires Twitter

the bird is freed

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022

After a very public six-month “will he, won’t he” saga, the billionaire and Tesla CEO officially took control of Twitter on Thursday October 27 2022 in a US$44 billion deal. He announced the takeover in a tweet claiming “the bird is freed” — no capitalisation or punctuation, please — and changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit”. The tweet has 2.5 million likes so far.

Twitter becomes a one-man company as the CEO, CFO and policy chief are fired

I love my colleagues so much.

— Lara Cohen 💅🏼 (@Larakate) October 27, 2022

In one of his first moves as head of the social media giant, Musk began to clean house.

On Thursday he fired the company’s board, making himself the sole director. He also fired several high-ups in the executive ranks — CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde (the person responsible for removing former US president Donald Trump from the platform) were all told to clean out their desks. There have since been reports Musk’s team has discussed laying off 25% of staff.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed becomes Twitter’s second-largest shareholder

Dear friend “Chief Twit” @elonmusk

Together all the way 🤝🏻 @Twitter https://t.co/J9rnd013xz pic.twitter.com/bXo6RUaUwk

— الوليد بن طلال (@Alwaleed_Talal) October 28, 2022

Shortly after the new Chief Twit’s inaugural tweet and reports of the executive bloodbath, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal confirmed that he would maintain his US$1.9 billion in shares in the platform owned by his private office and Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), making the prince the second-largest investor in the platform after Musk, with approximately 4% of the company.

Not long after the prince’s announcement, US Democratic Senator Chris Murphy called on the US government to investigate national security concerns raised by Saudi Arabia’s role in Twitter’s takeover.

Musk flags big changes

@sriramk any chance in helping with verification? Denied some 4-5 times despite large following and working to share spaceflight/rocket launches to the masses via my photography. Published in a plethora of huge outlets but Twitter doesn’t seem to care! https://t.co/efL1l1H2d9

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) October 30, 2022

It has now been widely reported, first extensively by The Verge, that the company will revamp its optional paid subscription for Twitter Blue. The changes would force verified users to pay or lose their blue tick.

How do you get big tech changes to happen so quickly? Well, if you’re Musk, you offer an ultimatum: meet his deadline, or pack up your desk and leave.

The blue tick is not the only change the billionaire has made. As one of the first orders of business, he quietly changed the homepage for logged-out users. Where the homepage used to display a signup form, it now directs logged-out users to the Explore page, which displays trending tweets and news stories.

Hate speech spikes on the platform

I dont know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech. https://t.co/Sy0jvXIBnC

— LeBron James (@KingJames) October 29, 2022

As Crikey reported yesterday, the takeover of the platform by self-portrayed “free speech absolutist” Musk has coincided with a surge of hate speech across the platform. According to Network Contagion Research Institute, a group that analyses hundreds of millions of social media posts, instances of the N-word on the app spiked nearly 500% over the 12 hours after confirmation of Musk’s takeover. Further, as The Washington Post reports, by Friday afternoon misogynistic and anti-LGBTIQA+ messages had become increasingly prominent.

Musk slams media as ‘fake news’ and ‘far left propaganda’

This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times! pic.twitter.com/d6V6m5ATW2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022

Following in the footsteps of another free speech hero, it didn’t take Musk long to begin attacking media. He labelled The New York Times “fake news” and, in response to a tweet about the impact his new job will have on The Guardian’s subscriber numbers, Musk responded attacking the newspaper for being a “far-left-wing propaganda machine”.

“The Guardian used to have balance (moderately left) and integrity, but now it is a far left wing propaganda machine. I hope they get back to where they were one day,” he wrote.

As for Trump, he welcomed Musk’s new role, taking to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to declare himself “very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands” and “will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country”.

Big names exit left

Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye.

— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) October 29, 2022

Musk’s planned changes and his commitment to “free speech absolutism” have some big names heading for the hills — or whichever platform can (very) quickly capitalise on the exodus — including Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, who made it clear she wasn’t hanging around to see Musk’s vision enacted.

Advertisers also seem to be mulling over their presence, with General Motors flagging it would temporarily pause advertising on Twitter as it seeks to “understand the direction of the platform” under its new ownership.

This article was first published by Crikey.