On October 27, Elon Mask, known as the "Iron Man" in Silicon Valley, completed the acquisition of the social media platform "Twitter" after a six month commercial tug of war. The subsequent series of "blood exchange" operations made the Voice of Germany call "Twitter" "Maskization". In addition, the mid-term elections in the United States are approaching, and the public opinion war on social media is becoming increasingly fierce. At this time, "Twitter" fell into the hands of Musk, which caused a lot of speculation and attention.
On October 27, the Silicon Valley "Iron Man" Musk released a 9-second video on Twitter, which received more than 1 million likes and became the most popular tweet of the week.
The video was shot one day ago. On October 26, Musk carried a sink when he entered Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco. The text description is: enter Twitter's headquarters and let the sink in.
Of course, Musk is not working as a porter. In fact, he is playing with a popular "stem".
"Let that sink in" literally means letting the sink in, while the extended meaning is similar to "you taste, you taste".
What Musk, who carried the sink, asked us to do in detail was the almost certain Twitter acquisition.
On the same day, he changed the self introduction of his personal Twitter account with 1.1 million fans to "Twitter boss" and the address to "Twitter headquarters".
One day later, on October 27, Musk completed the acquisition of all shares of Twitter at a price of $44 billion.
On October 28, Twitter was suspended from the New York Stock Exchange. According to the documents released by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States, Twitter will be officially delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on November 8, nine years after its listing.
Ives, analyst of securities company: Yes, the privatization process of Twitter starts today, and Musk tries to change the company.
This also added a new identity to the 51 year old Musk, CEO of Tesla and Space Exploration Technology.
On October 28, after joining Twitter, Musk released his first tweet: Birds are free.
The symbol of Twitter is a bird. For a long time, Musk has criticized Twitter's content control for binding the bird.
This also added a new identity to the 51 year old Musk, CEO of Tesla and Space Exploration Technology.
On October 28, after joining Twitter, Musk released his first tweet: Birds are free.
The symbol of Twitter is a bird. For a long time, Musk has criticized Twitter's content control for binding the bird.
In March this year, Musk launched a vote on his Twitter account: Do you think Twitter follows the principle of free speech?
In more than 2 million votes, more than 70% of the participants voted no.
Musk, who claims to be a "free speech absolutist", has always opposed the permanent ban of Twitter on users for some comments. After the riots on Capitol Hill in January 2021, Twitter banned Trump's account. Musk thought it was "stupid" and "immoral".
Musk: I really think it is wrong to ban Trump, and I think it is a mistake. I think I will revoke the permanent ban.
After Musk took control of Blue Bird, Trump said for the first time on his own social media platform "Truth Social": I'm glad Twitter is now in the hands of sober people.
Scoler, analyst of Interactive Investors UK: Mask described himself as an absolutist of free speech, which indicates that the social media giant will have a great change in the future direction. Maybe Trump will be invited back to the (Twitter) platform.
However, Ben Garrison, an American conservative cartoonist, believes that things are not so simple.
In his writing, Musk is portrayed as half a man and half a cat, breaking into Twitter's birdcage, holding the bird's neck and saying, "Beautiful bird!"! I will teach you to say "freedom of speech"!
Ordinary people have different views on the change of Twitter owners.
Janus, a New Yorker: Many people believe that this is a kind of freedom, which will bring freedom of speech.
Jonah, a New Yorker: I think this is terrible. If you give a person too much power, one person has too much power. This is the case with Twitter now. I don't think this is a good thing.
Social media always like to emphasize their own technology platform attributes and are not responsible for information control.
However, the proliferation of fake news is obvious to all, and the existence of cyber violence cannot be ignored.
On October 28, Paul Pelosi, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the "No. 3 figure" in American politics, was attacked at his home in San Francisco. David DePape, the suspect, smashed the glass door of the house and broke in, injuring 82 year old Paul with a hammer.
San Francisco Police Commissioner Scott: The suspect took Mr. Pelosi's hammer and attacked him violently with it.
During the murder, Depap shouted "Where is Nancy?". The FBI revealed that his original plan was to take Nancy Pelosi hostage.
This reminds the Associated Press that on January 6, 2021, when the Capitol Hill was in turmoil, Trump supporters also shouted: "Where are you, Nancy, we are looking for you.". Where are you, Nancy.
As the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi is regarded as one of the main spokesmen of the Democratic Party. The New York Times said that the attack revealed the current situation of increasing political violence in the United States before the mid-term elections.
However, Musk questioned the incident on Twitter: there is a little possibility that there is another hidden story behind the story.
He attached a report link with the title "Terrible truth: Paul Pelosi drank too much again and had a conflict with a male prostitute on Friday morning".
This report came from a website called "Santa Monica Observer". The article claimed that the suspect David Depap was a "male prostitute". He left a gay bar with Paul Pelosi that night, and then had physical conflicts at Pelosi's home.
A few hours later, Musk deleted the tweet without any explanation.
However, many mainstream media in the United States did not let it go. They continued to follow up, refuting rumors about the incident while attacking Musk for spreading "conspiracy theory".
The New York Times and other media pointed out that the "Santa Monica Observer" website, which published the report, is good at making fake news and famous, and often spreads various political conspiracy theories of extreme right-wing forces, such as inciting people not to fight for new coronavirus vaccine.
With the incident fermenting, the "Santa Monica Observer" website added a paragraph at the beginning of the report: the San Francisco police said that Paul Pelosi did not know David Depap before the attack, and the latter launched the attack after breaking in.
As the new boss of Twitter, Musk, who has millions of fans, forwarded the false report when the truth was unknown, which objectively boosted the spread of the false report, and therefore was criticized by the Associated Press and other media.
Musk: We are very reluctant to delete the content. We should be very careful about the permanent ban. The short-term ban is more appropriate.
According to the Washington Post, just after Musk acquired Twitter, a batch of anonymous accounts emerged on the Twitter platform and began to test whether Twitter's content review policy had changed. Several non-profit organizations, including Anti Defamation League and Network Diffusion Research Institute, have noticed that hate speech on Twitter has increased sharply.
According to the data of the Internet Diffusion Research Institute, in the 12 hours after Musk completed the acquisition, the use rate of a word that starts with the letter N and is discriminatory against African Americans jumped by 500%.
Yoel Roth, the security and integrity director of Twitter, also pointed out that a racist tweet was published 50000 times by 300 accounts.
LeBron James, the NBA star of the United States, angrily denounced this phenomenon after the change of ownership of Twitter.
I don't know Musk, let alone who owns Twitter. But I want to say that if these data are true, I hope he and his people take this matter seriously, because it is terrible. There are so many damned and incompetent people who say that hate speech is freedom of speech.
American media observer Gonzalez: We have seen that white supremacists and conspiracy theorists are willing to use this platform to spread lies and false information, suppress people of color and spread hatred.
At the same time, a tag claiming that "# Trump is dead #" also appeared on Twitter's hot search list, which received more than 20000 likes in less than an hour.
Someone even imitated the mainstream media PS and published a screenshot of the report.
The person who created this label was American comedian Tim Heydeck. Later, he tweeted: Comedy returns to Twitter.
Newsweek of the United States commented that Heidek is using such a "play it by play" operation to satirize and challenge Musk's relaxation of Twitter content review.
As for possible changes to Twitter, EU internal market commissioner Thierry Brayton reminded that birds should be free and have boundaries.
Thierry Breton, EU Internal Market Commissioner: In Europe, this bird will fly according to our (EU) rules.
Mamer, spokesman of the European Commission: What Thierry Brayton did was absolutely correct. He just reminded all companies operating in Europe what the framework should be followed.
On October 27, the night of Twitter's change of ownership, the headquarters building was brightly lit, the company's internal atmosphere was depressed, and four top executives lost their jobs.
Parag Agrawal, CEO, Ned Segal, Head of Legal Affairs and Security, Vijaya Gadde, and Sean Edgett, General Counsel.
Musk claimed that there was a reason for dismissing them. It was the "misleading" of some Twitter executives that led to his Twitter acquisition, which turned into a long tug of war lasting six months.
In April this year, Musk, the largest shareholder of Twitter, expressed his intention to acquire Twitter.
Twitter's board of directors initially rejected this proposal, and even formulated the "Poison Pill Plan" to dilute Musk's shares and prevent its forced acquisition.
Only half a month later, the Board of Directors changed its mind and accepted the acquisition proposal. Musk hit yes on Twitter!
However, since then, the two sides have had serious disagreements about how many real users Twitter has.
In July, Musk announced that it would stop acquiring Twitter.
Twitter immediately sued Musk, asking the court to force him to complete the acquisition. Musk filed a counterclaim against Twitter.
As a result, the acquisition drama ended before the legal process was completed.
What made Musk change his mind is unclear. In the view of the BBC, it is hard to say whether he really wanted to launch the acquisition or played hard to get a better purchase price.
The only certainty is that Twitter executives are unhappy.
As a new boss, Musk accused Twitter management of misleading him and other investors on the number of false accounts on the platform.
In the opinion of the Wall Street Journal, some executives were dismissed for "some reason", which means that Musk may not need to pay them severance expenses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars according to relevant terms.
The Daily Mail of the United Kingdom noted that Gard, the fired head of legal affairs and security, was the decision maker behind the permanent closure of Trump's Twitter account last year.
According to the US Capitol Hill on October 31, Mask dissolved the board of directors of Twitter, became the only director of the company, and became the CEO.
He commented under relevant reports: This is only temporary.
But a series of thunderous measures still made more than 7500 Twitter employees nervous: can I continue to work here after the boss changes?
A prank even appeared outside the Twitter headquarters. Two men dressed as fired Twitter employees and interviewed the media, fooling many American media.
reporter: What is your position
Joker: software engineer
reporter: How long have you worked here
Joker: Three years later, this is my first job after graduation. I even bought a Tesla car.
According to the list of Twitter employees obtained by the Wall Street Journal, some new people have been added, including Tesla engineers. In addition, Tesla employees have reviewed the coding work of Twitter engineers to understand how much code they have written.
NBC Business Channel noticed that some Twitter employees began to compete to show their value and hope to keep their jobs. Some managers asked employees to work 12 hours a day and seven days a week.
However, regarding the rumor that many American media reported that Twitter would dismiss 75% of its old employees, Musk said that there was no such thing.
Avis, securities analyst: Twitter has started a broader layoff, perhaps 30% to 50%.
Advertisers are also worried. They are worried that Mask's freedom of speech will lead to a surge of unfriendly content that offends some users.
According to the Wall Street Journal, several large advertising companies, including Interpublic Group of Cos., have suggested that their customers suspend paying ads on Twitter.
Olio biscuit manufacturer Yizi International, pharmaceutical company Pfizer, Volkswagen's Audi and other companies have also suspended advertising on Twitter.
Engberg, market research analyst: Less content review may be one of the issues that advertisers are most concerned about at present. Recent research shows that the most active Twitter users have tended to be unhappy with content that may affect brand reputation. Reducing content auditing may exacerbate this problem, making advertisers more reluctant to spend money on Twitter.
The Guardian said that 90% of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising, and more than half of its advertising revenue comes from the United States.
According to the data of FactSet, a financial data company, Twitter has lost money in 8 of the past 10 fiscal years. Although Musk publicly said that he "hated advertising" in 2019, he has now had to make good to the "money owner".
Dear Twitter advertisers, Twitter is looking forward to becoming the most respected advertising platform in the world.
The Wall Street Journal said that Musk had begun to meet with senior executives of advertising companies. He promised that Twitter would not become a free and indulgent hell, and would form a content review committee with broad and different views. Before the committee was established, it would not make major content decisions or restore the blocked accounts.
Butcher, Special Editor of TechCrunch: Musk didn't have much choice because he bought it at a high price and spent $44 billion. At present, this platform is losing money. If he does not want to waste all the money he has just spent, he must introduce new functions and business models.
On November 1, Musk announced the first new measure since joining Twitter, to improve the blue certification mark on the Twitter platform, that is, the special permission of the so-called "blue tick" users. The authenticated "Blue Hook" users will be given priority in reply, mention and search. They can publish long videos and audio, and can reduce advertising by half at most, but they need to pay $8 per month. If you don't pay, you will lose the qualification of "Blue Hook".
According to the official data of Twitter, the platform currently has about 423700 "Blue Hook" users. If about 10% of them pay $8 per month, Twitter will gain nearly $4.1 million in additional income every year.
Musk also sent a comparison cartoon that a Starbucks at $8 can drink for 30 minutes, and the blue label certification at $8 can last for 30 days.
However, Twitter users were quite critical of this, and someone posted a message that Starbucks was not free before.
According to the latest Twitter user survey, more than 80% of users said they would not pay for "Blue Hook", and 10% said they were only willing to pay $5 per month.
As he heard too many complaints recently, Musk ridiculed himself by changing his Twitter self introduction from "Twitter boss" to "Twitter complaint hotline operator", and his avatar became a child answering the phone.
In recent years, the influence of social media in American society has continued to rise, which is closely related to American election politics.
On October 25, Biden invited eight TikTok bloggers with more than 67 million fans to the White House.
According to the Washington Post, Biden hopes that the relevant content recently released by bloggers on TikTok platform can bring votes to the Democratic Party in the mid-term elections on November 8.
Kate Wellington, 24, is one of the bloggers who participated in this event. She was hesitant to make a political statement on TikTok before. After visiting the White House, she said that the situation might change.
Compared with TikTok, which is popular with young people, Twitter is closer to American politics.
Brian, technology reporter of CNN: Many Twitter users are government officials or government departments, politicians or business leaders.
In May this year, Musk publicly said that he no longer supported the Democratic Party. Last October, he also moved Tesla headquarters from California, the traditional force of the Democratic Party, to Texas, which is dominated by the Republican Party, on the grounds that Texas does not collect "state income tax".
He took charge of Twitter, which attracted the attention of some Democratic politicians.
Democratic Senator Warren: I don't think any billionaire should have the right to decide how Americans and people around the world talk to each other. So I think he (Mask) has a problem.
Compere: Are you a "blue tick" user?
Democratic Senator Warren: I don't care.
The New York Times recalled that William Hurst, Joseph Pulitzer and other 19th century American newspaper tycoons, in its view, Mask may appear on the political stage as a new chaotic factor.
Butcher, Special Editor of TechCrunch: Musk has argued that Twitter is too left-wing, and he even came out to support the Republican Party politically. Therefore, whether Twitter can effectively maintain its relative independence and neutrality needs to be put on a question mark.
Next week, the United States will hold mid-term elections. Analysts generally believe that as one of the key information battlefields, Twitter will inevitably have an impact on the public opinion ecology of the United States.
The Washington Post said frankly that in the critical period when the Democratic and Republican parties are competing for control of Congress, social media platforms such as Twitter must make difficult decisions about which content to retain or delete, because wrong information will eventually weaken the confidence of the American people in elections.
