On October 27 entrepreneur Elon Musk bought the much loved social media platform Twitter from ex-CEO Jack Dorsey. Musk claims that he bought the company to “try to help humanity, whom I love.” However, many believe that he is only saying this to sound genuine and that the real reason why he did this was to make more money. Things at the Twitter headquarters and on the app are looking much different now that Musk has full control and it is causing negative feedback from the app’s users. 

According to Search Engine Journal, when Musk first stepped up to the plate, the first big change he made was laying off or firing almost half of the Twitter employees (about 3,800 workers out of the rounded value of 7,500 workers) that were working for the company before Musk took over. Musk stated that Twitter was rapidly losing money and the company just doesn’t have enough money to pay all of the workers. He wanted to make up for all of the money that was being lost and demanded that his workers commit to long and intense hours while working, but around 1,200 workers left because of this change. After all of these workers quit, Musk attempted to hire back some of the workers that he had previously laid off or fired to make up for the ones who quit. 

With over half of the company’s employees missing, Twitter is struggling to improve, let alone sustain the website. Many tweets are going through the filters, bugs and glitches are building up causing one of America’s most famous social medias to slowly deteriorate.

The other big thing that Musk has changed is introducing a Twitter subscription called Twitter Blue and setting up a whole new verification system with it. It was launched on December 12, 2022 for $8 on web or $11 on iOS. The subscription would give the customer a blue check mark that would appear as if they were a verified account and give them access to beta features. This backfired on Musk immediately. Twitter users changed their profiles to be parodies of popular companies or influencers and posted inappropriate content or wrong information. As a result, Musk took this feature off and removed Twitter Blue as an option so he could change the way the verification process worked. When it is re-released, everything will be the same besides the check marks which will now be gold rather than blue so you can tell the real verified accounts apart from the customers of Twitter Blue. 

According to the New York Times, Elon Musk plans to resign from being the Twitter CEO as soon as he can find someone to take his place. He stated that “no one who wants the job can actually keep Twitter alive.” But for now, Musk will continue to stay as CEO with less than 70% of his employees gone and an app that people are slowly leaving.