By Lily Angel
Since Elon Musk sealed the $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter in October, there have been many changes at the company. Musk laid off thousands of employees, changed Twitter’s content rules, reinstated previously suspended accounts, and lost millions in revenue as well as followers.
Most notably, Musk reinstated former president Donald Trump and Kanye West, both of whom were previously permanently suspended for inciting violence with their tweets.
There has been a definite increase in hate speech on the platform since Musk’s acquisition. Before Musk bought Twitter, slurs against African Americans appeared 1,282 times a day on average, rising to 3,876 after his purchase, according to the New York Times. Slurs against gay men similarly rose and antisemitic posts rose more than 61 percent in just the two weeks after he purchased the platform.
Musk sees no issues with the rise in hate speech, however. His comments focus on free speech, rather than stemming the tide of hatred.
In a tweet, Musk said, “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
Twitter has also seen issues with several earlier rules and regulations, especially due to the lowered employee count, given that there are 5,000 employees who were either fired or quit, according to Bloomberg.
Due to the low employee count, Twitter’s copyright Strike down is not functioning properly. Twitter users are posting full movies and copyrighted material, which is not being taken down due to insufficient staff to monitor the issue.
Other social media platforms, both established and up and coming, are looking to dethrone Twitter in the chaos after Musk’s involvement.
Meta, the company that owns both Instagram and Facebook, is in talks to create the next Twitter, according to the New York Times. Other companies such as Mastadon and Hive Social, and even Tumblr are looking to gain the followers fleeing Twitter.
According to a MIT report, there may have been more than a million followers who left Twitter in just the first few weeks of the change in ownership.
The conditions of Twitter have certainly worsened since the purchase of the greatly declining the platform.
Twitter has increasingly become an unreliable platform that doesn’t seem to function properly.
Well, Twitter has a good 16 years running but it doesn’t look like it will be able to make it to the 20th year thanks to new management.
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