Now that Twitter belongs to Elon Musk in what is, at least partially, a leveraged buyout, the social media platform’s interest expense alone is set to balloon to around $1 billion by next year. Musk’s biggest challenge now is to figure out a strategy to unlock explosive growth in Twitter’s monetizable userbase without offending advertisers as he aggressively dials back on content moderation.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022 In a series of tweets, Elon Musk has now offered some much-needed clarity on what the “Twitter Blue” subscription will entail. For starters, the Twitter premium experience will be available for $8 per month in the US. Internationally, the subscription will be adjusted according to each country’s purchasing power parity.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022 Twitter’s premium experience will offer priority when it comes to “replies, mentions & search,” which, according to Elon Musk, will effectively counter the issue of spam accounts and bots. In other news, Elon Musk has now limited access to Twitter’s internal content moderation tools to just around 15 people. According to Bloomberg, this access is typically given to hundreds of employees. Twitter’s Trust and Safety team has apparently raised concerns around this action, particularly as it comes just ahead of the US Midterm elections and degrades the platform’s ability to moderate misinformation campaigns. According to Bloomberg, Twitter experienced a 1,700 percent surge in racist slurs on Friday and Saturday, just as Musk was assuming Twitter’s command. Last week, Elon Musk fired Twitter’s former CEO, Parag Agrawal, its CFO, Ned Segal, and the company’s head of legal policy, trust, and safety, Vijaya Gadde. Readers should note that Gadde is widely considered the pivotal person who was responsible for booting the former US President Trump off Twitter. Moreover, rumors continue to circulate that Musk is looking to fire around 75 percent of the platform’s workforce.
No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022 On Friday, Elon Musk announced the creation of a “widely diverse” content moderation council that will serve as the focal point for decisions regarding censorship policies and account reinstatements.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022 Toward the end of October, Elon Musk penned an open letter to advertisers, exhorting continued cooperation as Twitter is transformed into “the most respected advertising platform” in the world. However, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that many of the platform’s advertisers, including General Motors, have already demanded the suspension of their ads on the platform as they assess Twitter’s new direction under Musk’s leadership.
