Elon Musk’s Twitter: Know It All – Layoffs to Verification

Welcome to Elon Musk’s Twitter! Here, rules are up for debate, and verified accounts don’t matter. In April 2022, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced his desire to purchase Twitter, fueled by his mission to eliminate spam bots and defend free speech. “It is my strong, intuitive conviction that having a widely trusted and accessible public platform is highly essential for the progress of humanity,” Musk stated at a TED conference on the day he proposed his offer.

I have no interest in economics.

Musk endured a chaotic legal discovery process that included some embarrassing texts, but ultimately he was successful in sealing the deal. By October, he had acquired the platform.

Following the acquisition, news related to the microblogging platform has been a whirlwind, with verification chaos, API access shakeups, ban reversals, and staggering layoffs.

Musk recently announced his transition from Twitter CEO to executive chair and CTO.

On May 12, Linda Yaccarino announced her appointment as the next Twitter CEO. She will depart from her current role as chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCU.

Rewrite without passive voice Starting with the most recent news, here is a complete timeline of what is happening at the bird app: June 2023 Twitter will require users to be verified in order to access TweetDeck after 30 days. Due to a multitude of users being unable to access certain parts of TweetDeck over the last few days, Twitter is now rolling out a new version of the web app to users July 3. The company has also indicated that 30 days from now, verification will be necessary to access TweetDeck.

Only Twitter Blue subscribers, verified organizations, and those who have been gifted verification by Twitter are allowed to use TweetDeck starting in August.

Account holders with verification can view up to 6,000 posts daily, whereas unverified users are limited to 600 posts. Newly registered, unverified users are limited to 300 posts daily, as Elon Musk has announced. He subsequently increased the limits to 10,000, 1,000, and 500 respectively.

TweetDeck users experienced major problems, including notifications and entire columns failing to load, due to the read limits imposed by Twitter.

When Twitter began enforcing the login requirement, Musk stated that he had implemented these “temporary” measures to prevent data scraping. The company has not yet declared its decision to allow users to view links when they are not logged in or provided any information about the measures it has taken to stop scraping. Users can now post 25,000-character-long tweets as the company updated its Twitter Blue page today, indicating the limit.

Prachi Poddar, an engineer at Twitter, announced the change in a long tweet. The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter in the Federal District Court in Nashville. The lawsuit claims that Twitter failed to act on the 1,700 copyright violation notices sent by the NMPA, representing 17 publishers.

The publishers’ organization filed a lawsuit alleging that Twitter “fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical ‘compositions’, violating Publishers’ and others’ exclusive rights under copyright law.”

It also stated that, in contrast to its competitors TikTok and Instagram, Twitter has yet to reach an agreement for the use of copyrighted music. The organization is seeking fines of up to $150,000 for each violation.

The landlord sued Twitter in May, and on May 31 the judge granted an order for the sheriff to evict Twitter from their Boulder office within 49 days. Case number 2023CV30342 in Boulder District Court shows that Twitter failed to pay three months’ rent.

On Monday, June 5, Linda Yaccarino officially became the CEO of Twitter. The same day, Ella Irwin announced her resignation from her role as trust and safety lead at the company. Irwin took over for Yoel Roth, who had resigned during the early days of Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter takeover.

Twitter released Community Notes for images in posts on May 2023. This new feature aims to give more responsibility to crowdsourced moderation by allowing users to address situations involving edited or AI-generated images appearing on the platform. The launch follows the spread of a deceptive AI-generated image of an attack on the Pentagon, which was quickly shared by several influential accounts.

The new tier, called Twitter Blue, costs $5,000 per month. Through Twitter API Pro for Startups, developers can now fetch up to 1 million tweets per month and post up to 300,000 tweets per month, as well as gain access to the full archive search endpoint.

The company modified its Twitter Blue page and announced that they have increased the video file size limit for paid users from 2GB to 8 GB. Now, users can upload longer videos through the iOS app, in addition to the web. However, the maximum quality for uploads still remains 1080p.

”Elon Musk confirms that Linda Yaccarino will be the new Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced on May 11 that Linda Yaccarino will assume the role of CEO at Twitter in approximately six weeks. Musk will then transition to Executive Chairman and CTO, overseeing product, software, and system operations.

Twitter released its first version of encrypted direct messages (DMs). This feature is only available to verified Blue users or accounts associated with verified organizations.

Unfortunately, the encryption feature does not work with group messages and Twitter does not provide protection from man-in-the-middle attacks. Additionally, Twitter has also added the ability to react to DMs with emojis. Users can now select almost any emoji to respond to a DM in a conversation.

”This will allow users to be able to take up desired usernames. The CEO also announced that the company is rolling out a new feature that allows users to react to the most recent Direct Message with a select set of emojis with their latest app update.

Users should expect the issue to be resolved soon and their tweets will be private once again.

The email stated that in April 2023, a security bug could have allowed users not in your Twitter Circle to view tweets meant to be limited to that Circle. Twitter has declared that they have fixed the bug and know what caused it.

Twitter is randomly logging users out after reports that people were able to temporarily regain their Verified checkmarks by editing their bios. Complaints on Twitter suggest that some users are able to log back in after being logged out.

Desktop users who access Twitter via the web are experiencing issues where they are being logged out repeatedly. Some have reported that by updating their Twitter bio, their legacy blue checks reappear, regardless of the text they enter.

The old text designating her as “notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category” showed up on the page, even though she did not pay for it. However, refreshing the page causes the check to disappear. It is unclear if anyone else can see the check reappear briefly.

The European Union has warned Twitter that it must comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) which is slated to take effect this fall. On April 25, Twitter was confirmed as one of 19 major tech platforms that will be subject to centralized oversight by the EU’s executive. Elon Musk-owned social network has been warned by the Commission that it must be careful to stay on the right side of the incoming law.

Vera Jourova, the EU’s values and transparency VP, tweeted a warning of “yet another negative sign” from Twitter. She accused the platform of not making digital information space safer or free from Kremlin #disinformation and malicious influence. She reported that Twitter will now show labels on tweets with reduced visibility and informed that both authors and viewers will see them.

Twitter still reinstated the blue verification for them.

The New York Times reported in March that Twitter was considering giving a free verification mark to the top 10,000 brands and companies. However, it is unclear whether Twitter is extending the same policy to personal accounts.

Starting April 21, Twitter requires advertisers to have a verified checkmark in order to run ads on the platform. Several Twitter users have posted screenshots of an email reportedly sent by Twitter, which confirms the new policy.

Starting April 25, Microsoft will no longer offer its free social media management service on Twitter. This follows Twitter’s announcement of charging a minimum of $42,000 per month for its API, including enterprises and research institutions.

Consequently, users will not be able to access their Twitter account or create, schedule, or manage tweets through Microsoft’s service.

Elon Musk threatened to take legal action against those who illegally used Twitter data: “Lawsuit time.” — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

Twitter now provides a notice to the account owner and people who visit the tweet’s URL when a visibility filter is applied. Twitter can limit the reach of tweets that violate its policies by using “visibility filtering.” This means that the tweets remain online, but they become less discoverable, as they are excluded from places such as search results, trends, recommended notifications, For You and Following timelines, and more.

In the past, the public may not have known when Twitter moderated a tweet in this way. However, Twitter now notifies the account owner and people who visit the tweet’s URL when a visibility filter is applied.

With the new update, however, the platform is now open to all subscribers.

Several other news organizations, including NPR, also confirmed to Axios that they have stopped tweeting due to the labeling controversy. After taking control of the company, Musk also terminated Revue, a startup Twitter had acquired in 2021.

Prominent news entities such as Boston NPR affiliate WBUR, Hawaii Public Radio, and LA-based local news source LAist followed the lead of other news outlets and ceased their advertising on Facebook.

Weeks later, the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT, and Catalonia’s TV3.cat were all designated as “government-funded media”.

Twitter and eToro have partnered to show real-time stock and crypto information on Twitter. This adds to the social network’s Cashtag feature, which previously provided limited stock and crypto coin information from TradingView data.

The partnership with eToro goes further by allowing users to engage in trading. When searching for a stock on Twitter, users will now see a “View on eToro” button which redirects them to the site.

During the interview, Musk revealed that he only purchased Twitter because he thought he would be forced to.

During the interview, Clayton asked Musk if he willingly purchased Twitter or if he did so because the court case, in which Twitter was trying to force him to make the sale, was going badly. Musk responded that he only went through with the deal because he believed he would legally be forced to do so.

On April 20, this company will officially remove all legacy checkmarks. It will only offer verification marks to paid users and businesses, government entities, and officials.

Twitter is no longer a public company and does not need to report name changes to the SEC. However, the new name of the company was seen in an April 4 document related to Laura Loomer’s lawsuit against Twitter and Facebook. The document declared that “Twitter, Inc. merged into X Corp. and no longer exists.”

The former executives of Twitter are suing the company in Delaware Chancery Court for failing to pay more than $1 million in legal bills they incurred while responding to requests by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission.

”A former Twitter employee confirmed this move is likely due to a policy change.”

Twitter is displaying 50% more ads in Blue subscribers’ timelines and boosting their visibility in search. As users scroll, they will see organic or non-promoted Tweets interspersed with promoted Tweets or ads.

”At times, there may be more or fewer non-promoted Tweets between promoted Tweets. Twitter states they are reducing ads on paid subscribers’ feeds, but it is difficult to determine if this is the case without relying on anecdotal experiences. Twitter has recently labeled NPR’s Twitter account as “US state-affiliated media,” which is misleading.

Twitter defines state-affiliated media as outlets that the state controls either financially, through political pressures or by controlling production and distribution. Examples of this include organizations without editorial independence, such as the BBC in the UK. Therefore, NPR does not qualify as a state-affiliated account under Twitter’s definition.

Elon Musk congratulated them on the move, tweeting “Nicely done!” along with a laughing emoji. Benny Johnson shared the tweet, adding “GET REKT @NPR” on April 5, 2023.

It appears that Twitter has made a misstep with their April 1 verification changes. Elon Musk had previously announced that only those with a subscription to Twitter Blue would retain their blue checkmark as a symbol of legitimacy, with the wider goal of gating previously free features and bundling new ones under the $8 monthly Twitter Blue subscription, which is $11 on iOS and Android devices.

Celebrities and businesses voiced their opposition to the $8 fee, making it clear that Twitter would find it difficult to remove so many blue checks. Therefore, Twitter only changed the text accompanying a blue check, making it unclear if they were verified for being notable or paying for Twitter Blue. In retaliation, Twitter removed The New York Times’ verification check when the news giant refused to pay for verification.

Early returns show that Twitter Blue has not significantly boosted Elon Musk’s Twitter bottom line, with only $11 million in mobile signups in its first three months.

Elon Musk Decided

”Verification is required to vote in polls for the same reason.”

Newly created accounts will be unable to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 30 days. Additionally, Twitter reserves the right to impose waiting periods for new accounts without prior notice.

When users clicked on their checkmark, they received a pop-up reading, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.” After Twitter made a mistake in removing checkmarks, they altered the copy so that users could no longer differentiate between someone who had a checkmark due to payment or recognition.”

Twitter has now expanded its Blue subscription service to 20 more countries, bringing the total to 35 countries across the world. The countries included in the expansion are Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus.

In February 2023, Twitter cut more than 200 employees, including Esther Crawford, the chief executive of Twitter payments who oversaw the company’s Twitter Blue verification subscription. This marked the fourth round of layoffs since Musk took over and the staff has now decreased from about 7,500 to less than 2,000. Ex-employees speculate that Musk must be planning to put a new team in place, as the cuts don’t seem to make sense otherwise.

The ex-manager told me that it is difficult to keep the lights on with the remaining staff.

This date has now been pushed back again, with no set date for the launch of the new API platform.

Currently, there is no set date for the launch.

We will provide more information soon.

Starting on February 14, we will offer a basic tier of API access for $100 per month. This tier will provide developers with a “low level of API usage” and access to the Ads API.

Developers seeking clarity around the new API rules went to the developer forum website only to find that the site required a login. The forum was accessible four days later on February 13. Twitter Blue announced the ability to post longer tweets for paid users on February 8.

”Twitter Blue subscribers can post tweets of up to 4,000 characters, whereas all other users are limited to 280 characters. If a tweet exceeds 280 characters, only the first 280 characters will appear in the timeline. To read the rest, click “Show more.”

Do you need more than 280 characters to express yourself? We understand that many of you do! While we love a good thread, sometimes it’s best to Tweet it all at once. That’s why we’re introducing longer Tweets! Check it out!

Elon Musk tweeted on February 3 that Twitter will start sharing ad revenue with creators. He added that to be eligible for payouts, users must sign up for Twitter Blue. Payouts have not yet reached the creators’ wallets.

This new tab is now available to premium subscribers in the US, Canada, Japan, UK, Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Saudi Arabia.

Only Blue subscribers and “some people on Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android apps” will be able to access podcasts.

Instead, Twitter will offer a paid basic tier.

Users will be able to view the set of co-tweets for a month. Afterward, these co-tweets will automatically convert to retweets on the co-author’s profile.

U.S.-based advertising campaigns can now access a program that lets brands analyze the content surrounding their ads, including promoted tweets above and below the ad. Additionally, Twitter has released its bookmark feature on iOS, which displays a bookmark button under the expanded tweet view for easy saving of posts.

Tap the share button to open the sharing card, then tap the bookmark option to save a tweet. The new button simplifies this process – tapping it reveals a banner at the top of the screen that says “Show all bookmarks.” Currently, this feature is only available on the iOS app, but Twitter will likely roll it out to Android and the web soon.

”On January 19, Twitter officially prohibited the use of third-party clients.

Earlier this week, Twitter denied access to its platform to certain clients and did not specify which API rules they had violated. Consequently, developers of third-party Twitter clients removed their apps from App Stores.

The recently shuttered third-party apps helped Twitter develop its own subscription offerings, such as Twitter Blue.

Twitter is attempting to generate revenue by holding auctions for its surplus office furniture that it no longer needs due to thousands of employees leaving or being laid off. The auction is now closed.

With advertisers rapidly dropping out and rent going unpaid, why not try a Hail Mary? Twitter is now making its algorithmic “For You” timeline the default, though it has attempted this approach before, only to offer users the option to switch back to a chronological timeline after a wave of criticism. This time, however, the Elon Musk-led company is displaying both algorithmic and chronological feeds side-by-side, allowing users to switch between them with a simple swipe of their phone screens.

Now, users can easily switch between the “For You” and “Following” timelines by swiping. Twitter is justifying the change by claiming that it makes navigation easier.

On January 20, Twitter made the “For you” feed the default when users opened Twitter in a tab or refreshed the page. On February 7, the same preferences were extended to iOS and Android.

Twitter has reversed its political ad ban to increase revenue. In 2019, they declared that political messages should be earned, not bought. This decision contrasted with other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which permit political advertisements.

This update is part of Twitter’s strive to provide more value to its subscribers.

Type the dollar symbol and a ticker symbol, such as “$GOOG” or “$ETH” (without quotation marks), in the Twitter search bar to display stock and cryptocurrency prices. In some cases, you can access the feature without the $ symbol, but it may not always show the requested prices.

Hit the “View on Robinhood” button to learn more details about a stock or cryptocurrency. You can now view how many people have seen your tweets with the addition of the tweet’s View Count feature.

”In a tweet, Elon Musk announced that Twitter is now providing View Count so people can see how many times a tweet has been seen. He also noted that this is common for video and added that it shows how active Twitter really is since over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply, or like since those actions are public.

We’re excited for businesses to be able to use this to identify their employees and will be rolling out to more organizations in the coming year,” said Twitter product manager Esther Crawford.

We look forward to expanding our program and adding more businesses in the new year!

Twitter abruptly suspended several prominent journalists on the platform without warning on the same day. In response to the suspensions, Elon Musk tweeted, “The same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else.”

Later, Twitter encountered an error that allowed users who had been banned to still join Twitter Spaces. Consequently, the group of suspended journalists started a conversation there, and Musk joined in.

Verified accounts aren’t part of the current verification process.” Elon Musk tweeted on December 12 that Twitter will remove all legacy checkmarks within a few months. Before Musk took over, blue checkmarks were used to authenticate active, notable accounts.

This past week, many users with blue checkmarks have seen an alert when clicking on their checkmark that reads, “This is a legacy verified account. Verified accounts are no longer part of the current verification process.”

Additionally, Twitter Blue for Business will launch, allowing companies to connect with their customers and manage their accounts on Elon Musk’s Twitter.

The cost of Blue for Business is $50 per month. For “access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark,” Twitter charges $8 per month for web sign-ups and $11 per month for iOS sign-ups, according to a tweet from the company’s official account.

In January 2023, Twitter Blue became available on Android for the same price as iOS. Additionally, the company began launching Blue for Business, which will add a gold checkmark to company accounts, for a cost of $50 per month.

Twitter has rolled out its Community Notes feature globally. This crowdsourced fact-checking system, previously known as Birdwatch, allows moderators to add notes to tweets to provide context and users to then vote on whether they deem the context to be helpful. Before this global expansion, Community Notes were only available to users in the U.S.

The company also added moderators from the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand in January 2023.

Twitter has updated its Community Notes to better address low-quality contributions. The platform’s crowdsourced fact-checking system now scores notes that explain why a tweet should not be considered misleading.

Confused about all the checkmarks and badges on Twitter? You’re not alone. Here’s a quick guide on what each of them means: Twitter Blue Verification – Twitter Blue is a premium subscription service that charges $8 per month.

It provides additional features, such as allowing users to edit their tweets after they have been sent and the ability to add posts to their favorites.

It includes the option to add a special grey-colored “Official” label to profiles of companies, celebrities, politicians, and other prominent accounts.

However, within hours of the launch, Elon Musk tweeted his disapproval of the labels, calling them “lame.” In response, Esther Crawford clarified that the grey “Official” labels are still available as part of the new Twitter Blue product.

The blue “verified” checkmark was the only feature available at the time, which allowed fake accounts pretending to be celebrities, brands, and influential people to create accounts and spread misinformation.

A class action lawsuit sued Twitter for not giving employees prior notice of a mass layoff, claiming it violated worker protection laws. Soon after, Twitter contacted some former employees to invite them back, as their layoff had been “by mistake”.

Moreover, a round of executive departures shook up the company. In his inaugural email to staff, Elon Musk stressed the importance of ending remote work and fighting spam.

Elon Musk’s Twitter is giving workers a choice: quit Twitter or get ready to work hard. He is demanding that employees “get hardcore” in order to make the new and improved platform a success.

Twitter announced that it will revoke verification badges from current holders if they do not purchase Twitter Blue within 90 days of launching the new verification system. This news comes from a report from The Verge.

He fired Parag Agrawal (former CEO), Ned Segal (CFO), Sean Edgett (general counsel), and Vijaya Gadde (head of Legal, Trust, and Safety) on the first day.