Underneath stress and dealing with a wave of criticism, Elon Musk has more and more turned to his favourite launch valve: Twitter.
Since Saturday, Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man and the brand new proprietor of Twitter, has launched into a tweeting spree so voluminous that he’s on a tempo to publish greater than 750 instances this month, or greater than 25 instances a day, in accordance with an evaluation from the digital investigations firm Memetica. That might be up from about 13 instances a day in April, when Mr. Musk first agreed to purchase Twitter.
His latest tweets have lined an more and more broad vary of subjects. Over the past 4 days, Mr. Musk, 51, needled the comic Kathy Griffin and beefed with the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on the platform. He made masturbation jokes geared toward a rival — and far smaller — social media platform. He posted, then deleted, a tweet participating with a quote from a white nationalist. And he defended his possession of Twitter, together with why he had laid off 50 p.c of the corporate’s workers and why folks mustn’t impersonate others on the service.
All in all, Mr. Musk, who described himself in his Twitter profile as “Chief Twit” earlier than later altering the outline to “Twitter Criticism Hotline Operator,” has tweeted greater than 105 instances since Friday, primarily about Twitter, in accordance with a tally by Memetica.
“Birds haven’t been actual since 1986,” Mr. Musk tweeted on Sunday in a dialogue thread about Twitter, together with a meme from an absurdist conspiracy concept that posits that birds are literally robotic spies. He didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Mr. Musk is underneath large scrutiny 11 days after finishing his $44 billion deal for Twitter, which was the biggest leveraged buyout of a know-how firm in historical past. On Friday, he reduce roughly 3,700 of the corporate’s 7,500 workers, saying he had no selection as a result of Twitter was dropping $4 million a day. On the similar time, he has discovered himself embroiled in the identical content material debates which have plagued different social media corporations, together with easy methods to give folks a approach to communicate out with out spreading misinformation and poisonous speech.
Extra on Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover
Already Mr. Musk has needed to delay the rollout of a subscription product that will have given folks examine marks on their Twitter profiles. Advertisers have paused their spending on Twitter over fears that Mr. Musk will loosen content material guidelines on the platform. And the midterm elections are set to be a take a look at of how a slimmed-down Twitter will carry out in catching inflammatory posts and misinformation about voting and election outcomes.
In a report that was revealed on Monday, researchers on the Fletcher Faculty at Tufts College mentioned the early indicators of Mr. Musk’s Twitter “present the platform is heading within the incorrect course underneath his management — at a very inconvenient time for American democracy.”
The researchers mentioned that they had tracked narratives about civil conflict, election fraud, citizen policing of voting, and allegations of pedophilia and grooming on Twitter from July by way of October. “Publish-Musk takeover, the standard of the dialog has decayed” as extra extremists and misinformation peddlers have examined the platform’s boundaries, the researchers wrote.
Amid the hubbub, Mr. Musk’s habits on Twitter means that he intends to easily publish by way of it. And whereas he has at all times been a prolific tweeter, he has raised the extent in latest days.
On Friday, Mr. Musk, who has greater than 114 million followers on Twitter, proposed a “thermonuclear name & shame” marketing campaign in opposition to manufacturers that had stopped promoting on the platform. He mentioned that he had performed every part he may to appease advertisers however that activists had labored in opposition to him to trigger manufacturers to drop out of spending on Twitter.
On the similar time, the billionaire was embroiled in a combat over his plan to cost Twitter customers $8 a month for a subscription service, Twitter Blue, which might give a examine mark to anybody who paid. The examine mark had been free for notable folks whose identities had been verified by the corporate, together with celebrities, politicians and journalists, as a approach to shield in opposition to impersonation.
Critics have been sad about Mr. Musk’s plans to monetize the examine mark, saying it may result in the unfold of misinformation and fraud on the platform. In protest, some Twitter accounts that had examine marks modified their show names and images to match Mr. Musk’s account over the weekend, a transfer supposed for instance why it might be complicated if anybody may purchase a examine mark.
On Sunday, Mr. Musk introduced that he would permanently suspend any account “participating in impersonation with out clearly specifying ‘parody.’” The billionaire, who had beforehand criticized Twitter when it completely barred customers, then barred Ms. Griffin, who had posed as him on the service.
Mr. Musk, who has known as himself a “free speech absolutist,” is studying the fundamental expectation of content material moderation for well-liked social networks, mentioned Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Coverage Middle.
“His concepts have been incoherent for some time,” she mentioned.
On Sunday night time, Mr. Musk responded to a tweet that includes a quote from a white nationalist, earlier than deleting the publish and shifting on to squabble with Mr. Dorsey over Birdwatch, a characteristic that lets neighborhood members add context to tweets that they imagine are deceptive. Mr. Musk, who beforehand lauded the characteristic, proposed altering the characteristic’s title to “Group Notes.”
“Group notes is probably the most boring Fb title ever,” replied Mr. Dorsey, who owns a $1 billion stake in Mr. Musk’s Twitter.
Then on Monday, Mr. Musk prompt he may pursue civil society teams and activists who have been pushing for Twitter advertiser boycotts, when he replied to a right-wing commentator that “we do” have grounds for authorized motion. Authorized consultants mentioned the holding of boycotts for social and political objectives is protected underneath the First Modification.
Mr. Musk additionally tweeted that individuals ought to vote Republican in Tuesday’s midterm elections. “Shared energy curbs the worst excesses of each events, subsequently I like to recommend voting for a Republican Congress, provided that the Presidency is Democratic,” he tweeted. He later posted that he was an impartial with a “voting historical past of completely Democrat till this 12 months.”
He quickly moved on. Mr. Musk’s consideration turned fastened on Mastodon, a Twitter competitor that has gained traction over the previous 10 days. Enjoying off Mastodon’s title, he made a number of crude jokes about masturbation — then deleted these posts an hour later.
Tiffany Hsu contributed reporting.