Musk’s Mismanagement of Twitter
By: Saanika Raina
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has been followed by mass firings, the flouting of safety protocols, and the reinstatement of accounts of individuals and groups who promote hate speech. These actions are making Twitter a hotbed of misinformation and disinformation.
Musk joined Twitter as a user in 2010 and had 80 million followers by April 2022 when he made an unsolicited bid to buy Twitter to ostensibly promote free speech on the platform. He tried to back out of the deal in July 2022 but was sued and had to proceed with the acquisition which went through in July 2022. Musk attempting to put a personal stamp on Twitter has instead turned it into a chaotic mess with the resignation and firing of employees, the derision of safety protocols, and the restoration of accounts that were banned for egregious violations.
Musk left a vast number of terminations in his wake, as he has presided over the layoff or resignation of almost 5000 of Twitter’s approximately 7500 workforce. Musk fired over half the staff to cut costs, and did it in such a disorganized manner that the company had to then ask many of those they fired to return. He further demanded that employees commit to working long hours in the office, ordering that they sleep there and be “extremely hardcore” or resign. Half of the remaining workforce chose to resign, including the majority of the Trust and Safety team whose job is to monitor the site for hate speech, misinformation, and other content that violates the law or the website’s own policies.
Additionally, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has led to the neglect of Twitter’s safety protocols. The new head of the Trust and Safety team Ella Irwin, who was promoted to the role by Musk, is aiding and abetting him as he goes against the policies and procedures that the departing Twitter team spent years defining and refining in an effort to build trust with users. The majority of the people who knew how to build adequate security systems have left and those that remain are unwilling to tell Musk that many of his actions are counter to Twitter policy. The safety and security process has devolved into a system where Irwin and her team follow Musk’s directives.
Furthermore, Musk has issued the reinstatement of Twitter profiles that incentivize hate speech and promote violence. Musk had previously stated that he would convene a content moderation council of third-party independent and diverse voices to dictate policy and review major account restatements, but no such council was publicly convened. Musk went on to reinstate the accounts of controversial figures like that of former President Donald Trump, when, after conducting an online poll of Twitter users, 52% of whom voted to restore Trump’s account. Twitter, like other social media platforms, encourages users to seek other like-minded people, which reinforces their views and confirms their theories. The world has seen Mr. Trump’s desire for revenge since he lost the 2020 election; Twitter was the platform he used to spew angry rhetoric to mobilize the mob that attacked the Capitol, amplify QAnon conspiracy theories, and dehumanize his opponents. Thus, reinstating the account of someone like Trump, who has demonstrated a consistent desire to provoke violence, is nothing short of irresponsible.
Moreover, in India, which is Twitter’s third largest market with 41 Million Twitter users, Musk has reinstated previously suspended Hindu Nationalist accounts. Human rights groups are saying that this has led to a resurgence of divisive religious material on Twitter. India is a Hindu-majority Muslim-minority country with a deep social and religious divide, where incendiary tweets can erupt into fatal Hindu versus Muslim confrontations. Hindu nationalists have been publishing tweets calling Pakistani Muslims “rectums” and calling the holy Quran “the source of all evil”. Musk has also interacted with Twitter users who embrace views of Hindu supremacy.
Musk’s actions have only led to chaos, as Musk swiftly replaces Twitter’s old culture of positive engagement with a disorganized and harmful culture of his own.
