Elon Musk Is Tweeting Through a Tide of Criticism

Facing a wave of pressure and criticism, Elon Musk has turned increasingly to his favorite release valve, Twitter.

Since Saturday, Musk, the world’s richest man and Twitter’s new owner, has started tweeting at such a high volume that he’s on pace to post more than 750 times this month, or more than 25 times a day. It is said that there is. In April, when Musk first agreed to buy Twitter, it was about 13 times a day, according to an analysis by digital research firm Memetica.

His recent tweets cover an ever-wider range of topics. Over the past four days, 51-year-old Musk has needled comedian Kathy Griffin and angered Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on the platform, arguing that he’s outsmarted rivals, and much smaller ones. Social media aimed at his platform and made masturbation jokes. He posted and then deleted a tweet quoting a white supremacist. He also defended his Twitter ownership, including why he fired 50% of the company’s staff and why he shouldn’t impersonate others on the service.

All in all, Musk described himself as “Chief Twit” on his Twitter profile, which he later changed to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” according to the tally. by Memetica.

“Birds haven’t been real since 1986,” Musk said. murmured Sunday in a discussion thread on Twitter, including a meme from an absurd conspiracy theory that posits that birds are actually robot spies. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Musk has come under a great deal of scrutiny 11 days after completing a $44 billion deal for Twitter, the largest leveraged buyout of a tech company in history. On Friday, he cut about 3,700 of the company’s 7,500 employees, saying he had no choice because Twitter was losing. $4 million a dayAt the same time, he found himself embroiled in the same debates that have plagued other social media companies. This includes ways to give people a way to speak up without spreading misinformation or toxic speech.

Already, Mr. Musk has had to delay the rollout of a subscription product that would have caused people to tick off their Twitter profiles. Advertisers have paused spending on Twitter over concerns that Mr. Musk will loosen the platform’s content rules. And the midterm elections will test how a streamlined Twitter works in catching inflammatory posts and misinformation about polls and election results.

of report Researchers at Tufts University’s Fletcher School said early signs of Musk’s Twitter “demonstrate that the platform is headed in the wrong direction under Mr. Musk’s leadership.” Especially in inconvenient times

Researchers say they tracked civil wars, electoral fraud, citizen vote crackdowns, and allegations of pedophilia and grooming on Twitter from July to October. “Conversation quality declined after Mask’s takeover,” the researchers wrote.

Amid the hustle and bustle, Musk’s actions on Twitter suggest that he is simply going to post. And while he’s always been a prolific tweeter, he’s taken it to the next level.

On Friday, Musk, who has more than 114 million followers on Twitter, said:thermonuclear name and shameCampaigns against brands that have stopped advertising on the platform. He said he did everything he could to appease advertisers, but activists opposed him and encouraged brands to stop spending on Twitter.

At the same time, the billionaire was embroiled in a fight over his plan to charge Twitter users $8 a month for Twitter Blue, a subscription service. Public figures whose identities were verified by the company, such as celebrities, politicians and journalists, were not ticked as a way to protect against impersonation.

Critics have complained about Musk’s plan to monetize Checkmark, saying it could spread misinformation and fraud on the platform. As a protest, some Twitter accounts that were ticked changed their display names and photos over the weekend to match Mr. Musk’s account.

On Sunday, Mr. Musk announced: permanent suspension All accounts that “engage in impersonation without explicitly specifying ‘parody’.” Criticized Twitter When It Was Permanently Banned The user then banned Mr. Griffin for impersonating him on the service.

Daphne Keller, director of the platform regulation program at Stanford University’s Cyber ​​Policy Center, calls herself a “free speech absolutist.” Musk is a content moderator for popular social networks. He said he was learning the basic expectations of

“His thoughts were inconsistent for a while,” she said.

On Sunday night, Mr. Musk reacted to the tweet featuring quotes from white supremacista feature that allows community members to add context to potentially misleading tweets before deleting the post and arguing with Dorsey over Birdwatch. I suggested changing it to “Community Notes”.

“Community Notes is the most boring Facebook name ever,” said Dorsey, who owns a $1 billion stake in Musk’s Twitter.

Then on Monday, Musk suggested he might go after civil society groups and activists pushing for a boycott of Twitter advertisers when he responded to right-wing commentators:we do” There are grounds for legal action. Legal experts said holding boycotts for social and political purposes is protected under the First Amendment.

Musk also tweeted that he should vote Republican in Tuesday’s midterm elections. “Sharing power curbs the worst excesses of both parties. Therefore, given that the presidency is Democrat, I recommend voting for the Republican Congress,” he tweeted. He later posted that he was an independent with “totally Democratic voting history up until this year.”

He quickly moved on. Musk’s attention turned to his Twitter rival, Mastodon, which has gained momentum over the past 10 days. Using the Mastodon name, he made some vulgar jokes about masturbation, but deleted the posts an hour later.

Tiffany Shoe contributed to the report.