Twitter was recently purchased by Elon Musk on October, 27, 2022. This deal started when he began buying shares of the social media platform in January 2022 and quickly became the company’s largest shareholder by April. Musk invested some of his own Tesla stock, causing him to go into debt and ultimately this could lead to numerous economic problems.
Musk stated that he would “loosen rules against spreading misinformation, [and] allow former President Donald Trump back on Twitter,” he continues saying he wants to “shake up the company’s business model and find new revenue sources,” reported by NPR.org. This will cause false information, propaganda, and hate speech to spread at a faster rate than ever before.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” Musk says in his final deal announcement. He has repeatedly said his skepticism towards the rules and regulations Twitter has and voiced his plans to make it less strict.
“Bot Sentinel [has] analyzed 3.1 million accounts on Twitter and ‘believes that around877,000 accounts were deactivated,'” meaning there was a “208% increase in lost accounts” MIT reports. This is in addition to some remaining users attempting to break Twitters restrictions, such as tweeting hate speech.
Within the first week of Musk’s leadership, it was reported by MIT that he already “fired Twitter’s previous board of executives and legal time, followed by a plan for monthly payments for users to stay verified,” this means that anyone can now purchase a ‘verification check mark’ and appear to be a credible source. This is also an ethical problem, for it violates the California labor laws, that state “employers with more than 100 employees to provide 60 days of notice before any mass layoff.”
Students here at SUNY Cortland are most likely on some sort of social media, specifically in the age range of being part of the first digital natives, generation-z. Asking some students about their thoughts on the take over of Twitter, it is interesting to see the difference between fellow students viewpoints.
“I understand Musk was able to buy Twitter but what he is now doing with the platform, like giving certain people a voice that should not have a voice is going to much more harm than good,” Jack Kelly, a sophomore here at SUNY Cortland.
“I feel like could lead to a much bigger problem down the road,” junior Jennifer Dwyer says, “it may not affect people right now but as Twitter gains momentum and is run by Elon Musk with his lack of care for disinformation, it will only cause a snowball affect.”
Ultimately this is not good for Twitter at all, as more people are leaving the site it will soon become a right-winged, unilateral platform. Filled with conservative government employees, celebrities, and featuring information only in favor of one side. It is important that those who are still on the site be aware of it’s ownership and the dangerous affects of how impactful the newly implemented rules could be.