There have been so many reports of changes at Twitter since Musk officially took control of the company last week that nobody could be blamed for feeling confused or out-of-touch with what’s going on at the social media giant.
On Wednesday, Fox Business put together a list of what it called the “top five moves the world’s richest man” has either accomplished or at least announced his intention to accomplish in the near future, which should help anyone curious about the current situation at Twitter feel more up-to-date.
On Thursday, immediately after taking the reins, Musk fired a number of high-level executives from Twitter. Those included Parag Agrawal and Ned Segal, the CEO and CFO, respectively.
Musk also fired general counsel Sean Edgett and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top legal and policy executives.
Gadde played a key role in getting Trump banned from Twitter in 2021, even though at the time he was the sitting president of the United States.
She was also instrumental in censoring news stories about Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings in China and Ukraine in the weeks before his father, Joe Biden, faced Trump in the 2020 election.
At noon San Francisco time Thursday, to make sure that nothing about Twitter’s product changed prior to the final closing of the sale, the company’s software engineers were denied access to change Twitter’s proprietary code.
Twitter enacted the same lock-out in April when the sale was first announced.
Musk also brought Tesla engineers in to review that code and recommend possible changes.
Tweets published Sunday night by the Tesla and SpaceX founder appeared to indicate that Musk was showing interest in potentially competing against TikTok, the controversial short-form video content network that has skyrocketed in popularity over the past two years.
The first clue was a tweet on the subject, in which Musk posted a Twitter poll asking his 112 million followers a simple question: “Bring back Vine?”
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Vine, a video-sharing app that appeared before TikTok, was purchased by Twitter in 2012 but eventually discontinued, as CNBC reported Monday. That means it’s now Musk’s to revive if he so chooses.
Musk, shortly after the Vine poll tweet, asked his followers what could make Vine a better app than TikTok, igniting rumors that Musk might have another business opportunity on the horizon in the social media space.
On Monday, it was announced that Musk had dissolved Twitter’s board of directors.
The paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding his purchase of Twitter enabled Musk to dissolve Twitter’s board, giving him the ultimate power to hire, fire and chart Twitter’s new path forward into what Musk has promised would become a true free speech platform.
Musk later tweeted that the move was “just temporary.”
Finally, two announcements this week seemed to indicate some of Musk’s thinking about the future direction of Twitter, as he announced plans to revamp the platform’s content moderation and user verification processes.
Twitter’s content moderation council will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022
And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Reaction to all of these changes and proposals has, of course, been mixed. During this same week-long period, a number of well-known Twitter users have deleted their accounts, or at least threatened to do so.
Musk certainly isn’t finished yet, and more changes at Twitter are expected in the coming days and weeks.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
