Twitter under Elon Musk
Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022; Musk acted as CEO of Twitter until June 2023 when he was succeeded by Linda Yaccarino.[1][2] Twitter was rebranded to X on July 23, 2023,[3] and its domain name changed from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024.[4] Yaccarino resigned on July 9, 2025.[5] Now operating as X, the platform closely resembles its predecessor but includes additional features such as long-form texts,[6] account monetization options,[7] audio-video calls,[8] integration with xAI's Grok chatbot,[9] job search,[10] and a repurposing of the platform's verification system as a subscription premium.[11] Several legacy Twitter features were removed from the site after Musk acquired Twitter, including Circles,[12] NFT profile pictures,[13] and the experimental pronouns in profiles feature.[14] Musk aims to transform X into an "everything app", akin to WeChat.[15] X has faced significant controversy post-rebranding. Issues such as the release of the Twitter Files, suspension of ten journalists' accounts, and labeling media outlets as "state-affiliated" and restricting their visibility have sparked criticism.[16][17] Despite Musk stepping down as CEO, X continues to struggle with challenges such as viral misinformation,[18] hate speech, and antisemitism.[19][20] In response to allegations it deemed unfair, X Corp. has pursued legal action against nonprofit organizations Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.[16][21] HistoryAcquisition of TwitterElon Musk initiated the acquisition of Twitter, Inc. on April 14, 2022, and completed it on October 28, 2022.[23][24] His goal was to transform Twitter into X, an all-encompassing app inspired by WeChat.[25] By April, Musk had become Twitter's largest shareholder with a 9.2 percent stake and made an unsolicited $44 billion offer on April 14, which Twitter's board initially resisted before accepting on April 25.[26][27] In July, Musk attempted to terminate the deal, citing Twitter's failure to address spam bot accounts.[28] Twitter sued him, with a trial set for mid-October.[29] Musk then reversed his decision and completed the acquisition on October 28.[30] He became the new owner and CEO, took Twitter private, merged it into X Corp., and fired several top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal.[31] Following Twitter's change in ownership, Musk renamed several features to remove references to bird-oriented terminology, including renaming "Birdwatch" to "Community Notes".[32][33] In October, Musk ordered Twitter employees to revamp multiple aspects of the program within one week, enlisting employees from his other companies, including Tesla, the Boring Company, and Neuralink,[34] as well as investors Jason Calacanis and Sriram Krishnan.[35] To meet these deadlines, many staff members were told to work longer hours.[36] Musk is not the sole owner of X Corp.; it is wholly owned by X Holdings Corp. (XHC) and based on a court filing by X Corp. and XHC. Investors in XHC include entities linked to Bill Ackman, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, and Sean Combs.[37] The court filing also reflects that over 20 Fidelity-associated funds, trusts and pools are investors in XHC.[37] Post-acquisitionOn July 23, 2023, Musk announced the rebranding of Twitter to X, which started when the X.com domain (formerly associated with PayPal) began redirecting to Twitter;[3] the logo was changed from the bird to the X the next day,[38] and the platform's official main and associated accounts also began using the letter X within their handles.[39] The @x handle was originally owned by photographer Gene X Hwang, who registered it in 2007. Hwang had expressed willingness to sell the handle, but received an email stating that the company was taking it, and was not offered financial benefits.[40] The Android app's name and icon were changed to X on Google Play by July 27; the same change went live on the App Store on July 31 after Apple granted an exception to its minimum character length of 2.[41] Around that time, some more elements of the Twitter branding were removed from the web version, including tweets being renamed to "posts".[42] The rebrand was described as unusual, given that Twitter's brand was already strong internationally, with words like "tweet" having entered common language.[43] The rebranding was criticized on the basis that the trademarkability of the name and logo is weak: there are almost 900 companies in the U.S. that own an X trademark,[44] including an existing social media-related logo owned by Meta Platforms.[45] The X logo uses a blackboard bold X, a character that has appeared in mathematical textbooks since the 1970s and that is included in Unicode as U+1D54F 𝕏 MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X.[46][47] A few days after the rebrand took effect, an AP Stylebook update recommended that journalists refer to the platform as "X, formerly known as Twitter".[48] By September 2023, Ad Age, citing The Harris Poll, noted that the rebranding had not publicly caught on, with the majority of users still referring to X as "Twitter".[49] On May 17, 2024, Musk announced that the URL was officially changed from twitter.com to x.com,[4][50] with the domain transition being one of the more awkward aspects of Musk's rebranding the company.[51] Social media sites including Twitter came under questioning for their handing of disinformation related to the 2024 United Kingdom riots.[52][53] Musk criticised UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer amid the riots, saying "Shouldn't you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?".[54] Responding to a tweet with footage of the disorder that said the riots were due to the "effects of mass migration and open borders", Musk tweeted "Civil war is inevitable", and his comments were condemned by Starmer's official spokesman. Having previously restored Tommy Robinson's account, Musk interacted with him on the platform,[55][56][57][58] and went on to refer to Starmer as "two-tier Keir" and ask the protection of communities in Britain.[59][57] Musk also promoted a conspiracy theory that the UK government was planning to build detainments camps in the Falkland Islands to hold rioters.[58] The UK's Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle said that in practice dealing with large tech companies and their leaders can be more like negotiating with foreign states than normal businesses.[60] In December 2024, the X website was redesigned, giving it a more modern and simplified look alongside removing the last elements of the Twitter branding (such as blue colors).[61] Musk argued in February 2025 that X's Community Notes "is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media", and that he was taking steps to "fix" it.[62][63][64] The statement came after Community Notes contradicted Musk's claims on astronauts and legacy media, and also contradicted claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was unpopular among Ukrainians.[62][63] In 2025 the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had used the platform to solicit an influencer he had never met in person to have his child. Following their rejection of his offer he unfollowed their account and their impressions and revenue declined sharply.[65][66] Layoffs and mass resignations
On November 4, 2022, Musk and Twitter began laying off a substantial portion of the company's workforce and Twitter temporarily closed its offices,[69][70][71] with The New York Times estimating that roughly half of employees had been let go.[72][73] The night before the layoffs, five Twitter employees based in San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts, filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that mass layoffs would violate federal and California WARN Acts.[74][75] Musk explained that the layoffs were a cost-cutting measure and stated that the company had been losing over $4 million a day,[73][76] and criticized activist groups who had called on advertisers to cease doing business with the company. The Times described the layoffs as "haphazard",[73] Twitter's internal directory, Birdhouse, was taken offline and Twitter offices worldwide were closed for the weekend.[77] On November 6, Twitter asked some employees who had been laid off to return to the company.[78] Days after the layoffs, Twitter terminated a large number of its contractors,[79][80] and Musk fired a series of employees who criticized him publicly or within the company.[81] On November 16, Musk delivered an ultimatum to employees via email: commit to "extremely hardcore" work in order to realize Musk's vision of "Twitter 2.0", or leave.[82][83] In response, hundreds of Twitter employees resigned the next day, hours before the deadline to respond to Musk's email.[84][85] Business Insider reported that fewer than 2,000 employees remained at the company.[86] Musk and his advisers met with several employees to dissuade them from leaving the company,[87] while Twitter offices were once again closed until November 21.[88] Despite the closures, Musk summoned all Twitter software engineers to Twitter's headquarters on November 18, seeking greater insight into the platform's solution stack.[89] Additional layoffs occurred later that month,[90] and the company resumed hiring.[91] Musk continued laying off employees in February 2023,[92][93] promising substantial "performance-based stock awards" to employees who remained at the company.[94] In November 2022, Axios reported that Twitter had fired almost all of its communications team, leaving only one member.[96] From November 2022 to March 2023, Twitter's communications team was "effectively silent" and not responding to press inquiries, reported NPR. In March 2023, Musk personally announced a new Twitter policy, which brought Twitter in-line with Musk's other businesses which do not have press or communications departments.[97] During the April 2023 controversy, NPR confirmed that a press inquiry it sent to Twitter was responded to by Twitter with an emoji of feces.[98] In April 2023, Musk told the BBC that he had reduced staff from around 8,000 to under 1,500.[99] In June 2023, trust and safety chief Ella Irwin resigned,[100][101] hours after Musk undid a company moderation decision by unrestricting and reposting The Daily Wire's anti-trans documentary What Is a Woman?.[102] Resignation poll
On November 16, 2022, Musk stated that he planned to eventually appoint a new CEO to oversee Twitter,[105] shortly thereafter beginning the process of searching for his successor.[106] On December 18, amid growing public discontent surrounding the ElonJet and Mastodon controversies, Musk conducted an open-access Twitter poll asking whether he should resign from his position as Twitter CEO, claiming that he would "abide by the results".[107][108] The poll resolved to "yes" after 57.5 percent of 17.5 million users voted in favor of him stepping down.[109][110] After this result, Musk responded "interesting" to unfounded theories that the result of the resignation poll had been influenced by bots, agreeing with a user's suggestion to restrict future polls on policy changes to paid Twitter Blue subscribers.[111][112][113] On December 20, he announced he would step down as CEO as soon as his replacement was selected, but would continue to lead Twitter's software and server teams.[114] On April 11, 2023, he told the BBC that he had stepped down and appointed his dog as CEO.[115] On May 11, 2023, Musk announced he had found a person to succeed him in the CEO position;[116] the following day, he named Linda Yaccarino, former head of ad sales for NBCUniversal, to succeed him as CEO.[117] Corporate valueOne year after the Musk acquisition, company documents related to employee restricted stock grants showed the company had estimated its own valuation at about $19 billion, down about 55% from Musk's purchase price.[118][119] A lower estimate was reported in October 2023 from Fidelity at about the same time, estimating the company to be down 65% from its purchase price.[120] Fidelity estimated in October 2024 that the company's value was down 79% from Musk's original purchase price, 24% lower than what Fidelity had estimated two months earlier.[121] In February 2025, Musk was reportedly in talks for a new round of financing at a $44 billion valuation, thus returning to the valuation at the time of purchase.[122] FinesIn August 2023, X was fined US$350,000 for failing to meet two deadlines to comply with a U.S. Department of Justice search warrant for the account of former president Donald Trump.[123][124] In October 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear X's appeal.[125] In October 2023, X was fined AU$610,500 by Australia's e-Safety Commission for failing to properly disclose information about how it polices child abuse content.[126][127] As of 2023[update] other fines were being considered.[128][129] Appearance and featuresPostsPosts are publicly visible by default, but senders can restrict message delivery to only their followers. Users can mute users they do not wish to interact with, block accounts from viewing their posts, and remove accounts from their followers list.[130][131][132] Users can post via the X website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries.[133] Users may subscribe to other users' posts—this is known as "following" and subscribers are known as "followers".[134] Individual posts can be forwarded by other users to their own feed, a process known as a "repost". Users can also "quote",[135] a feature that allows users to add a comment to their post, imbedding one post in the other.[136] Users can also "like" individual posts.[137] Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a " X HiringX offers a job search feature named X Hiring, where users can search jobs by keyword or location, and they may filter the results by location type, seniority, employment type and company.[10][144] Users can also get personalized job recommendations on their timeline.[145] GrokGrok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, and integrated inside X. It has direct access to X data, and is available for Premium and Premium+ subscribers.[9] Grok is also used to power the Stories feature, which summarizes posts on X associated with each trending story. Stories are visible under the For You tab of the Explore section.[146] X PremiumX offers three tiers of paid subscription for individual users, namely X Premium, which provides additional functionality compared to the free tier. The three tiers are Basic, Premium, and Premium+.[147][148] Additionally, X offers a paid subscription for businesses, non-profits, and governments called Verified Organization, which provides additional functionality beyond the Premium+ tier.[149]
This is the entry-level subscription tier for the social media platform X. Priced at $3 per month or $32 per year, it offers several enhancements over the free version, aimed at improving user experience. Basic tier allows users to edit posts within 30 minutes of posting and retract a post shortly after sending it, before it is widely seen. It enables users to write posts up to 25,000 characters, bypassing the 280-character limit, and to upload videos up to three hours long and 8 GB in size on the X website and iOS app. Users can also download videos posted on X, play videos in the background while using other features, and apply bold or italic formatting to text in posts. Additionally, Basic tier provides organizational tools such as bookmark folders, access to the most shared articles from followed accounts, and a reader mode for simplified reading of long conversation threads. Subscribers can also customize the X app icon on their mobile devices, create communities based on shared interests, and enjoy prioritized replies over non-subscribers.[150][151]
This is the mid-tier subscription, costing $8 per month or $84 per year. It includes all Basic tier features plus additional benefits aimed at enhanced user engagement and monetization. Premium subscribers can earn a share of ad revenue based on the engagement their posts receive and set up creator subscriptions to receive monthly payments from top followers, sharing revenue generated by X. They also gain access to Media Studio for managing and measuring content performance, X Pro for managing multiple timelines and accounts from a single interface and Grok,[152] an AI-powered chatbot for information and inquiries. Premium subscribers see half the ads compared to Basic subscribers and non-subscribers and receive a verification checkmark next to their name, with the option to hide it. Replies from Premium subscribers are prioritized higher than those from Basic subscribers.[153][151]
This is the top-tier subscription, priced at $22 per month or $229 per year. It includes all features from Basic and Premium tiers, along with exclusive benefits. Premium+ subscribers have no advertisements on the site. They can directly post articles with formatting, and their replies receive the highest prioritization over other tiers.[154][151]
It offers a premium subscription service for businesses, non-profits and governments with two plans: Basic and Full Access. The Basic plan, available for $200 per month or $2,000 per year, includes a gold checkmark, priority support, X Premium+ features, and a limited-time advertising credit of $2,500 per year or $200 per month. The Full Access plan, priced at $1,000 per month or $10,000 per year, includes all the Basic plan features plus increased reach, affiliations, and a limited-time advertising credit of $12,000 per year or $1,000 per month.[155][156] X Money AccountIn January 2025, X announced plans to introduce an "X Money Account" feature later in the year.[157] The feature which would function as a digital wallet allowing real-time payments on the social media platform and moving funds to and from traditional bank accounts.[158] Visa was announced as partnering with X on the project and, at least initially, cryptocurrencies would not be supported.[159] Content moderation
October 28, 2022[160] Initial reformsOn October 28, 2022, Musk announced that a "content moderation council" with diversified viewpoints would be established to inform the platform's "content policy", and declared a moratorium in "major content decisions or account reinstatements" until then.[161] The council was never formed; Musk claimed that it had been part of a deal made with activists who had failed to honor it.[162] He also signaled an intention to do away with lifetime account suspensions and unban those suspended for "minor [or] dubious reasons".[163][164][165] Musk later stated that he would not alter Twitter's content policies or restore banned accounts until after the midterm elections.[166][167] In June 2023, Musk defended the approach to content moderation as "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach", but went against his own policies, restricting the use of the terms "cis" and "cisgender" arguing that they are slurs,[168] and describing the platform as having liberal bias.[169] In September 2023, X subsequently scrapped the feature for users to report misleading posts, instead relying exclusively on Community Notes to combat misinformation on the platform.[170] Handling of misinformation and disinformationIn November 2022, X announced it would no longer enforce its policy prohibiting COVID-19 misinformation.[171] Algorithm changes promoted viral disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and led to significant gains in followers for media outlets affiliated with Russia, China and Iran.[172][173] Twitter, like Meta, Twitch, and Alphabet, laid off a significant portion of its content moderators in 2023.[174] As of September 2023, Twitter relied exclusively on its Community Notes program to combat misinformation,[170] leading to failures in labeling misinformation.[175][176][177] The program has become responsible for spreading misinformation[178][179][180] as well as delays in fact-checking.[181] A European Commission study found that disinformation was most prevalent and received the highest relative engagement on Twitter, compared to other major social networks,[182][183] leading to warnings of a potential ban or fines by the EU for non-compliance with the Digital Services Act.[184][185] In October 2023, media outlets and experts observed significant disinformation related to the war in Gaza.[186][182][187] A BBC journalist described a "deluge" of false information, including by "blue tick" accounts,[186] and CNBC found that while some videos were flagged as "misleading or false", identical re-posts remained unflagged. Despite Hamas being banned on Twitter as a terrorist organization, some of its propaganda videos have circulated on the platform.[182] An analysis from NewsGuard found that Verified users, described as "superspreaders of misinformation", produced 74% of the most viral misinformation related to the Gaza war during the first week of the conflict. The study analyzed 250 of the most-engaged posts on Twitter, based on the most popular false or unsubstantiated claims, that had received over 100 million views and one million engagements from users.[175][176][177] On December 18, 2023, the European Union announced it would be taking action against Twitter over the spread of disinformation.[188][189][190][191] In August 2024, several Labour MPs in the United Kingdom reduced their use of Twitter or left the platform due to concerns about misinformation and hate speech under Musk's ownership. Some explored alternatives like Threads and Bluesky, while the British government continued to use X, focusing on implementing stronger online safety regulations.[192] Increase in hate speechFollowing Musk's acquisition of Twitter, multiple organizations reported a rise in hate speech on the platform, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the Anti-Defamation League, and a research group at Tufts University.[193][194] The CCDH report found that anti-Black slurs appeared on Twitter at nearly three times the rate they had prior to the acquisition and that homophobic and transphobic slurs had risen by 52% and 62% respectively.[193][195] Academics and researchers studied the spread of hate speech on Twitter primarily by accessing the Twitter API, which was shut down in February 2023. According to a Reuters survey, this removal led to the modification or cancellation of more than 100 ongoing studies.[196] According to the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), from June 2022 to February 2023, the number of anti-semitic tweets doubled on the platform, with removal of such content also increasing, while the number of Islamic State accounts had also increased by 70%.[197] A further showed that in the period up to June 2023, the weekly rate of hate speech was approximately 50% higher than when Musk took over, and the number of likes received by hate posts had doubled.[198] In March, a study from the BBC found a third of the 1,100 reinstated accounts appeared to have violated Twitter guidelines.[197] Twitter insiders told BBC Panorama they were struggling to protect users from trolling and harassment, including misogynistic online hate, and the targeting of rape survivors.[199] From a study of over 1 million tweets since 2022, the CCDH reported that posts associating LGBT people with "grooming" increased by 119 percent since October 2022, with advertising also appearing alongside what many deemed anti-LGBT rhetoric. The study featured five high-profile accounts including Libs of TikTok, Christopher Rufo, Tim Pool, and James Lindsay.[200][201][202] Media monitoring group GLAAD described Twitter as "the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ people" with X ranking lowest on its Social Media Safety Index.[203][204][205] In November 2023, the CCDH released a new report claiming 98% of misinformation, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other hate speech, in relation to the Gaza war, remained on X after 7 days of reporting, generating over 24 million views. X responded by detailing the removal of 3,000 accounts and taking action against 325,000 pieces of content, such as restricting the reach of a post.[206][207][208] On November 24, the European Union halted advertisements on X referring to an "alarming increase" in hate speech and misinformation. A spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed that X is affected by the EU rules, and has advised European institutions to abstain from advertising on the platform.[209] Following the Dublin riots in Ireland on November 23, X faced criticism for allowing "vile messages" on the platform, described as hate speech, while other social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, complied with Garda requests for taking down content.[210][211] After Prime Minister Leo Varadkar called for incitement to hatred legislation to be updated, Musk responded by stating "the Irish PM hates the Irish people".[212][213] Child sexual abuse materialIn August 2023, it was reported that child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on Twitter was still an issue, despite statements by Musk that removing it was a top priority.[214][215] As of June 2023, an investigation by the Stanford Internet Observatory at Stanford University reported "a lapse in basic enforcement" against CSAM by Twitter within "recent months".[216][217] The number of staff on Twitter's trust and safety teams were reduced, for example, leaving one full-time staffer to handle all child sexual abuse material in the Asia-Pacific region in November 2022.[218][219][220] A 2023 investigation by BBC Panorama found concerns that child sexual abuse was rising, following the layoffs and changes at Twitter since Musk's takeover.[199] According to the Australian Financial Review, the Australian government's eSafety Commission reported in March 2023 that, since Musk's acquisition of the platform, "the proactive detection of child sexual exploitation material [on Twitter] fell from 90 per cent to 75 per cent."[221] In 2024, the company unsuccessfully attempted to avoid the imposition of fines in Australia regarding the government's inquiries about child safety enforcement; X Corp reportedly said they had no obligation to respond to the inquiries since they were addressed to "Twitter Inc", which X Corp argued had "ceased to exist".[221][222] Elon Musk was criticized in July 2023 for intervening to unban political influencer "Dom Lucre".[223][219] Lucre had, according to Forbes, "posted a screenshot of a video depicting child sexual abuse on July 22 reportedly connected to Peter Scully, an Australian man sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing children as young as 18 months, whose video was reportedly created on the dark web."[223] The Washington Post reported that the Twitter post by Lucre was viewed 3 million times, and was "an image of a toddler being tortured."[219] Musk stated the platform would "delete those posts and reinstate the account."[223] In June 2025, NBC reported about the status of child protection on Twitter under Elon Musk as of that date. The report stated: "Many aspects of the child exploitation ads issue, which NBC News first reported on in January 2023, remain the same on the platform. Sellers of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) continue to use hashtags based on sexual keywords to advertise to people looking to buy CSAM."[224] Lloyd Richardson, of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said the platform's response "has been woefully insufficient".[224] The child protection organization Thorn stated: "We recently terminated our contract with X due to nonpayment. And that was after months and months of outreach, flexibility, trying to make it work. And ultimately we had to stop the contract."[224] Malicious and fake accountsIn March 2024, The Intelligencer reported on the proliferation of spam posts containing the phrase "░P░U░S░S░Y░I░N░B░I░O░", or similar references to pornographic content appearing in the poster's bio, apparently formatted so as to evade counter-spam measures.[225] The commonality of "pussy in bio" or "PIB" spam made it fodder for internet memes, including one posted by Elon Musk himself.[225] The Intelligencer further noted that most of the accounts that posted this spam were short-lived throwaway accounts, and that links provided by the accounts typically routed users through several layers of redirecting websites, ultimately landing on a provider of simulated sex chats.[225] Musk made several statements about his intention to disable such bots on X, but eventually conceded that "Fighting bot and troll farms is hard", because of their tactics evolve alongside those of platforms trying to stop them.[225] Policy changes
November 18, 2022[226] In December 2022, Twitter dissolved the Trust and Safety Council responsible for Twitter's policies on hate speech, child sexual exploitation, and self-harm content.[227] This occurred while evidence showed an increase in hate speech following Musk's acquisition.[228] The new head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, announced that Twitter had moved towards more automation to moderate content, in order to restrict diffusion,[229] later described by Musk as "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach".[168] Twitter adopted an updated zero-tolerance policy on "violent speech" on February 28, 2023, described by The Verge as both "more specific and more vague" than the prior version.[230][231] As of April 2023 there was no evidence of policy changes that had decreased the overall number of bots, although there was some evidence that spambots had decreased slightly.[228] Account suspensions and reinstatementsWithin hours of the takeover in October 2022, the far-right Britain First account, previously banned in 2017, was reinstated.[232][233] Account bans continued to be lifted in late November 2022, beginning with Jordan Peterson, Kathy Griffin, The Babylon Bee, and Donald Trump.[234][235] Multiple accounts were suspended, many of which had been named by far-right figures who urged Musk to take action. Among those banned include a group that provided security to LGBTQ+ events, and several accounts parodying Musk.[236][237] Twitter has also suspended the accounts of Musk/Tesla critic Aaron Greenspan and his legal transparency company PlainSite,[238] and several journalists and left-leaning accounts, including Ken Klippenstein.[239] In November, Twitter analytics firm Bot Sentinel calculated that around 877,000 accounts were deactivated and 497,000 were suspended between October 28 and November 1, over double the usual number.[240][241] In December, neo-Nazi and founder of The Daily Stormer Andrew Anglin was reinstated,[242] within 24 hours of Kanye West's suspension after posting an antisemitic tweet.[243] with his account later restored in July 2023.[244][245] In August 2024, Alexandre de Moraes a Brazilian Supreme Court judge, cautioned that X might face suspension if Musk did not appoint a new legal representative for Brazil within 24 hours, in relation to issues over the reinstatement of Brazilian accounts that had been suspended under a court order. Musk had earlier paused X's business operations in the country and criticized Judge Alexandre de Moraes for his efforts against disinformation. The with platform suspended in late August temporarily,[246] the platform blocked the accounts as requested in October.[247] ElonJet and journalists suspended
December 15, 2022[248] On December 14, Musk suspended ElonJet, a Twitter bot account operated by Jack Sweeney which tracked Musk's private jet in real-time using publicly accessible data, in addition to several of Sweeney's other accounts. He had previously stated, "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk." Defending his decision to suspend the accounts, Musk declared a ban on doxxing real-time location data, and Twitter followed suit by updating its policies page.[249][250] The next day, Twitter banned the accounts of multiple journalists who had been covering the ElonJet incident,[251][252][253] as well as the Mastodon account on Twitter,[254][255] on the grounds that they had violated the new doxing policy.[256] Some of the suspended journalists joined a Twitter Spaces mass audio call with Musk, where Musk was asked about their suspensions; Musk quit the call, and the call was abruptly ended before the entire Twitter Spaces service was temporarily taken down. Musk attributed the shutdown to a software bug, while a Twitter senior software engineer said that Spaces had been "taken offline".[257][258][259] Most suspended journalists were later reinstated, but found themselves unable to post new tweets until their policy-violating tweets had been taken down.[260][261] State-affiliated media labelingIn April 2023, Twitter designated National Public Radio's main account as "US state-affiliated media", a label that was typically reserved for foreign media outlets that directly represented the point of view of their respective governments, like Russia's RT and China's Xinhua.[262] Twitter's decision was controversial; though established by an act of Congress, NPR is an independent news organization that only receives a fraction of its funding through government programs. Twitter's previous policy had explicitly mentioned NPR, as well as the United Kingdom's BBC, as examples of networks that were not considered state-affiliated due to their editorial independence.[263][264] NPR ceased activity on its main Twitter account in response to the designation.[265] As of October 2023, NPR still no longer uses Twitter, with the media outlet describing the effects on traffic as negligible.[266][267][268]  On April 8, 2023, Twitter changed the designation of NPR's account from "state-affiliated" to "government-funded".[269] On April 10, after managing to get in contact with Musk himself, NPR reporter Bobby Allyn tweeted that Musk said he was relying on a list accessible through a Wikipedia category page, named "Category:Publicly funded broadcasters", to determine which news organizations' accounts should be deemed as "government-funded media".[270][271] Twitter then added the label to other sources such as PBS, the BBC, and Voice of America, which all three objected to.[272][273] On April 12, NPR announced that its accounts would no longer be active on Twitter,[270][274][275] citing the platform's "inaccurate and misleading" labeling of NPR as "government-funded media" despite the fact that it receives "less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget" from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.[270][274][276] As their last post on the platform, the network shared links to their alternative newsletters, websites and social media profiles.[274][277] In an email to the staff explaining the decision, CEO John Lansing allowed individual NPR journalists and staffers to choose for themselves whether to keep using Twitter, while noting that remaining on the site "would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here".[270][275] On April 17, Canadian public broadcaster CBC was designated as "government-funded media" by Twitter, in response to a letter from Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre. On April 18, the label was changed to "70% government-funded media", referring to outdated data from the CBC's 2020–2021 report; shortly afterwards, Musk tweaked the percentage in the label to "69%". Musk tweeted "Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they're 'less than 70% government-funded', so we corrected the label".[278][279][280] In response, CBC announced they would pause Twitter activity.[279][281] Four days later, Twitter stopped labeling state-affiliated media entirely, with neither Western publicly funded outlets such as NPR, BBC and CBC, nor China's Xinhua and Russia's RT, displaying the label on their accounts.[282][283] Hateful conduct and language regarding transgender people
June 21, 2023[284] After previously indicating his intention to review Twitter's policy against "misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals",[285] Musk relaxed the platform's hate speech policies in November 2022, with Gizmodo describing the policy protecting transgender people as "effectively dead".[286] While previously tweets would be removed, Twitter announced it would instead place warning labels on tweets that are "potentially" in violation of its hateful conduct policy in April 2023.[287][288][289] In June, on the first day of Pride Month, Musk confirmed that a policy against misgendering wouldn't be enforced, and that in his opinion "Whether or not you agree with using someone's preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws".[290] He also promoted the film What Is a Woman? by The Daily Wire, after a Twitter review determined the content promoted hateful conduct, and was therefore in violation of abuse and harassment policies. Musk claimed the objection to the film was "a mistake", but that it wouldn't be promoted across the platform. After a pressure campaign from users, the restrictions were reduced to simply not being placed next to advertising.[291] Shortly after, Musk declared that the words "cis" and "cisgender" are considered slurs on Twitter, within the context of repeated and targeted harassment.[292][293][294] In October, the ability to report allegations of transphobic abuse had been scrapped.[295][296] In November, PragerU would buy a "timeline takeover" advertising spot, which forces an advertisement and accompanying hashtag to be seen by most Twitter users regardless of demographics or preferences for 24 hours, to promote their short film Detrans: The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care; the "timeline takeover" spot was part of PragerU's estimated $1 million marketing budget for the short film.[297][298] The Nation describes "anti-trans hatred" as one of Twitter's "core features".[299] Aggressive monetization of accessIn January 2023, Twitter abruptly cut off many third-party Twitter clients from the site's application programming interface (API),[300][301] and had retroactively updated its developer agreement, barring developers from creating products similar to Twitter's own app.[302] In February, Twitter announced it would be removing the free tier of its API and replacing it with a "basic paid tier".[303] while excluding "good content" bot accounts.[304]
July 1, 2023[305] In July 2023, Twitter temporarily blocked unregistered users from viewing tweets or profiles.[306] The following day further measures were implemented with temporary limits to the number of tweets a user could see per day, with different limits for verified and unverified users, as well as newly created users,[307] and thousands of users reported Twitter issues to the website Downdetector.[308] Soon after, the limit was increased again.[308][307] Twitter also limited the number of direct messages (DMs) that unverified users could send per day.[309]
In October 2023, X began charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines an annual fee of $1 in order to use basic features such as posting, replying and quoting tweets, as part of a pilot program.[312]
Apr 15, 2024[313] In January 2024 Nitter privacy-friendly alternative frontend had to be declared as "dead" by the project leader.[314] MiscellaneousIn August 2023, Musk proposed deleting the "Block" feature, with the exception of direct messaging,[311][315] instead replacing it with a stronger version of "Mute".[316] In response to backlash received from anti-bullying activists for removing the feature, chief executive Linda Yaccarino confirmed the changes,[317] with concern that if removed Twitter would violate the App Store and Google Play Store policies.[318] That same month, analysis from The Washington Post found that X was delaying links to external social media sites such as those owned by Meta Platforms, Substack, Bluesky, as well as Reuters and The New York Times, all companies that Musk has had grudges with. The Washington Post found that users were made to wait approximately five seconds before the links loaded. They also claimed that the New York Times had seen a drop in user traffic.[319] A few hours after the story was first published, X started reversing this delay.[319][320][321] Later that month, Fortune reported that Musk was planning to remove headlines and other text from news articles posted on Twitter,[322][323] with the change taking effect in October 2024 |
.jpg)
.jpg)
