Musk is maybe starting to realize this the new new plan, according to the Verge, is to leave current verified accounts alone. That plan would strip Twitter verification of its traditional value as a marker of authenticity and legitimacy, which could make Twitter a less trusty place to get news or hear from public figures. He has said he plans to charge $8 a month in exchange for verified accounts with blue checkmarks and “priority” in how users’ tweets travel about the platform. Unfortunately, the thing Musk picked to start making money in other ways is a bad idea that will probably cut into his advertising business rather than operate independently of it. As he said during his real-time negotiation (or whatever) of Twitter subscription pricing with Stephen King, Twitter can’t rely exclusively on advertisers as it has more or less for its entire existence. Whether Twitter loses ad business or not, Musk has plans to try to make money in other ways. Musk seems to lack a fundamental knowledge of how advertising works, and maybe that makes sense Tesla has not historically done it. To this point: Feverish devotees of MyPillow have yet to bring Walmart to its knees. “We are going to stop eating Cocoa Puffs because General Mills paused an ad campaign on Twitter” is almost certainly too much even for the most internet-addicted, Musk-loving activist to sustain for more than five minutes. There are very few insincere boycott gestures that Twitter conservatives will not at least superficially entertain, but this may be the one. He has threatened a “thermonuclear name & shame” of companies that stop advertising on Twitter, which would be a great way to build lasting and productive relationships with those megacorporations. He apparently blocked one of the marketers who questioned him in the course of these meetings. Anyway, Musk believes this is the left’s fault. It isn’t clear whether the executive Musk fired was one of the people Twitter asked back to their jobs almost immediately after laying them off. Musk calls this “extremely messed up” and says it’s part of an effort to “destroy free speech in America” by left-wing activists who are pressuring his would-be ad buyers. As a result, some advertisers have stopped buying space on Twitter. He hasn’t yet announced sweeping changes to Twitter’s policies, but it doesn’t feel like a good moment to trust in Twitter’s ability to facilitate healthy conversations. Some content moderation is fine-for example, in response to Twitter accounts that impersonate Musk. In his week and a half of owning Twitter, Musk has laid off about half the company, including a comparatively light but still big 15 percent of people who worked on content moderation. Advertisers demand content moderation, which Musk had spent months signaling he wanted to roll back in the name of free expression. Advertising has recently accounted for about 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue, fluctuating a bit depending on the quarter. Not good! Musk made a lot of mistakes in this process, but a fundamental one was thinking he could both have cake (his status as a beloved protector of free speech for very online conservatives and heterodox types) and eat cake (maintaining Twitter’s critical advertising revenue stream while catering to his new internet friends). That did not work, and now this steaming pile of posts is his personal and financial responsibility. Then he changed his thinking, and he spent some time trying to nuke his own acquisition. Musk did not notice them or did not mind them for a while. Some things that were either not in Musk’s head or not deemed important enough to stop him: What would happen if the stock market went down and the premium Musk already agreed to pay became an even more serious overpayment? (It did.) What if it became clear that his dealings with Twitter would cause big headaches for shareholders in Tesla, the company whose shares make up most of his net worth? (They did.) What would happen if these things conspired to force Musk to find a way to turn profits at Twitter, a company he insisted he wasn’t buying for economic reasons and that has historically not made a lot of money, when it made any at all? (Yep, this too.) The other was that he could be a hero for “free speech,” at least in the portion of the conservative internet whose approval Musk, for whatever reason, seemed to crave. One was that it would be cool to own one of his favorite places, a posting machine that went brrrr whenever he typed some words into it and pressed a blue button. Two things appeared to be in Musk’s head. The whole thing seemed like an impulse buy, the way a regular person might order an expensive pair of shorts because they liked an Instagram ad, except in this case the shorts cost $44 billion. It was apparent from the very day Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, last April, that he had neglected to think a few things through.
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