2 weeks Ago By Yahoo News
It’s been two years since Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, bought the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion. The company, now called X, has seen thousands of employees laid off, issues with AI-generated content and misinformation run amok and an overwhelming number of design and function changes since Musk took over. After some with the company, Musk officially became the owner of Twitter as of Oct.
27, 2022. He immediately fired Twitter’s CEO, CFO, general counsel and the head of legal, trust and safety. Days later, he delisted the company from the New York Stock Exchange, which freed him from having to listen to boards and shareholders when making decisions.
“The bird is free,” he posted. Let’s take a look at how dramatically the platform has changed since Musk took over. November 2022 A week after starting, Musk announces there would be more major layoffs across the company.
that the first wave targeted teams primarily responsible for monitoring misinformation and prohibited content on the platform. A few weeks later, as many as 20 engineers were fired — some, allegedly, for about Musk. Twitter rolls out its so for a blue checkmark verification on their profiles.
This eliminated Twitter’s , which ensured high-profile accounts — celebrities, businesses and journalists — and used to spread misinformation. January 2023 Third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot from the platform. Tweetbot was a separate app that claimed to enhance the user’s Twitter experience, like showing feeds without ads or promoted content and allowing users to temporarily mute people, keywords or topics.
February 2023 Musk says Twitter is going to start charging $100 a month for developers to (API). Twitter’s API was previously free. Developers previously could use Twitter’s API to create third-party services and tools, like Tweetbot.
April 2023 Twitter officially its original blue checkmark verification system. Users who had been verified through the original process now lose their checkmark, unless they pay for Musk’s subscription service. May 2023 Twitter launches for images in posts, where users can flag if something is Photoshopped or AI-generated.
Musk appoints Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO. Twitter’s full-time employee count is around 1,000, down from 7,500 employees when Musk first took over. June 2023 Paid subscribers are now allowed to write 25,000-character long posts.
According to the New York Times, Twitter’s ad revenue is from April 2022 to May 2023. July 2023 Musk announces he is changing the name and getting rid of the iconic bird logo. August 2023 Musk says X will start keeping ad revenue from content creators who are not subscribed to the platform’s Twitter Blue, which Musk will later rename X Premium.
(At the time, to qualify for the program, creators need to be at least 18 years old, have a minimum of 500 followers and have at least 15 million “organic impressions” on posts within the last three months, .) X also announces it will on paid political ads. The platform in 2019 before Musk took over.
September 2023 The finds that X has the highest amount of Russian disinformation out of the most-used social media platforms. Similarweb, a traffic analysis and data aggregation company, that finds X’s global traffic is down 14% from September 2022. October 2023 X headlines on articles that are shared in X posts.
X also , which allowed users to post to a smaller, more exclusive audience. Ebiquity, a media investment analysis company, finding that a majority of X’s biggest-spending advertisers have stopped advertising since Musk took over. November 2023 X algorithm to highlight smaller accounts.
December 2023 Musk decides to reinstate Alex Jones and Infowars’ X accounts after Jones, a conspiracy theorist, and his media brand were in 2018 for posting abusive content. January 2024 Nonconsensual, deepfake garner millions of views before X takes them down. X several accounts belonging to journalists and podcasters who have been critical of Musk.
They were later reinstated. March 2024 X experiments with where creators can share adult content with specific users and fans. X also launches an .
Apil 2024 In an effort to curtail X’s growing bot problem, Musk for new X users to pay a small fee in order to enable posting. X also allows influential creators — who have more than 2,500 verified followers — on their profiles. May 2024 “Twitter.
com” now to the “X.com” domain. June 2024 — meaning users cannot see what posts people are liking on the platform.
Previously, on someone’s profile, there was a tab that allowed visitors to see what posts they were interacting with. X officially allows users to on the platform, as long as it is consensually produced and . This includes AI-generated content.
July 2024 X now offers the option to on posts they believe have questionable claims or misinformation. Previously, were responsible for finding posts that required Community Notes — with this new rule, if a certain number of users flag a post, the contributors will be notified. September 2024 X announces it will soon to block public accounts.
This means if someone has a public X account and is blocked by another user, their posts will still be visible. Previously, blocking someone would hide their profile and their posts. Users with iOS software can after sending them.
October 2024 X (to take effect on Nov. 15) so that AI can train using public posts. Before the update, X users had the option to opt out of sharing data for AI training.
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