We're watching a company implode, in real-time, because of self-detonation
Elon Musk fired half the company last Friday, then after the weekend reportedly asked some of the folks to come back.
They launched new "official account" labels on profiles to differentiate between the blue paid-for checkmarks, then suddenly scrapped them. Launched the $8 Twitter Blue plan on Wednesday, and now, two days later have already pulled it from the app. This came after basically all the worse-case scenarios came true: companies had accounts created with their logos and names, became verified, then began announcing things that weren't true. Fake accounts for politicans popped up, looked real because of the checkmark, then began tweeting crazy things. Like a fake George W Bush account that said he missed killing Iraquis, or a fake Donald Trump account that apologized to President Joe Biden. Jesus became verified.
Someone already made a Chrome extension to change the labels to indicate what are paid for, and actually verified accounts.
A swath of their executives have left - including those in privacy, policy and security. Oh, and they have a communications team of zero. They're losing $4 million a day. Elon sold an additional $4 billion of Tesla stock to pump into Twitter. Advertisers are bailing. They're being watched closely by the Federal Trade Commission. And Elon says bankruptcy may be in the future.
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