Elon Musk Takes Over Twitter, and Two Terrible Weeks Ensue

We can not ignore the fact that the real-life equivalent of the house-on-fire is Musk's acquisition of Twitter. It feels like we are all watching a horrible, once-in-a-lifetime spectacle when we see a train wreck in real time. The Musk man has outdone himself this time, from firing key executives that were probably keeping the platform afloat, to mangling the blue check mark, to scaring advertisers and alienating hordes of users. Here are some of the highlights from the last two weeks, since Elon sealed the deal on hisTwitter acquisition and began burning the global tech platform to the ground.

This slideshow has scenes of stupidity.

The warrior from the billionaire clan is a lover of dogs and builds cars. One day, after cresting an internet hillock, he spied, in yonder vale, an acquisition worthy of the name Kingdom Twit of Bird-land. He charged down and staked a claim. What did the conqueror do first? His enemies should be laid low. There was no forgiveness. Parag, it's time to say goodbye. Segal, goodbye. Both Edgett and Gadde. Here comes the conqueror, brilliant mind, and strong with ideas and money, to bring a new era of prosperousness.

I just spent the GDP of a small nation on a major tech platform that also happens to be a global cesspool for misinformation and propaganda. I have said that I will clean this place up when I take over. What is the best way to do that? You say that the parody accounts should be banned. The accounts that everybody knows are fake and therefore don't pose any kind of threat to anyone. That is intriguing. Is it possible that this is both ineffectual and counter-productive to our goals? Do you think it's not? Okay. Let's do it Right now, let's do it. This is a spoof.

A: According to the New CEO Handbook, if you have just spent a lot of money on a bad deal to buy a big company, how do you recover?

Someone said to fire everyone.

The New CEO Handbook isn't a real book, but I think it's possible that he's read something similar. Initially, it was reported that Musk wanted to lay off as much as 75 percent of the workforce. About half of the workforce, or 3,700 employees, will be fired by Musk. Layoffs were worse in other countries. Musk fired as many as 90 percent of the company's workforce in India. You need to cut corners when you're in debt.

After realizing that he might actually need one or two employees to run one of the largest companies in the world, Musk decided to beg a few of the people he had fired to stay. They responded? Some people were willing but other people were not.

There is a better, less toxic social media alternative that people could have used all the time. Mass defections from the bird app to Mastodon show that the Fediverse favorite is growing its user base. The platform is thought to have around 3 million users, though the active number of regular users on Mastodon recently hit one million.

The assassination of the blue check mark by Musk is probably the strangest disaster so far. Last week, Elon kneecapping the platform's current verification system, started things off. He said that the blue check mark would cost $20 per month. He dropped the price to $8 after a lot of backlash, but it's still a batshit rate for something that was free a month ago. Overwhelmed and redundant verification systems have only continued to confuse users since then. The pay-to-verify method resulted in a lot of fake verified accounts for public figures. Imposters created fake verified accounts for people like George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and Joe Biden.

Mark was surrounded by angry software engineers and millions of confused platform users when he died. It's sad that a product feature is so young. Gray Check Mark was supposed to be a free verification method for government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, and major media outlets. Check Mark was born several hours before it died, and he was eager to help with the verification effort. It will be remembered for being redundant, having an odd pallor, and being optimistic in the face of a completely incoherent product strategy. Oh, but! It seemed to come back late Thursday night for whom and how long.