Questions remain about Musk's business strategy, his approach to content moderation, and whether his remaining team can keep the server up and running during periods of increased demand.
We have learned a lot over the last few days.
It came down to a vote on the social networking site. The account of Donald Trump was restored into existence after 15 million votes were cast on a poll posted by Musk.
Musk said the people had spoken. Trump will be brought back to life. They call it vox populi. The god's voice is heard by the people.
There was a chance that the people's voice wasn't important enough to help Musk make his decision. He had announced the outcome before. The New York Times reported that he said at the time that the ban was a mistake and that Donald Trump didn't have a voice. It was morally wrong and stupid, Musk said.
It's possible that Trump would use the platform the same way he used it before.
On January 6th, 2021, I wrote about this issue in a different way. I wrote that banning Trump was necessary because he was using social networks to help overthrow the government. Platforms were smart to remove his account in a world where America's democracy was replaced by authoritarianism. Billions of other people had lost their accounts for small transgressions, and surely mounting a coup justified extraordinary intervention.
Trump has been weakened by the failure of so many candidates he endorsed to win office, as well as the legal challenges he faces related to the events of January 6th. His power appears to be on the decline as he has failed to drive the news cycle the way he used to.
He is the most powerful and popular person in the Republican party, and he is running for president again. He might use and misuse the platform the same way he did before.
Just because Trump's account was restored doesn't mean you'll find him there. He said in a speech on Saturday that he didn't see any reason to go back to the social networking site. He said thatTruth Social has been very strong and he will be staying there. He is contractually obliged to make his posts exclusive to Truth Social for at least six hours.
The most likely outcome is something Musk likes to say. Restoring Trump to the social media site feels like an outcome that would fit that description. He was the big dog on here for so long and now he is being asked to come back and play a supporting role in the drama.
Musk needs Trump more than Trump needs Musk on social media.
The process through which Musk restored his account deserves scrutiny.
Content moderation and community standards are not sustainable.
Musk said in October that he would use a special council to make major decisions. There will be no major decisions before the council convenes.
The account was restored based on the results of a survey. The issue of how that poll might have been susceptible to influence by bots is one that Musk has been outspoken about.
He began restoring the accounts of lesser offenders, including the comedian who had impersonated him, as well as the Babylon Bee.
Musk has drawn a line. He said he wouldn't allow Alex Jones to return to his account.
Musk said that his first child died in his arms. I knew he was dead. I have no pity for people who use the deaths of children for their own purposes.
It is a poignant story, and also the right call, as Jones has long since forsaken his right to the reach that social media can provide.
At the risk of stating the obvious, this kind of ad hoc approach to moderation is unsustainable. There are a few of the most prominent accounts on the service. Musk is leading trust and safety at the same way he is leading product and hiring at the same time.
On the other hand, this sort of CEO-led moderation isn't completely new, as Mark Zuckerberg has done more than his share of intervention in difficult questions of moderation over the years. Community standards, policy teams, and an oversight board are some of the sources of power that social networks have learned to give to other sources.
There was hope that Musk would follow in his footsteps and defer decisions to a council. In the end, his impulses were the only thing that mattered.
On Thursday, a week after Musk ended the remote work policy and ordered everyone back to the office, employees received another alarming email, this time that the offices were temporarily closed and badges were suspended.
The news came a day after Musk told employees to either sign a loyalty pledge or leave the company. Hundreds of employees made a choice.
One person was left in the core services group.
It was part of Musk's plan all along. Sources familiar with the matter told Platformer that he wanted to lay off more than 50% of the company. The email was a way to make the ranks thinner.
Musk and his team had expected the resignations to be smaller. The company had critical gaps in its engineeringorg by Thursday. We are told that the core services group went down to just one person.
Musk failed to read the room, which can be seen as part of the problem. Many people joined the company because they believed in the mission. The company has never offered better compensation than its competitors. It offered a chance to build a vital service for the exchange of news and information, elevating voices that previously had struggled to affect the public discussion.
The company is changing profoundly but employees don't know what it is. The new chief executive hasn't laid out a comprehensive vision forTwitter as a place to work, much less as a social network He told employees they should expect to work longer hours, but he didn't say much else.
After the resignations started to roll in, Musk and his team went into damage control, offering some people as much as $100,000 a year to stay, sources said.
The code reviews were short and not very technical.
Things got weird on Friday. Anyone who actually writes software should report to the 10th floor at 2pm today, according to Musk. Employees in remote areas were asked to go to San Francisco. The interviews will allow me to better understand the tech stack.
The employees were surprised. Didn't the offices just close? Roughly 250 people signed up to meet with Musk and show him how they use the internet. Musk said to be prepared to do brief code reviews as he walked around the office.
The code reviews were shorter than anticipated. In the early hours of Saturday, Musk posted a picture of a whiteboard and said he was leaving his job at the micro-blogging site. The image received 35,000 upvotes under the title "Twitter for dummies."
One of the photos that Musk posted from the office appeared to have been taken by a person from another company. We are told that there are 100 engineers on loan from other companies.
There were over two thousand full-time employees at the time.
There was a second set of cuts.
On Sunday, Musk held two meetings with the global sales team to discuss the company's ad products, his past votes for Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well as other issues.
Chris Riedy seems to be leading sales. Robin Wheeler, the former sales leader who Musk wanted to stay, was fired on Friday.
Employees who were there complained about Musk's responses and the fact that he didn't answer the questions that they were posting. Is there any more layoffs coming?
There will be. A new wave of layoffs hit the sales team on Monday, with account managers and client partners among those affected. Wheeler was fired because she wouldn't submit her team's names for more cuts, according to some employees.
Despite the fact that the employees were already well aware of the format, Musk explained it to the team during a Sunday meeting. One employee of the company said that the company's ads should look similar to the micro-messaging service.
There are a number of security certificates that are going to expire in December. Certs are used to assure users that a website is legit. A modern web browser will refuse to establish a connection without proper certs. If these certs are not renewed, most users will not be able to use the service for some time.
The people responsible for renewing these certs have largely resigned, raising concerns that the site could go down without the people on hand to bring it back. It is highly unlikely that the renewal process will fail, according to others. The issue continues to come up in conversations with current and former employees.
The accounts of employees who have resigned or been laid off have been inactive for a long time. At least one key bot has been shut down, we're told, the "on call" Slack bot, which is used to alert people who are on duty for responding to technical emergencies on the site.
The bot has not been restored.
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