'He Wants Attention': As Elon Musk Takes Over Twitter, This Tech Insider Has Some Thoughts

It’s a done deal. Elon Musk now owns San Francisco-based Twitter. He closed the $44 billion deal last week and quickly fired the company’s top executives. Some users are already leaving the social media platform in protest, fearing a rise in hate speech — a fear that already proved well-founded by Monday, as Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, said the platform was seeing an influx of tweets containing slurs and derogatory terms. In short, there’s quite a bit of chaos — not least because Musk himself tried to back out of the deal just a few weeks prior. So why did he go through with it?

“He signed a contract,” said Jeremy Owens, technology editor and San Francisco bureau chief for MarketWatch, in a recent interview with KQED’s Tara Siler. “This is one of the dumbest acquisitions since AOL Time Warner. He’s paying four or five times what Twitter is worth to own this. I’m not surprised he tried to get out of it. But, you know, there are some rules in this country that are followed. And one of them is if you sign a contract to do something, you’re probably going to have to do it.”

As Twitter employees, regular users, journalists and advertisers wait nervously to see what Musk will do next, there were a lot of questions on everyone’s mind, the first of which might be: Why Twitter?

“He wants attention,” said Owens. “We’ve seen a cavalcade of billionaires buying media outlets. But Elon especially, he just wants the spotlight on him and he finds ways to get the spotlight on him. Now he has it, we’ll see what he does with it.”

That’s the $44 billion question. Speculation is rife; expectations vary. Some have praised the takeover as a victory for freedom of speech, while others fear things may already be headed for the worst.

“It’s kind of impossible to know,” said Owens. “I stress to everybody they shouldn’t believe what Elon Musk says. He says a lot of things that are contradictory. A lot of them are fantastical. I mean, we’re not seeing Teslas rolling around as robotaxis making money for their owners in their sleep, like he said would be happening by now. We’re really going to have to wait and see.”

While Musk said he plans to create a “content moderation council” on Twitter, he has also said he would loosen the rules on what users can say on the platform, and although he has often been referred to as a libertarian, his political views remain hazy. Nevertheless, the lawsuit brought against Musk by Twitter after Musk rescinded his offer to buy the company in April revealed texts with friends and associates that provide a premonition of things to come — both in terms of what was said and what was not.

Furthermore, Musk has praised the acquisition of right-wing social media app Parler by Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — and he announced Friday that Ye’s blocked account on Twitter had been reinstated, days after the singer/songwriter drew international ire over antisemitic remarks and comments on slavery. Musk has also said Twitter was wrong to ban former President Donald Trump — who has since founded the right-wing social media platform Truth Social — after the January 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Musk stated back in May that he would restore Trump’s account. Then, on October 18, Musk posted and later deleted a meme depicting the three social media platform owners — Musk, Ye and Trump — as “The Three Musketeers,” tweeting “in retrospect, it was inevitable.”

Although Musk has been critical of Trump’s Truth Social, calling it a “right-wing echo chamber,” the celebration of Musk’s Twitter takeover by right-wing and conservative pundits and media since Thursday has worried Twitter users that the network will become more racist, sexist and toxic. Those fears appeared well founded as, a day after Musk bought Twitter, tweets started flooding in testing whether Twitter’s misinformation policies were still in place; popular right-wing personalities tweeted buzzwords such as “ivermectin” and “Trump won.”

In an apparent effort to address these concerns, on October 27, a day before the deadline to close the takeover deal, Musk assured advertisers over Twitter that the social media platform is “important to civilization” and that it “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.” But advertisers weren’t so convinced, as General Motors and Ford — both of which are Tesla competitors — announced they’d suspend their ads on Twitter for now.

So far, Musk has only been firing people, having told prospective investors that he wanted to get rid of 75% of Twitter’s 7,500 employees and continue with a team of 2,000 — something he denied in an earlier visit.

“The people that were fired … were the CEO, CFO, head of legal and potentially general counsel as well, the people he was battling with in the acquisition,” explained Owens from MarketWatch, saying that he doesn’t think we’re going to see major changes to the platform this week.

“If he wants to maintain advertising revenue, if he wants to grow the platform and convince more users to come to the platform, I think he’s going to have to be very careful how he proceeds from here,” added Owens.

What happens if people’s fears are realized and Twitter does seem to resemble the “hellscape” that Musk said would never happen? Owens says there are plenty of other options for everyday users, like Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, but adds that things would be especially alarming for journalists, considering 69% of U.S. journalists use Twitter as their preferred social media platform for work, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

“Those of us who are verified on Twitter and try to combat these storms of misinformation and disinformation … if the platform does all fall apart, where does that go?” said Owens. “Where can people find legitimate information?”

As of Monday, Elon Musk seemed to be moving quickly with changes, including a plan to start charging $19.99 a month for verified users with the Twitter Blue check mark — which is currently $4.99 a month — giving them 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue status. He has also requested that logged-out users visiting Twitter.com be redirected to the Explore page that shows trending tweets and news stories. There have also been reports of yet more layoffs since the weekend.