The irony of Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue and what it means for social media

There are two ways to look at Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. 

The first way is to think positively and believe that the tech mogul is going to make the bird app so much better. After improving this area of social media, he solves world hunger. Also, he takes us to Mars.

And the second way is to look at him like a cartoon villain taking over your own home and rearranging your furniture for no good reason. Also, you have to start paying rent.

Unfortunately, many Twitter users feel the latter.

Elon went through hoops to buy Twitter. Even taking out a loan to secure his $44 billion deal. But after everything, it seems like the Tesla CEO doesn’t know what to do next.

I can’t believe this app is free!

Twitter is a goldmine of content. With so many people from different cultures and backgrounds coming together. 

Users tweet anything from their deep innermost thoughts to funny brain farts to absolutely terrible hot takes.

Arguably, the site is working fine as is. The only major problem users have with it is that your feed refreshes when you see a good tweet. (An edit button wouldn’t hurt either TBH.)

Yet Elon decided to make a bunch of changes that no one asked for…

Blue Boot

Upon his acquisition, Elon fired three top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal, and multiple employees which were deemed redundant.

Although, Elon confirmed that these layoffs were already decided before he purchased the site. 

Correct

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022

However, this mass firing has caused anxiety for both users and advertisers. Since the people Elon booted are the ones responsible for security, public policy, communications, and engineering.

Reportedly, Elon called to rehire these employees after they realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features he envisioned.

Twitter Blue

Elon Musk announced new features such as a subscription-based verification system. Verified users will be able to post longer videos and have their content prioritized in replies, mentions, and searches.

It will cost $7.99 per month to have a blue badge next to your name. This applies to already verified users too. 

Needless to say, not everyone was happy about the announcement.

If you don’t pay the $8 your tweets will be suppressed by an algorithm. Not making this shit up he said it to a room of investors yesterday & claimed this would solve hate speech. “You’ll have to scroll really far to see unverified users” pic.twitter.com/gSzXtzFYtC

— Aaron Stewart-Ahn (@somebadideas) November 5, 2022

Goodbye Twitter?

$20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 31, 2022

With these changes, many people are understandably anxious about the future of the app. The subscription-based verification system eliminates a lot of the things that made Twitter cool and fun to use.

Nonetheless, only time will tell if Twitter Blue will improve the app or not. So maybe don’t jump ship just yet!