Elon Musk on Friday morning announced a new “freedom of speech” policy for content on Twitter. “New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” Musk said in a tweet
Musk, who closed his $44 billion USD acquisition of Twitter in October and took the social network private, explained that “negative/hate tweets” will be demonetized and have their discoverability on the platform crippled moving forward.
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from [the] rest of [the] Internet,” he said.
Musk went on to clarify that this new policy “applies just to the individual tweet, not the whole account.”
Kathie Griffin, Jorden Peterson & Babylon Bee have been reinstated.
Trump decision has not yet been made.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
In a follow-up tweet, Musk announced that comedian Kathy Griffin, Canadian media personality and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, and satirical news publication The Babylon Bee have been reinstated to Twitter.
I'm back. Thanks @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/MnWWNDACGD
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) November 18, 2022
Griffin was suspended from Twitter earlier this month after she impersonated Musk, Peterson was locked out in June for comments about recently-transitioned actor Elliott Page, and The Babylon Bee lost access to the platform back in March for mocking Admiral Rachel Levine, the U.S.’s first openly transexual, Senate-confirmed federal official.
Musk added that a decision on whether or not Donald Trump should be reinstated to the platform “has not yet been made.” That said, the former U.S. president has made it clear he won’t return to Twitter even if his suspension is lifted.
Twitter is undergoing a major restructuring as employees continue to leave or get fired in droves. Musk axed about half of the company’s 7,400 workers earlier in the month, and Twitter cut 4,400 of its 5,500 contract workers days later.
Check out The Babylon Bee’s take on the Twitter layoffs below:
To top it all off, hundreds of Twitter’s remaining full-time employees reportedly left on Thursday after turning down Musk’s ultimatum to join “Twitter 2.0” and commit to “working long hours at high intensity.” Instead, they chose to depart the company with three months of severance pay.
According to reports, Thursday’s resignations included some senior staffers and cleaned out entire departments at Twitter. This sparked concerns that Twitter wouldn’t survive much longer, although Musk noted that the hysteria is actually driving more traffic to the platform and “making it more alive than ever.”
Record numbers of users are logging in to see if Twitter is dead, ironically making it more alive than ever!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
In fact, Musk said on Thursday evening that Twitter hit another all-time high in usage.
Let that sink in …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
According to an internal email, Musk has invited any employees who still work at Twitter and “actually write software” to meet him on Friday afternoon (via Business Insider).
Musk said he wants to talk to engineers doing technical work at the company to “better understand the Twitter tech stack.” He even urged workers to fly out to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on the company’s dime to meet with him in person.
