Twitter: Elon Musk’s Changes

We’ve seen it everywhere: Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, and since then changes on the platform have been announced, implemented, withdrawn, re-announced… In short, we don’t really know where we stand anymore.

Here is an overview of the changes we have information about for the moment. Please note that this article is based on our resources, and that everything we mention is not necessarily in place at the moment and is probably subject to change.

Workforce Adjustment

While this is beyond our scope of expertise, we’ll still look at what happened at Twitter after its acquisition by Elon Musk. The first notable changes are the ousting of the platform’s top executives, but also 50% of its employees. The staff reshuffle may not be over, since the new boss seems to give ultimatums to his team, or at least what is left of it.

Twitter Blue

This is Elon Musk’s big project for the Twitter platform. For a subscription fee of $8 per month, you could see, among other things, a blue certification sticker on your profile, as is currently the case for public figures, politicians or official institutions’ accounts.

Launched just after the change of ownership, Twitter Blue was then withdrawn very quickly after its implementation because of the numerous account usurpations and all the cacophony that this generated on the platform. Suspended, but not abandoned, since it was announced that Twitter Blue would make its return on December 2nd, but with changes, especially in the colours of the badge.

Golden badge for companies, gray badge for political institutions and their members, and finally the classic blue badge for public figures and Twitter Blue subscribers. Although the changes in the colours of the badges have not yet appeared on the platform at the time of writing, it is now possible to see if the certified users of our Twitter feed have the badge because they are recognized as a public utility account, or if the badge has been purchased through a subscription to Twitter Blue.

The information on Twitter Blue is still a bit unclear, with quite a few announcements that Elon Musk has subsequently withdrawn. So further changes may be in order.

Twitter Blue subscribers will also be the only ones who will be able to benefit from two-factor authentication via SMS starting March 20, 2023. Announced by Elon Musk on February 17, this change adds to the list of controversial decisions he’s made so far. But let’s look at the positive side of things: two-factor authentication by SMS was certainly more secure than a simple password, but it wasn’t infallible, and its disappearance for those who don’t want to pay a subscription fee will push them to turn to other means of authentication such as authentication applications or security keys that are still accessible to everyone.

Unfortunately, uninformed users or those who simply don’t know how to do it may not activate either of these options, leaving their accounts vulnerable.

Attach a long text to a tweet

Elon Musk announced on his personal Twitter account that the platform will soon add the ability to attach long-form text to tweets in order to stop the spread of screenshots of text written in users’ notepads when they want to share something that exceeds 280 characters and is too long to be shared as a thread.

The ability to create monetized content

New tools should appear on the platform to allow creators to monetize their content. This may give users the opportunity to see content, including videos, exclusive to Twitter rather than TikTok or Instagram real shares as is currently the case.