The Twitter board of directors have all been fired as Elon Musk takes control, after nearly a year of will-he-won’t-he from the erratic billionaire.
Musk took over Twitter as its new owner this week, after his $44 billion purchase was pushed through against his will by a long court battle. One of his first actions has been to fire the entire Twitter board of directors and instill himself as the sole board member. He tweeted that this set-up is “temporary,” but has yet to announce any details.
A spokesperson for Musk also tweeted a poll asking users how much they would be willing to pay for account verification, if that were to become a paid feature. For the common user, Twitter currently has no paid features, its revenue entirely coming from advertisers. Verification, indicated by the famous blue checkmark, is currently available to anyone with a public online presence, a soft proof that a Twitter user is who they say they are. The service is currently unavailable, during the changeover.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted Sunday in response to a user who asked for help getting verified.
Bots and falsely verified users on Twitter are the big reasons Musk claimed to have wanted out of the $44 billion deal, which the Twitter board of directors and their lawyers held him to.
Other changes he says are coming is a cut-back of some of Twitter’s content restrictions, such as the rule against misinformation, allegedly to promote “free speech.” When asked if he would repeal a number of high-profile bans, such as that against Donald Trump, he says that no major decisions on banned accounts will be made until a “content moderation council” can be instated. He has also said that bans for “minor and dubious reasons” will be redacted, in the same Twitter thread, so the matter is up for very subjective enforcement.
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