Twitter In The Elon Musk Era: 5 New Takeaways On Kanye West, Marc Andreessen, More

Billionaire Elon Musk acquired social media platform Twitter, now known as X, for $44 billion in 2022. A flurry of lawsuits, delays, and leaked text messages surrounded the acquisition before the deal was finalized in October 2022.

New details continue to emerge from behind the scenes of the acquisition and life at Twitter after Musk bought the company.

Here are five new revelations about the Twitter acquisition and its time under Musk's ownership that many don’t know about.

1. Musk Does Kanye West A Favor: Since taking over Twitter, Musk has unbanned the accounts of many people who were blocked from the platform under the previous ownership. According to the Wall Street Journal, Kanye West reached out to Musk earlier this year when he was banned on the platform and asked to be reinstated.

This came after Musk had already unbanned West and then banned him again after the musician posted an image of a swastika merged with the Star of David. Twitter’s previous management team had a policy of conducting formal company reviews before reinstating accounts. Musk dropped that policy and brought West’s account back, with the stipulation that he wouldn’t be able to make money from the account and would have to follow company policies.

2. Musk Wanted His Posts Boosted: Musk has the most followed account on Twitter that generates millions of views on his posts. The new owner of the platform wasn’t happy with posts earlier this year, thinking they weren’t getting as much attention as they should. Musk thought his posts should be viewed more and asked the team to address the issue, the WSJ report said.

Engineers found that one reason Musk’s posts had received less attention was the fact that a lot of users on the platform had blocked Musk. Engineers wrote new code that put Musk’s tweets more often in user timelines, according to the report.

3. Favor For Marc Andreessen: Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was among those who were interested in investing in Twitter when Musk acquired the company. The venture capitalist hit up his friend Musk after the deal went through to tell him that he was seeing tweets that he didn’t find interesting. Musk reportedly had his engineers to work on the problem, with changes made for Andreessen and other high-profile users so they saw less content from Twitter users they do not follow.

4. Relying On His Gut: Former Twitter employees have said that Musk didn’t look at data or ask subject experts enough, instead relying on his gut to make most decisions.

“He didn’t seem compelled to seek out or rely on a lot of data or expertise to inform it,” former Twitter employee Esther Crawford said.

The report said that, despite Linda Yaccarino becoming CEO of Twitter in June, many Twitter managers still look to Musk for approval of decisions on the platform.

5. Content Moderation: Musk has changed content moderation policies since taking over. Twitter previously had a trust and safety team with hundreds of employees, and major decisions about content were agreed upon by multiple people.

Musk also eliminated a program that flagged abusive tweets about celebrities and politicians. Twitter employees were also told they risk being harassed online for decisions made on the platform. Twitter has faced recent pressure from advertisers over content moderation.

Photo via Shutterstock.

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