Twitter began rolling out a controversial new paid subscription ordered by the social network’s new owner, Elon Musk, after he took control of the platform last week.
Source: AFP
Just days after the Tesla boss took over one of the world’s leading platforms for opinion and activism, his promises and provocations are drawing a wave of reactions, including warnings from the United Nations and an apology from one of the co-founders. of Twitter.
His plans to ease content moderation on the site caused such concern that the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, urged Musk to make respect for human rights a central theme of the social network.
“Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that could harm people’s rights,” Turk said in an open letter.
Reports that Musk fired the platform’s entire human rights team were “not an encouraging start,” he added.
Related note: They report that Musk fires the entire Twitter team in Mexico
For his part, Jack Dorsey, the platform’s co-founder in 2006 and who retired from the CEO position last year, tweeted that he apologized for growing the site too quickly, the day after nearly half of the 7,500 employees were fired by Musk.
“I realize that many are angry with me,” he wrote.
Employees left at the company witness a sharp change in company culture with the new owner reportedly asking to launch the new product on November 7, the day before the US mid-term elections, or their jobs would be up for grabs. danger.
-Race to Launch-
In fact, the platform’s mobile application began to offer an update on Saturday that will allow users to register for the new version of Twitter Blue, which Musk announced would cost $8 a month and offers the blue tick that marks an account as verified, as well as less exposure to advertising.
“Get Twitter Blue for $7.99 a month if you sign up now,” reads the update, only available on iPhones for now.
In a tweet, the California-based company’s director of product development, Esther Crawford, specified that the new service had not yet launched.
“The new Blue is not activated yet – the race to our launch continues, but some people may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real time,” he posted.
The current version of the service, which costs five dollars, contains premium features, such as a more comfortable reading mode.
Musk now wants to add the blue certification mark, although he has not explained how payment accounts will be verified.
Until now, verification has been free and serves as proof of authenticity for user accounts such as politicians, governments, journalists, celebrities and athletes.
The update also lists other benefits Musk mentioned, such as the ability to post longer videos and audio messages.
-Advertising investments suspended-
The Californian company needs to diversify its income, which is highly dependent on advertising.
With concerns that Musk’s plans for content moderation will flood the site with hate speech and misinformation, several advertisers have said they will suspend their advertising.
Musk insists that content moderation remains a priority, that the rules have not changed, and that he would create a group dedicated to this task. He though he has also blamed “activist groups” for pressuring advertisers.
“We have done everything possible to calm the activists down,” he said in a tweet on Friday. “They are trying to destroy free speech,” she added.
Twitter he loses about $4 million a day, the tycoon wrote in another tweet, trying to justify Friday’s massive layoffs.
Musk promised on Saturday that Twitter it would evolve with more search and sharing tools, as well as ways for creators to monetize.
