It would be hard to avoid the news of Twitter\u2019s acquisition by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk as the sale has certainly not been drama-free.<\/p>\n
The acquisition was officially completed on 27 October, and Musk immediately fired top Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal, whom he replaced with himself. One of his first announced policy decisions was to institute an $8 monthly fee for a “blue tick”.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s move has undoubtedly raised questions about social media ethics and the monetisation of status online. We spoke to Dr Gregoire Burel<\/a>, Research Fellow in the OU\u2019s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) who had previously, along with colleagues, written about the possible consequences of Musk\u2019s intent to buy out Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is hard to speculate about the impact of policies that have not been applied yet and may significantly change by the time they come into force.<\/p>\n \u201cFor example, since Musk took over Twitter just over a week ago, he has rapidly changed his stance about monetising “blue ticks”. Initially, it was reported that a $20\/month fee will be necessary for a verified account to keep its checked status. Now, it appears that it will cost $8\/month and be available to all.<\/p>\n \u201cRightfully, there has been a large amount of concern about how it may impact the spread of misinformation as individuals lose their ‘blue ticks’ and bots and impersonating accounts gain the coveted status making it harder to distinguish between real and fake accounts.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough Musk has assured that no moderation policy has been changed since his takeover, an increase in hate speech<\/a> on the platform has been observed shortly after the announcement as\u00a0racist and extremist users celebrated the news. In a now-deleted tweet, Musk himself was also seen as tweeting a link to a misinforming website relating to the recent attack on\u00a0Nancy Pelosi’s husband.<\/p>\n \u201cAs Twitter currently loses money, Musk needs to find ways to make the company more profitable and sees a subscription model as a way to reduce the company’s debt despite the company making most of its earnings from advertising<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAt least in the short term, Twitter needs to retain advertisers to keep the company afloat. That means reining\u00a0in hate speech and misinformation on the platform.\u00a0Although Musk has tried to reassure companies<\/a>, General Motors has already announced that it was pausing advertising on Twitter over platform directions uncertainties and there has been rumblings of other large organisations following suit.<\/p>\n