As it rebrands to X, a key question: Is Twitter better or worse under Musk?

Our headquarters tonight pic.twitter.com/GO6yY8R7fO

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 24, 2023

The name change, and dropping the iconic bird logo, is of course far from just being a cosmetic change – it is deeply symbolic of Musk’s tumultuous leadership of the platform, where it has laid off key employees responsible for moderating speech on the site, banned and unbanned users on Musk’s whims, and has become less accountable to researchers and the press.

Under Musk, the company has also quietly abandoned an accountability measure it once championed, and cut off free access to its site’s code to researchers who used it to study trends of hate speech and misinformation.

What’s changing at Twitter?

The blue bird logo of the company could be dropped as Musk has announced adopting a logo showing the letter “X’. At the time of publishing, his profile picture on Twitter was the letter X, which he sourced from a user who has posted it on the platform.

Elon Musk has himself said that he is obsessed with the letter ‘X’. (Twitter/@elonmusk)

Musk also reportedly sent an email to Twitter employees telling them the company would become X, and that it was the last time he would email from a Twitter address, according to the Platformer.

Interestingly, Musk is obsessed with the letter X. X.com was an online bank co-founded by Musk in 1999, which eventually became Paypal. The letter finds itself in Musk’s rocket company SpaceX and it was also the name of the first SUV model that Tesla had launched.

What he promised and what he delivered: a report card

Let’s rewind back in time to Musk’s key pitch for buying Twitter – he was upset at the bot problem on the platform and wanted to do something about it, and promised to convert the site into a place for unfettered free speech.

• Bots and hate speech go up

However, a study conducted jointly by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute, Oregon State University, UCLA, and UC Merced, published in April this year, showed that under Musk, bots have increased on the platform and so have instances of hate speech.

“Among the set of users who posted hateful tweets from Oct. 1st to Nov. 29th (2022), the average proportion of hate speech used per day increased dramatically upon Musk’s purchase,” the study said. “After the initial spike in hate speech, the levels of hate speech tend to still reach levels higher than the highest levels from the month before, hinting at a new baseline level of hate speech post-Musk.”

Average proportion of hate speech on Twitter, pre and post Musk. (Source: study quoted above)

The same study also showed that despite Musk’s insistence that we would end the bot problem on Twitter, the number and kinds of bots actually went up post his acquisition.

Bots increased on Twitter under Musk. (Source: study quoted above)

• Transparency comes down

At the same time, Twitter’s transparency norms have come down under Musk. In February, he announced that the company will discontinue offering free access to the Twitter API, and will launch a paid version. The announcement has impacted researchers quite a bit, especially those who studied hate speech and online abuse.

A number of researchers and Universities relied on these APIs to study human behaviour on Twitter, and introducing a price on it meant that a lot of them were cut off from it.

In the meantime, the company’s propensity to take questions from the press has reduced significantly as Musk has shown a public defiance to traditional media outlets’ coverage of him and how he has handled operations at the company. Any query sent to the press@twitter.com email now returns with a ‘poop’ emoji as a response.

• Free speech (T&C applied)

Just months after he completed his takeover of Twitter in a mammoth $44 billion deal, Musk called himself a “free speech absolutist”, and declared that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

However, in about a year under his leadership, Musk’s tune has changed from being a free speech defender, to one who will follow laws of the land. Earlier this year said that India’s rules for social media platforms are “quite strict” and that he would rather comply with the government’s blocking orders than risk sending Twitter employees to jail.

He has also criticised the lawsuit that Twitter had filed against the Indian government over some of its blocking orders. The case, which eventually went in favour of the Centre, was being seen as a promising challenge to India’s online censorship regime when it was first filed last July. However, prior to the takeover, Musk accused Twitter of hiding its lawsuit in India from him and said that its actions might jeopardise its business in the country.