Twitter didn’t reply to requests for remark
After Musk minimize the corporate’s payroll in half on the finish of final week — firing 1000’s throughout Twitter — Washington has watched anxiously for indicators that the platform is shedding management of misinformation and content material, significantly with the election so shut at hand. Musk himself added gas to that fireplace when he tweeted a false story about Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband final weekend, a transfer that drew criticism and helped drive advertisers away from the platform.
The tech billionaire has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” at the same time as he’s tried to reassure nervous advertisers and customers that the platform gained’t be inundated with hate speech and malicious content material if it adopts a extra freewheeling strategy to moderation.
Musk has additionally been clear that he wants to search out new methods for Twitter — an organization that has not often turned a revenue — to earn money. The mass layoffs and the transfer to arrange a subscription service are all supposed to assist the debt-laden firm get on extra steady monetary footing.
Though Twitter’s verification program began effectively outdoors of politics — it was a response to a faux account pretending to be former baseball supervisor Tony La Russa — the system has come to be seen as a brake on viral misinformation and an vital filter within the American data ecosystem. It has additionally are available for criticism, typically from right-wing populists, who deride “blue-checkists” as a cabal of elites making an attempt to guard their standing.