From Yoel Roth's "I Was the Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. This Is What Could Become of It." in Friday's New York Times:
While Twitter has been publicly tight-lipped about how many people use the company’s mobile apps (rather than visit Twitter on a web browser), its 2021 annual report didn’t mince words: The company’s release of new products “is dependent upon and can be impacted by digital storefront operators” that decide the guidelines and enforce them, it reads. “Such review processes can be difficult to predict, and certain decisions may harm our business.”
“May harm our business” is an understatement. Failure to adhere to Apple’s and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic, risking Twitter’s expulsion from their app stores and making it more difficult for billions of potential users to get Twitter’s services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.
Apple’s guidelines for developers are reasonable and plainly stated: They emphasize creating “a safe experience for users” and stress the importance of protecting children. The guidelines quote Justice Potter Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” quip, saying the company will ban apps that are “over the line.”
In practice, the enforcement of these rules is fraught.
In my time at Twitter, representatives of the app stores regularly raised concerns about content available on our platform. On one occasion, a member of an app review team contacted Twitter, saying with consternation that he had searched for “#boobs” in the Twitter app and was presented with … exactly what you’d expect.
My take: It's all over. Twitter is circling the drain.
Next question is lawsuits from employees, users, and advertisers. That may include potential security breaches with potential financial impact, due to loss of staff. And there’s $16B in debt.
In theory corporate law and bankruptcy will protect Elon. But.??
I’m fearful that Musk is screwing the pooch. I think all this has certainly hurt my investment in Tesla.
So he’s tosses half his workforce, alienates another half with his ongoing ultimatum, and creates such havoc that most of the remaining advertisers, including Apple, stop using the platform. Now, as I write this, he says “HE” will reinstate certain banned persons, already having gutted or dismantled any shred of moderation. This is likely a ploy to get new Twitter membership and maybe even get TFG to invest in Twitter if he had any spare dough. Otherwise, it appears Musk will be spending much more of his and his investor’s money on driving Twitter further into disuse and abandonment.
IMO, he’ll probably like being King/authoritarian of “free speech”, unfettered by a BOD, upper
Management, middle management, and a hand selected/survivor group of sycophants. He might even make a bid for Truth Social, seeing as they are woefully underfunded and mismanaged too, and merge them.
And on top of all this, he’s still CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and expected to follow those same employment rules, manage personnel, and act in the companies’s and shareholders best interests. Would he take them private too if he thought it too burdensome to be beholden to BOD and shareholders, since he has so
much control?
I’m sure he’s “brilliant”, at least in his own mind, but so far, Twitter, IMO, unmasks some pretty disturbing Musk thought processes. If I were a TSLA shareholder, I’d think long and hard about the future under Musk’s control.