Biz Stone, the platform’s co-founder, has commented on the changes implemented since Elon Musk’s takeover, adding to the criticism of Twitter’s Elon Musk period.
The American businessman also stated that the Tesla CEO “doesn’t seem” to be the best choice to run the social media platform, which only served to aggravate the situation further. Stone thinks that Musk has undone some of the improvements made to the platform before his purchase in October 2022. Stone claimed in an interview with The Guardian that since returning to Twitter in 2017, he has seen significant improvements in both manager content and morale.
We made significant progress in certain areas, he claimed. And that is all no longer there. He reflected, “Musk “doesn’t seem” the appropriate person to own Twitter, “but I could be wrong.”
Social Media Management
Managing a social media company is “not a win-win situation… it’s always tough,” according to Biz Stone, who founded Twitter in 2006 alongside Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, and Evan Williams. This is because “50% of the people are going to be happy, and 50% of the people are going to be upset with you.”
“You have to be OK with stuff being there that you just don’t like or agree with,” he concluded.
If not, you should just purchase a publication where having a particular stance is acceptable, such as a magazine or newspaper. Users of the site and workers have practically never stopped criticizing Musk during his time as the company’s “chief twit.”
Restoring banned accounts
The billionaire has recently been under fire for restoring previously banned accounts, including those of self-described misogynist Andrew Tate and former US president Donald Trump. After Musk published a poll asking the public if he should resign as CEO, Twitter users expressed their displeasure with him. Although millions of people voted for him to step down as Twitter’s CEO, the billionaire believes it will be difficult to succeed him. And there were almost 17 million votes from Twitter users, along with hundreds of millions of retweets and likes for the post itself.
He tweeted this in December: “As soon as I find someone naive enough to accept the position of CEO, I will step down from it! I will then only manage the servers and software teams after that.” Back in November, when a major reorganization took place at Twitter, Musk sent a directive to the workforce informing them that they could either accept his demands for “crazy production” or leave.
Twitter 2.0
To stay on for what the new business boss branded “Twitter 2.0,” employees were instructed to select “yes” on a Google form.
We will need to work exceedingly hard going ahead if we want to create a revolutionary Twitter 2.0 and prevail in a world that is becoming more and more cutthroat,” Musk wrote in an email to his staff.
Messages flood the company’s internal Slack boards after the contentious demand, and many Twitter employees quietly realized that it was time to say goodbye. However, other employees publicly announce their desire to resign after taking to social media.
Musk backtracked on his promise to create a “content moderation council” to monitor important content choices and account reinstatements, opting instead for more arbitrary techniques such as user polls that are housed on his own Twitter account. In addition, he sacked about half of Twitter’s staff just days after purchasing the company for $44 billion (£35 billion) last year.
The so-called Twitter files, a collection of internal memos outlining choices like Donald Trump’s suspension, Biz Stone continued, shouldn’t have included the names of employees.
Current Financial Difficulties
People experience a lot of harassment when it occurs, according to Biz Stone. “It’s terrible,” Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, reportedly had to leave his home when Musk misrepresented Roth’s 2016 academic thesis, “Gay Data,” in tweets.
I don’t know the future, he continued. I have no idea what will transpire; perhaps everything will be perfect in a year but had to endure this trial by fire. But as of now, I’d say it doesn’t seem promising. Despite Twitter’s current financial difficulties, Biz Stone argued that the notion would endure. According to Stone, who cited the popularity of other platforms like Mastodon, “I don’t know that Twitter as a corporation is going to succeed for eternity, but the idea of Twitter I think will be around.”
“It would only matter if Twitter carried on with the concept. And it did. That appears to be taking place already. In the open-source, decentralized version of Twitter, Mastodon appears to be triumphant. There appears to be a crowd.
Wrapping Up
Biz Stone noted that when he co-founded Twitter in San Francisco, he never imagined it would be popular. He has also invested in Pinterest and the messaging app Slack.
“I advise young people that anything you do to attempt to become wealthy is probably not going to work. You have a better chance of becoming wealthy if you work on something that you simply genuinely enjoy.