Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover: A Year of Controversies, Devaluation, and User Exodus

It has been a little over a year since Elon Musk acquired Twitter . However, since his takeover, the company has been constantly making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Despite many people's hopes that the acquisition would bring innovation and features to the platform, the reality was quite the opposite. The company lost its essence, resulting in a massive 55% decrease in its value.

This devaluation can be traced back to some key decisions taken by Musk. Firstly, the mass layoffs of about half of its 7,500 employees left many internal departments understaffed, including communication and core engineering teams. This subsequently led to internal instability and caused large advertisers to temporarily pause ad spending on Twitter until the safety concerns were addressed.

Secondly, Musk's idea of reinstating previously banned accounts led to an increase in hate speech, which in turn led to a subsequent loss of advertisers. Thirdly, the Twitter Blue program also led to an increase in impersonation, including a fake profile of Musk himself being created. Additionally, the rebranding of Twitter to " X "and the replacement of words like "tweet" and "retweet" had made their standing in pop culture and into the daily conversations of people.

These key changes have resulted in several users quitting the platform entirely or looking for other alternatives.