Elon Musk has overhauled X, formerly known as Twitter, and made a number of controversial changes.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic via Getty Images
Elon Musk‘s $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter triggered a rollercoaster of chaos.
Musk renamed the platform X, let go of thousands of workers, and made major changes to the website.
Here’s a timeline of what’s gone down at Twitter since Musk took over.
Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022, following a tumultuous, months-long legal battle. Since then, the billionaire has implemented a number of controversial changes that have made both the website and the company nearly unrecognizable.
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Musk spent much of 2022 musing about buying Twitter and rapidly buying shares in the company, while publicly accusing the platform of undermining free speech, censoring conservative voices, and exhibiting left-wing bias.
By the spring of 2022, Musk had acquired a 9{c87e2df4b343d0515d304e127afe4653a549475791ab451641a18e09bd64e760} stake in Twitter and made an offer to buy it outright for $44 billion. Initially, Twitter responded with a “poison pill” to dilute Musk’s stake and stave off a hostile takeover. But by late April, Musk and Twitter struck a deal for $44 billion.
Within weeks, Musk was threatening to back out of the deal, blaming Twitter for failing to provide information on spam bots and fake accounts. Twitter sued Musk to force him to follow through with the deal, and Musk countersued Twitter. But Musk backed down later that year, shortly before the case was set to go to trial, and agreed to the original $44 billion deal.
Since the acquisition, Musk and X have faced a number of lawsuits, slashed 80{c87e2df4b343d0515d304e127afe4653a549475791ab451641a18e09bd64e760} of Twitter’s workforce, and overhauled the platform in a number of ways. And though the company has aimed to become profitable in 2024, Musk has also publicly said the company has struggled mightily with a drop in advertising revenue. Some estimates have valued the company as being worth 71{c87e2df4b343d0515d304e127afe4653a549475791ab451641a18e09bd64e760} less than when Musk bought it.
From strolling into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with a bathroom sink, to renaming the company X, here’s a timeline of how Musk’s chaotic takeover of the company unfolded, and how his reign has impacted workers and users alike:
October 2022
On October 28, 2022, same day Musk officially acquired Twitter, the billionaire ousted a number of its executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and senior legal counsel Sean Edgett.
All four of those executives have since sued Musk and X, alleging that they’re owed $128 million in unpaid severance, and over $1 million apiece in legal fees they accrued during their Twitter careers.
Along with the acquisition, Musk also took Twitter private, meaning it is no longer a public company, and was officially delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in November 2022. The move gave Musk complete control, freeing him up to make changes without any boards or meddling shareholders to restrain him.
A day before the deal was finalized on October 27, Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters carrying a large bathroom sink, seemingly a reference to it “sinking in” that he was becoming Twitter’s new leader.
After Musk’s first all-hands meeting with Twitter staff, many learned that Yoel Roth, the head of trust and safety, had resigned. Robin Wheeler, who was previously the advertising sales leader, also resigned but was convinced to stay.
Twitter sent engineers a memo calling for “maniacal” work and a willingness to suggest ideas to Musk. Engineers were also told to reach out to Musk directly with “cool product” pitches for the platform.
Musk tweeted on October 30 that “the whole verification process is being revamped right now.”
Cofounder Jack Dorsey retained an indirect stake in Twitter even after Musk took over. Dorsey agreed to roll over his 2.4{c87e2df4b343d0515d304e127afe4653a549475791ab451641a18e09bd64e760} stake to Musk’s holding company, X Holdings I Inc. Dorsey’s 18 million shares were valued at just over $1 billion, according to SEC filings.
Musk’s stake in Twitter, now known as X, now sits at around 79{c87e2df4b343d0515d304e127afe4653a549475791ab451641a18e09bd64e760}.
November 2022
Musk gave more details on the coming changes to Twitter’s verification model on November 1. He tweeted that Twitter’s “lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.” He added: “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
Hundreds of employees were let go in Musk’s first round of Twitter layoffs on November 4. A week after Musk took the helm, he sent employees an email confirming rumors that layoffs were imminent.
The memo said they would find out the next day if their roles had been affected by the cuts. However, some staff received notice they’d lost their job that same evening. Some Twitter employees lost access to their email accounts and company systems that night.
The following week, Musk issued remaining employees an ultimatum: work at an “extremely hardcore” rate to build “Twitter 2.0” or accept a three-month severance package. Musk sent employees an email at midnight PT on Wednesday, a timestamp on the email seen by Business Insider showed. The self-described “chief Twit” said in the email that employees were expected to work “long hours at high intensity.”
Several dozen Twitter employees were fired by Musk the night before Thanksgiving, despite saying in an all-hands meeting the week before that there would be no more layoffs.
Hundreds of former Twitter employees who were fired upon Musk’s takeover have since sued X for unpaid severance.
After Musk launched the Twitter Blue subscription, which allows anyone to pay to be verified, it led to a wave of bizarre and comical impersonations of public figures and brands. Some users couldn’t distinguish whether it was an official account belonging to public figures or brands – or impersonators.
December 2022
Musk said expenses were “reasonably under control” after claiming in November that Twitter bankruptcy was a possibility for the company.
He relaunched Twitter Blue, which included gold check marks for verified business accounts.
Dozens of unused offices in Twitter’s San Francisco HQ were turned into bedrooms in December for Musk’s confidants, including Jared Birchall. San Francisco officials later said the city was investigating and ordered Twitter to label them as sleeping areas or convert them back.
January 2023
Musk cut a major fertility benefit for Twitter employees. Staff were told via an email that a benefit that covers up to $80,000 in fertility-related costs would be halved.
Twitter offices in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Mexico, and Africa started shutting down in a bid to cut costs.
February 2023
Musk announced that Twitter API access would no longer be free, revealing plans to start charging $100 per month for the basic tier of the API in a bid to get rid of bots.
The next month, Twitter started to roll out tiered access to its API, charging different amounts depending on the user.
March 2023
Twitter announced it would be sunsetting its legacy blue-tick verified program — which Musk called “deeply corrupted” — on April 1, 2023.
Before Musk’s acquisition in October 2022, Twitter gave out blue checkmarks to authenticate active accounts of “public interest” such as those belonging to politicians, public figures, celebrities, and journalists. The platform independently verified such accounts.
April 2023
Twitter scaled back its paid leave for new parents from 20 weeks to two weeks and didn’t notify employees, which angered some staff.
Musk moved forward with a generative AI project, revealed as xAI in July, after he signed an open letter calling for an industrywide halt to any AI training for several months.
May 2023
Elon Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino as CEO of X.
Michael Gonzalez, Michael Buckner/Getty Images
Musk named Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO after saying in May that a new chief would start in around six weeks. He tweeted: “@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology. Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”
Musk also walked back the changes to Twitter’s paid parental leave. The company’s HR told employees in an email that it would give them seven weeks of paid leave and birthing parents would receive nine additional weeks.
Twitter announced that companies sharing information as a public service will be able to start using Twitter’s API for free again.
Representatives from software firm Oracle started calling current and former Twitter staff to seek payment for past-due invoices, which was at least six figures. Musk also has outstanding payments owed to companies, including Amazon and Google’s cloud services and landlords of its offices in the US, Europe, and Asia.
Meta launched Threads, a new text-based social-media network, in July and that same night Musk’s lawyer sent the company a cease-and-desist letter claiming it was a “copycat” app. The letter claims Meta hired “dozens of former Twitter employees” to help build its rival app Threads. It also claimed Meta had been “crawling and scraping” Twitter data on users.
The weekend prior to Threads’ launch, Twitter’s “rate limit” was temporarily imposed on the number of tweets users could view and users were locked out from viewing posts for several hours. Musk later said it was necessary because AI companies were scraping “extreme levels” of data from the platform, which meant it had to “bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis.”
However, Musk and Yaccarino didn’t brief staff on these changes. Staff in the sales and advertising division didn’t get a response about what they should say to clients about how the limit would impact ads.
Musk announced he was renaming the company as “X” and making it into an “everything app”. Soon after he scrapped Twitter’s bird logo in favor of a monochrome X and had a giant X sign installed on its San Francisco headquarters. The sign was removed three days later after complaints rolled in.
August 2023
Musk said X would keep ad revenue from content creators who don’t have a Blue premium subscription. He continued to bring in sweeping changes such as removing headlines of articles from X posts.
X was fined $4,447 by San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection for installing the X sign on the roof, which attracted 24 complaints, including concerns that it looked unstable and the flashing strobe light from it could disturb nearby residents.
September 2023
Musk laid off more employees who worked on the trust and safety team in the first week of September. The roles involved keeping the platform safe for advertisers and users. Between five and 10 people were affected by the layoffs.
Yaccarino appeared at Code Conference and had a car-crash interview where she seemed undermined by Musk, and appeared to struggle to answer questions concisely. In one segment, she was asked about X’s daily active user numbers, and she responded with only estimates, saying it had 200 million to 250 million daily active users or “something like that.”
A biography on Musk by Walter Isaacson hit the shelves in September.
It included revelations about his upbringing and character, such as him going into “demon mode” — “when he goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his brain,” according to his ex-girlfriend Grimes.
An EU Commission report found X had the highest amount of Russian disinformation out of the major social media platforms. It called for Musk to ramp up its efforts to tackle disinformation. The European Commission’s vice-president, Vera Jourova, advised Twitter that “we are watching what you are doing.”
October 2023
The SEC revealed it was investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and asked a California federal court to force him to comply with a May subpoena asking him to sit for testimony.
The filing revealed what the agency said has been “an ongoing nonpublic investigation by the SEC regarding whether, among other things, Musk violated various provisions of the federal securities laws” with his initial secret collection of Twitter stock in early 2022 and his later purchase of the company, along with statements he made about the deal.
Data provided exclusively to Business Insider’s Lara O’Reilly by the marketing consultancy Ebiquity showed that a large majority of X’s biggest-spending advertisers have stopped advertising on the platform since Musk acquired the company.
Just two of Ebiquity clients, which accounts for 70 of the top 100 top-spending advertisers, had purchased ads on X in September, down from 31 brands 12 months earlier.
“One is lower cost with all features, but no reduction in ads, and the other is more expensive, but has no ads,” he said in a post on X.
Musk told his followers that they could get updates on the Israel-Hamas conflict by following accounts known for peddling misinformation. He deleted the post after three hours, but by that time it had been seen by 11 million users.
Spring 2024
Musk’s Tesla began advertising on X. It’s the circle of life.
Tesla is famous for not advertising because it didn’t need to: People loved the product, and Musk was really good at promoting it, for free, on X.
Now Musk has overpaid for Twitter, has seen many of his advertisers flee, and is now (theoretically) paying to advertise there himself.
That wasn’t the only surprise of the season. As of May 17, Twitter.com began redirecting to the X.com domain. The company had started using the X domain long before then, but users could still access the Twitter.com URL if that’s what they typed into their browsers.
The company notified users of the change with a pop-up message saying, “We are letting you know that we are changing our URL, but your privacy and data protection settings remain the same.”
Users used to be able to see all the tweets or posts that other users liked, but Musk said he wanted people to have the ability to like posts without being “attacked” for doing so. Now, users are free to like controversial, edgy, or NSFW content without fear of retaliation.
Taiwanese tech firm Wiwynn filed a lawsuit against X in August for $61 million over claims X refused to pay for server parts worth about $120 million after Musk took control in 2022.
A list of X’s investors was disclosed by the company in August after a federal judge ordered X to unseal a list of shareholders. Names include X founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud, rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, and Sequoia.
Also in August X filed a lawsuit against a group of advertisers, claiming they violated antitrust laws by organizing an advertising boycott against the social network. CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a video and an open letter announcing the lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, the World Federation of Advertisers, and the GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, and Unilever.
Lawyers for X argued in the lawsuit that GARM persuaded top brands not to advertise on X in an effort to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from the platform.
