Last December, Elon Musk was converting several unused offices at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters into sleeping quarters, including one for himself, and adding some private bathrooms and showers. To "save" the platform that he had just purchased for $44 billion.
Around the same time, Musk had given employee-level access to conservative commentator Bari Weiss, and then newsletter writer Matt Taibbi, allowing both to comb through and publish (on Twitter) internal emails between former executives and employees about content moderation decisions.
Musk dubbed this exercise the "Twitter Files," and mostly with the help of Taibbi, attempted to create a conspiratorial narrative about the platform's alleged ideological decisions before his takeover. He'd already laid off, fired, or forced resignations on about 70% of the company's staff. He was still firing employees so fast that people were often asked to come back. Most of them ended up fired again – even some who slept at the office, or started pulling 80-hour weeks to show their dedication, didn't get to stay for very long. Even a hoaxer who made Musk laugh enough to get a job couldn't hang on.
That first few weeks of Musk running Twitter was merely stage direction for what ended up being a year of the famed CEO undermining his new business at seemingly every turn.
Several current and former employees stopped being surprised months ago by the rate at which Musk demolished Twitter. They told Business Insider that Musk, who is addicted to the platform, has developed a deeply rooted hatred for it. The entire company, from being forced to follow through on his contractual agreement to purchase it to major advertisers fleeing the instability he injected, is now a mar on what was once his unparalleled success story.
"The cruelty is the point," as one employee put it, be it toward workers or users. Everything he's done so far at the company, the person added, is about "fear and punishment." "He hates everything about it – that's obvious."
Hence Musk decided— the value of the brand and advertiser wishes be damned — to change the name to X.
A "common digital square" for public conversation is what Musk said he wished it to be. Instead, X is a platform ruled by Musk and the users who pay him $11 a month for a premium subscription that includes a "verified" checkmark.
Such users get their posts and replies boosted over everyone else. Musk often engages with these accounts, large and small, many antisemitic or otherwise openly promoting racial and cultural prejudices. Musk, too, rolled out payments to some popular creators who are also subscribers, based purely on their engagement metrics. It's led to an increased spread of false information, including about the Israel-Hamas War that broke out this fall, as gaming for engagement is now incentivized.
The European Commission is currently investigating X, after months of trying to get Musk and the platform to comply with a new law that makes it illegal for large platforms to allow false or harmful information to proliferate. Musk responded to earlier prodding from the European Commission by considering removing X from the region as a possible solution. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Musk's takeover. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is probing X's management of data under a consent decree stemming from an earlier settlement.
X's users have started to flee. Usage and downloads hit new lows in September. Since then, downloads have fallen another 14%, while daily usage is down another 6%, according to Apptopia. And X is, for the first time in its history, inching toward the wrong end of Apple's running list of the 100 most-downloaded apps – it's currently ranked 99th in California, the largest US state, and 72nd in the US overall. Six months ago it was ranked 34th in California and 37th overall.
Meanwhile, Meta's rival app Threads, launched six months ago, is holding on to second place in the App Store, in California and the US, and was the fourth most-downloaded app of the year.
X is also a platform bereft of advertisers, the basis of the social media business model. Brands and companies large and small have left X in droves over the last several months, fed up with seeing their ads show up next to posts on toxic accounts or next to violent false information that is going largely unchecked at X. The company has few employees left to handle content moderation. Musk's response was to tell unhappy advertisers, as a group, as well as Disney CEO Bob Iger specifically, "Go f**k yourself."
Musk has cut costs at X dramatically, whittling headcount by close to 90% and closing most offices. Based on quarterly financial filings from Twitter, which X no longer hosts on its corporate website, and the extent to which Musk has reduced overhead costs like employee pay and benefits and office space, it's likely costs at X are down by at least 50% to between $400 million and $500 million a quarter. The trouble is advertising is down by more than half of what it was before Musk's takeover, according to a Bloomberg report.
For the relatively few advertisers who remain on X, including Circle, select Fox Sports podcasts like the Joel Klatt Show and the Fordham Institute, their paid marketing dollars have them frequently appearing within feeds of accounts that deal openly in content that is racist, white supremacist, antisemitic and homophobic and transphobic, according to research by BI.
Some such accounts where these ads appear include Way of the World, which posts race-baiting images of world leaders who are people of color, among other incendiary and racially prejudiced content, and the Gentile News Network, which attempts to doxx public figures for being Jewish. That account also recently hosted a Spaces titled "The Threat of White Unity" including in the title a symbol widely associated with white supremacy that is now recognized as a hate symbol. On a landing page for "successful X ad campaigns," only one is from Musk's tenure — a June campaign for promoted tweets from Dior in the Netherlands. All other examples are from before his takeover.
When reported for violating platform rules around hate speech, X said accounts like Way of the World (and even specific posts in which the account repeatedly called Black children of Charlize Theron and Madonna "it," among other offensive content), had "not broken our safety policies."
Those policies have become much more lax, as X's few remaining content moderators are no longer allowed to remove content that is racist, homophobic, sexist, or otherwise prejudicial, according to a report in the Irish Business Post. New internal guidance on what is not allowed to be blocked or removed from X does not line up with the company's public statement on content moderation, which states abuse, harassment, and hateful conduct, like attacking people based on their race or gender, is not allowed.
A sense of resignation has come over some employees that BI spoke to regarding X. There is no "going back" to a better version of the platform, one employee said. "Advertisers aren't coming back," another employee said. "The reason advertisers have stopped spending is because of Elon. Period."
Inside X, there has sprung up a small cadre of Musk loyalists, or "new goons," as they are sometimes called, another employee said. They often post positive things about Musk on X, his reign at the company, or publicly like and agree with his posts, the employee noted. When Musk first took over Twitter, he brought in scores of employees from his other companies, Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, as well as some family, friends, and fans, who were referred to as "Elon's goons."
While no amount of loyalty can assure anyone working for Musk will keep their job, saying "yes" to Musk at all times, no matter how nonsensical the request, is how most employees manage, several agreed. They accept as assignments his constant emailing, often no more than screenshots of X posts he takes issue with or things he wants to be fixed or changed; they continue to send weekly and monthly emails detailing work they've done, despite no one knowing if leadership reads the emails or exactly who they go to; they accept being effectively on call 24/7.
Even chaos can become routine.
Are you an X employee or someone with a tip or insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging appSignal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device
