86. Blue Checks

**Chap­ter Sum­ma­ry: Blue Checks, Twit­ter, Novem­ber 2–10, 2022**

In ear­ly Novem­ber 2022, Twit­ter nav­i­gat­ed tumul­tuous changes under James Musk’s own­er­ship. Yoel Roth and the con­tent mod­er­a­tion team, despite fac­ing lay­offs, con­tin­ued their crit­i­cal work amidst adver­tis­er unrest and trolling issues. Roth worked on a new mis­gen­der­ing pol­i­cy while Musk intro­duced “Com­mu­ni­ty Notes,” a rebrand­ed ver­sion of the “Bird Watch” fea­ture to allow pub­lic con­tent mod­er­a­tion.

The pres­sure on Twit­ter esca­lat­ed as adver­tis­ers began pulling out, influ­enced by a boy­cott move­ment against the plat­form. Musk respond­ed with threats of nam­ing and sham­ing com­pa­nies with­draw­ing their adver­tise­ments, demon­strat­ing an aggres­sive stance against what he per­ceived as immoral actions by boy­cott advo­cates.

The sit­u­a­tion inten­si­fied when Musk, in a deeply author­i­tar­i­an move, demand­ed Roth to ban users advo­cat­ing for adver­tis­er boy­cotts, con­tra­dict­ing Twit­ter’s stance on free speech and prompt­ing Roth to con­sid­er res­ig­na­tion. Their dis­agree­ment high­light­ed the eth­i­cal dilem­mas and inter­nal con­flicts with­in Twit­ter, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant gov­er­nance chal­lenge.

More­over, Musk’s ini­tia­tive, Twit­ter Blue, aimed at intro­duc­ing a sub­scrip­tion mod­el offer­ing blue ver­i­fi­ca­tion marks for a fee, encoun­tered both con­cep­tu­al and prac­ti­cal chal­lenges. It aimed at reduc­ing fake accounts and gen­er­at­ing rev­enue but faced poten­tial exploita­tion by imper­son­ators. The imple­men­ta­tion was rushed and chaot­ic, lead­ing to wide­spread imper­son­ation and mis­in­for­ma­tion, notably impact­ing stock prices of mis­rep­re­sent­ed com­pa­nies.

Musk’s author­i­tar­i­an man­age­ment approach and imprac­ti­cal strate­gies led to oper­a­tional tur­moil. His ulti­ma­tum for staff to return to office work and con­fronta­tion­al inter­ac­tions over pol­i­cy deci­sions revealed a dis­cor­dant lead­er­ship style, cul­mi­nat­ing in Roth’s res­ig­na­tion after chal­leng­ing Musk’s direc­tives and express­ing con­cerns over the Twit­ter Blue mod­el’s via­bil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly regard­ing com­pli­ance with Apple’s poli­cies.

Roth’s depar­ture under­scored deep inter­nal con­flicts and Musk’s con­tentious lead­er­ship, adverse­ly affect­ing Twit­ter’s oper­a­tions and rep­u­ta­tion. This episode demon­strates the com­plex­i­ties and pit­falls of rapid orga­ni­za­tion­al change, high­light­ing the need for bal­anced gov­er­nance and thought­ful deci­sion-mak­ing.