Topline

Elon Musk reinstated controversial Twitter customers Kathy Griffin, Jordan Peterson and the Babylon Bee as he defined a brand new content material coverage reversing Twitter’s prior stance of eradicating dangerous content material as questions swirl over who will really workers the corporate.

Friday was a whirlwind at Twitter.

Key Information

The “new Twitter coverage is freedom of speech, however not freedom of attain,” Musk tweeted Friday afternoon, including Twitter will demonetize and never promote tweets containing hate speech or in any other case “unfavorable” content material.

Musk additionally introduced the reinstatement of beforehand banned customers “Kathie Griffin, Jorden Peterson & Babylon Bee,” apparently referring to the liberal comic Griffin, the far-right commentator and psychologist Peterson and the accurately spelled conservative satire publication.

However Musk wrote the extremely anticipated “Trump choice has not but been made,” although the brand new Twitter boss has beforehand backed the return of the previous president to the platform and promised to rid the platform of its supposed liberal bias.

The flurry of stories about Twitter’s new insurance policies comes amid a mass exodus of staff from the agency after Musk gave workers two days to resolve whether or not they wished to give up or stay at a brand new, “hardcore” Twitter earlier this week.

And in one other shock transfer, the billionaire Twitter CEO emailed the entire firm’s distant engineers to fly to San Francisco earlier than midnight Friday to fulfill with him face-to-face and focus on their coding, in accordance with a number of shops.

Musk ominously warned about “Freedom Fridays” in one other Friday afternoon tweet, tagging the publish with a spoiler alert, a possible reference to much more workers reductions (there are fewer than 3,000 Twitter staff left after numbering about 7,500 two weeks prior, in accordance to the Verge).

Key Background

Musk took cost at Twitter 15 days in the past after closing on his $44 billion buy, instantly sacking CEO Parag Agrawal and most different prime executives. Musk has seemingly operated on a whim, ceaselessly lobbying customers for his or her enter and rolling out after which strolling again new options. Musk had promised his new web site wouldn’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” in an open letter to advertisers earlier this month, however a host of firms have already pulled advertisements from the location.

Tangent

Musk can be the CEO of electrical car maker Tesla and personal aerospace big SpaceX, although he mentioned Wednesday he didn’t “need to be CEO of any firm” throughout an affidavit difficult his $55 billion Tesla compensation package deal.

Large Quantity

3%. That’s how a lot Tesla inventory fell Friday, with its shares down 19% during the last month, in comparison with a 0.1% improve Friday and 6.2% month-to-month achieve for the S&P 500. Tesla’s inventory has been “tarnished” by Musk’s “Twitter antics,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a word to shoppers final week.

Forbes Valuation

We estimate that Musk is price $188.2 billion, $13.5 billion greater than anyone else on earth (or mars). Musk’s internet price is down greater than $130 billion since final November largely as a result of efficiency of Tesla shares.