A timeline of Twitter changes and commentary from ADM+S researchers

After a few chaotic weeks it’s clear Elon Musk is intent on taking Twitter in a direction that’s at odds with the prevailing cultures of the diverse users who call it home. With so many experienced staff gone there are concerns the platform will be vulnerable to widespread outages and cyber attacks.

In this article Thinking of breaking up with Twitter? Here’s the right way to do it , Prof Daniel Angus and Assoc Prof Timothy Graham provide tips on moving away from Twitter or better securing your data on the platform.

“The drastic reductions to moderation staff and changes to platform architecture and Twitter rules and policies will mean more [misinformation and disinformation] on the site and in different ways,” Assoc. Professor Timothy Graham, who researches online bots, trolls and disinformation, told RMIT Fact Lab CheckMate in the article Misinformation analyst concerned by ‘volume of conspiracy theorising’ on Twitter during US midterms.

It is unclear whether users are replacing Twitter with Mastadon or whether they are sitting across both platforms. In this article Should Elon Musk really be afraid of Mastodon?, Professor Axel Bruns talks about what it would take for users to leave Twitter and what steps Mastodon would need to take to grow it’s current user base from 2.2 million to that of Twitters 238 million users.

The launch of paid verification badges resulted in a flood of fake accounts of public figures and brands with Twitter’s blue check mark. In response the company removed the paid verification badge option. On 17 November Musk tweeted “Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid”.

Primarily to raise revenue, Musk made the decision to charge US$8 a month for accounts to obtain the blue tick verification badge. Musk argued that this would solve hate speech and fake accounts by prioritising verified accounts in search, replies and mentions. If anything, this would have the opposite effect: those with enough money would dominate the public sphere.

In this article Is Twitter’s ‘blue tick’ a status symbol or ID badge? And what will happen if any can buy one?, Assoc Professor Timothy Graham revisits the controversial history of the blue tick and how this latest change would open the floodgates to inauthentic and harmful activity on the platform.