Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and the center of attention almost always, has made his presence known to the world once again. On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk bought 9.1% of Twitter’s Shareholder Stocks. This effectively made him the sole proprietor of the company and gave him heavy influence over Twitter’s business decisions. 

His first order of business was to fire all of the Twitter Board members and immediately make himself the sole board member. Though this was seen as a drastic move, with his buying power and current ownership, it enables him to change the company as he sees fit. Elon claims that the changes he makes are to ensure more freedom of speech and less political bias inside online media. 

Another change Elon made was to start a payment option on Twitter. He made an $8/month subscription plan offered to anyone who wanted to get priority placement in tweets and get more attention overall. This is to help newer creators and businesses become more noticed and recognized. The subscription also helps users become “verified” which gives them a blue check mark beside their name on Twitter. Verification on Twitter is almost seen as a badge of honor and shows that the person is who they claim to be and is also significant in some way. 

Finally, the most controversial thing Musk has done with his new power is to release select documents showing interactions between previous Twitter board members and some government officials. The documents had information detailing specifics on what could be classified as misinformation and stopping the spread of it. Elon disagrees with this sentiment and thinks it’s a direct violation of First Amendment rights and wants to make everyone aware of these conversations. 

All in all, it’s still widely unknown what Musk’s exact plan is for Twitter. Speculations suggest that there are still many changes to come, some minor and some drastic. All we know for sure is that time will tell.