Elon Musk bought Twitter, and now he’s rebranding it as X. Signs have gone up (and back down), icons are changing, and an old plan is new.
How’d we get here?
On April 4th, 2022, we learned that Musk had purchased enough shares of Twitter to become its largest individual shareholder. Eventually, he followed up with an unsolicited offer to buy 100 percent of Twitter’s shares for $54.20 each, or about $44 billion. Twitter accepted Musk’s offer, but then things got weird because he tried to cancel the deal.
There was a lot of back-and-forth about bots and text messages, but in the end, Musk settled on buying the company rather than facing a deposition or Chancery Court trial and eventually strode into Twitter HQ carrying a sink.
Since then, there have been layoffs, more layoffs, and even more layoffs — plus drama over Substack, unpaid bills, and blue checkmarks. With ad revenue still down from previous years, Elon finally abdicated the role of CEO in May 2023, installing longtime NBCUniversal ad executive Linda Yaccarino.
Read on for the latest updates about what’s going on inside Twitter right now.
Highlights
- X will start charging new users in two countries $1 per year
- Is your X ad revenue sharing payment smaller than you expected?
- Elon Musk wants a second chance to fail at X
- Elon Musk’s extravagant ‘X’ sign atop the former Twitter HQ has been dismantled
- For Elon Musk, X equals everything
- Twitter alternatives for the Musk-averse
- Why Instagram is taking on Twitter with Threads
Jul 9
You can search for bookmarks on X now.That��s a whole lot easier than scrolling through several years worth of bookmarks just to find a particular post. The feature is only available on the web and iOS for now.
Image: XJun 21
Jun 13
X all-hands leaves staff with few answers on delayed promotions
Linda Yaccarino. Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox MediaDuring an internal all-hands meeting led by X CEO Linda Yaccarino on Wednesday, concerned employees tuned in to hear if she would address the pressing issue on their minds: performance reviews.
Read Article >Sources inside the company confirm that a promotions process was recently delayed without explanation and that X’s sales team doesn’t expect to meet its revenue targets for the quarter. Given how the company formerly called Twitter has continued to struggle under Elon Musk’s ownership, employees have been bracing for more layoffs.
Jun 11
X is about to start hiding all likes
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty ImagesX is rolling out private likes as soon as today, according to a source at the company. That means what users like on the platform will be hidden by default, which is already an option for X’s Premium subscribers. Following the publication of this story, X owner Elon Musk reshared a screenshot of it, saying it’s “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”
Read Article >A few weeks ago, X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, said the upcoming change is meant to protect users’ public image — because “many people feel discouraged” to like “edgy” content. The Likes tab on user profiles will be gone. Users will still be able to see who liked their posts and the like count for all posts, but they will not see the people who liked someone else’s post, according to X senior software engineer Enrique Barragan. (He also hinted at the launch today in a post.)
Jun 3
X has new rules that officially allow porn now
Illustration: The VergeAs spotted by TechCrunch, X updated its guidelines to let users “share consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior” as long as it’s labeled and not in a prominent location, such as a profile picture or banner.
Read Article >After this article was published, the @Safety account tweeted saying, “We have launched Adult Content and Violent Content policies to bring more clarity of our Rules and transparency into enforcement of these areas. These policies replace our former Sensitive Media and Violent Speech policies - but what we enforce against hasn’t changed.”
May 30
Elon Musk finally agrees to testify in the SEC’s Twitter investigation
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty ImagesElon Musk has agreed to testify in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. A legal document filed on Thursday shows that Musk waived his right to appeal a court order that requires him to testify.
Read Article >This means Musk will have to appear at one of the SEC’s offices for an up to five-hour interview. The document says Musk and the SEC have already agreed to a date, but it’s not disclosed “for confidentiality purposes.”
May 26
How a 2019 Twitter thread full of anime trolls and lawyers created a legal super team.It’s been five years since “threadnought,” a giant Twitter thread in which lawyers battled trolls who were trying to silence critics of an anime voice actor accused of sexual misconduct.
Now, with a law firm drafted from the thread’s funniest people, lawyer Akiva Cohen represents many former Twitter employees who are suing Elon Musk over how he fired them after buying the company.
May 23
X is hiding likes to encourage ‘edgy’ engagement
Illustration: The VergeIn yet another major shift, X, the social platform previously known as Twitter, is taking away the ability to see what posts other users have liked. It’s a change the company’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, says is meant to protect users’ public image — because “many people feel discouraged” to like “edgy” content. MacRumors first reported that the change is coming after a flag was discovered in the iOS app that removes the Likes tab on all user profiles.
Read Article >“Soon you’ll be able to like without worrying who might see it,” Wang says. It wasn’t initially clear if this would affect seeing who liked your own posts, but X senior software engineer Enrique Barragan chimed in to clarify:
May 17
Twitter is officially X.com now
The VergeThe social network formerly known as Twitter has officially adopted X.com for all its core systems. That means typing twitter.com in your browser will now redirect to Elon Musk’s favored domain, or should. At the time of publication, we’re seeing a mix of results depending upon browser choice and whether you’re logged in or not.
Read Article >A message also now appears at the bottom of the X login page that reads, “We are letting you know that we are changing our URL, but your privacy and data protection settings remain the same.”
May 10
This scraper can keep on scraping.A judge tossed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X against web scraper Bright Data that alleged it illegally circumvented X’s anti-scraping technology. It comes after Musk lost a similar suit against an anti-hate group in March.
Apr 26
X now wants to compete with Google Meet.I mean, what could go wrong? A new video conferencing feature in the style of Zoom, Meet and Microsoft Teams is coming soon to X, according to X user/Elon whisperer DogeDesigner and X Daily News.
X Conferences will be hosted on the the platform’s existing live audio platform X Spaces (which added video earlier this year), according to a screenshot of the beta version.
Apr 16
X reverses course on Brazil.Elon Musk’s lawyers have reportedly undercut his free-speech theatrics related to ye old Twitter’s refusal to block accounts as ordered by the country’s highest court. According to Reuters, X’s lawyers said the following in a letter addressed to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday:
“As already communicated to the federal police, X Brasil informs that all orders issued by this Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court will continue to be fully complied with by X Corp.”
Apr 4
X’s ‘complimentary’ Premium push gives people blue checks they didn’t ask for
Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeJust as Elon Musk said, X is doling out free Premium and Premium Plus memberships to accounts with a high number of verified followers.
Read Article >Multiple X users on Wednesday reported seeing the familiar blue “Verified” checkmark next to their handles despite not paying for either paid X subscription tier. Musk last week announced that X accounts with over 2,500 “verified subscriber followers” would receive a free Premium membership; while accounts with over 5,000 would receive a free Premium Plus membership.
Apr 3
Elon Musk’s reputation is falling — and it’s taking Tesla with it
Studies show that consumers associated Tesla with Musk, which might be damaging the EV brand’s bottom line. Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty ImagesElon Musk’s controversial behavior in recent years is “very likely” to be a contributing factor in Tesla’s declining sales, according to corporate reputation tracking firm Caliber.
Read Article >Survey data reported by Reuters found that Tesla’s “consideration score” — a metric used by Caliber to track consumer interest in brands, based on how they respond to the prompt “I would buy, or continue buying, products and services from Tesla, if given the chance” — has fallen to 31 percent from its 70 percent high in November 2021, tumbling by 8 percent alone this January. Caliber’s consideration scores for rival EV-producing manufacturers Audi, BMW, and Mercedes, meanwhile, increased slightly during the same period, reaching between 44–47 percent.
Mar 29
xAI claims Grok’s first update will make it much better at doing math.The company said Grok 1.5, the first release since open-sourcing the model, performed significantly better in coding and math-related reasoning than its previous version. xAI’s testing showed Grok 1.5 outdid models like Claude 2, Gemini Pro 1.5, and GPT-4 in some problem-solving benchmarks.
Grok 1.5 will be available to early users of the model on X soon.
Grok 1.5 performance benchmarks compared to other models. xAIMar 28
Elon Musk has a new pay-to-play X Premium gambit.Elon's X Premium package pitches have included forcing them on celebrities, bundling access to an AI bot of uncertain value, and a chance at a slice of ad revenue generated by other paying customers, in addition to an edit button, blog posts, and fewer ads.
Now he's offering Premium or Premium Plus (normally $8 or $16 per month) as a free sweetener for accounts with at least 2,500 "Verified subscriber" followers (5,000 for Plus) that presumably also pay for access.
Buy 2,500, get one free Image: Elon Musk (X)Mar 25
Judge tosses Elon Musk’s X lawsuit against anti-hate group
Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty ImagesIn a decision filed Monday, federal Judge Charles Breyer dismissed a lawsuit from Elon Musk’s X against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), saying the company’s case is “about punishing the Defendants [CCDH] for their speech.”
Read Article >Judge Breyer writes that X’s “motivation in bringing this case is evident,” stating that the company’s goal is to “punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp. — and perhaps in order to dissuade others” from criticizing X in the future. “If CCDH’s publications were defamatory, that would be one thing, but X Corp. has carefully avoided saying that they are,” the filing reads.
Mar 23
Is this what X will look like on a smart TV?Earlier this month, a Fortune story reported that one of X’s latest moves since Twitter entered its Musk era involves whipping up a video app for smart TVs, with one source calling it “identical” to YouTube’s own.
Assuming this video posted by app researcher Nima Owji is what Fortune’s source saw... yeah, I’d reckon there’s some resemblance.
Mar 18
Here’s the Elon Musk interview that got Don Lemon’s show canceled
Things started getting tense about halfway into the interview. Image: Don Lemon ShowDon Lemon has published the “tense” interview with Elon Musk that got his show canceled on X. During the interview, Lemon touches on various topics related to hate speech on X and Musk’s own views on right-wing conspiracy theories, with the billionaire becoming noticeably irritated by the interview’s end.
Read Article >Things start to take a turn about halfway into the interview. Lemon asks Musk about his comments on illegal immigration and the far-right “great replacement” theory and then turns to the topic of content moderation. Lemon asks whether better content moderation on X would let Musk avoid some of the criticism of his posts about the “great replacement” theory.
Mar 18
xAI open sources Grok
Image: The VergeOn March 11th, Elon Musk said xAI would open source its AI chatbot Grok, and now an open release is available on GitHub. This will allow researchers and developers to build on the model and impact how xAI updates Grok in the future as it competes with rival tech from OpenAI, Meta, Google, and others.
Read Article >A company blog post explains that this open release includes the “base model weights and network architecture” of the “314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model, Grok-1.” It goes on to say the model is from a checkpoint last October and hasn’t undergone fine-tuning “for any specific application, such as dialogue.”
Mar 13
Elon Musk cancels Don Lemon’s show on X after a ‘tense’ interview
Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesElon Musk canceled Don Lemon’s show on X over some interview questions Musk didn’t like. Lemon says that Musk terminated their partnership just hours after a “tense” interview between him and the platform’s owner.
Read Article >Lemon doesn’t say what exactly transpired during his interview, but he does say that Musk “is mad” at him. “Throughout our conversation, I kept reiterating to him that although it was tense at times, I thought it was good for people to see and hear our exchange, and that they would learn from our conversation,” Lemon says in a video posted to X.
Mar 8
X adds “Articles.” They’re blog posts, but only for the most Premium posters.If you pay for the platform formerly known as Twitter, then you can post Articles on X. Better known as blog posts, they can feature stylized text, embedded images, and videos.
They’ll show up on the timeline with other tweets, but to publish one, you must belong to a Verified Organization or pay $16 monthly for the Premium Plus package. $8 Premium or $3 Basic subscribers will have to live without it, post regular tweets, or use Tumblr.
Mar 5
Twitter’s music label legal trouble might have legs
Image: The VergeThe music labels suing Twitter — now X — for copyright infringement can move forward with parts of their lawsuit. In a filing on Tuesday, US District Judge Aleta A. Trauger partially denied X’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it’s still not clear “to what extent X Corp. may be liable for the infringing acts of users on its platform.”
Read Article >Last year, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) sued X for $250 million on behalf of Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, and other major publishers.
Mar 4
Fired Twitter execs are suing Elon Musk for over $128 million
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty ImagesElon Musk fired a lot of people after he took over Twitter, but the first ones to go were several of its top executives. Now former CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and former general counsel Sean Edgett are suing Musk and the company now known as X, saying they’re owed more than $128 million in severance payments, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Read Article >Under Musk’s stewardship, X’s aversion to paying those it owes has practically become a trope (this is referenced in the lawsuit, along with a link to a page that tracks lawsuits against Twitter for non-payment and a note that the person who runs the site has been banned by X).
Feb 25
The latest ‘Woj bomb’ was just a scam NFT tweet from a hacked account
The fake NBA Top Shot tweet. Image: X / @wojespnPeople who still use NBA Top Shot were the primary targets of a scam tweet posted to ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski’s account on X Saturday evening at about 6:30PM ET. The tweet referred to NBA Top Shot as a “popular” NFT platform, despite the fact that current activity levels are a tiny fraction of what we saw during its peak, and falsely claimed a “free NFT pack is available to all customers.”
Read Article >The tweet linked visitors to a scam version of the NBA Top Shot website (the link went to a .org address instead of the official site’s .com URL) that could attempt to drain assets from people who give it access to their crypto wallets. About a half hour later, the official Top Shot account posted, saying, “There is NO Free Airdrop happening on NBA Top Shot at this time, Please be careful and always double check links.”