The sequence of events from Elon Musk acquiring Twitter to now is an incredible journey.

• Elon Musk bought a social media company for tens of billions, attempted to back out of the deal but couldn’t because of his ineptitude by signing away the ability to reneg on the deal.^[1](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/technology/twitter-musk-lawsuit-reasons.html)

• Then there was the freedom of speech advocacy from Musk where he ultimately unbanned racists and then began sharing bigoted Tweets. But it’s only freedom of speech for his bigoted supporters, when authoritarian governments ask Musk to censor people/tweets he abides by their requests.^[2](https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/twitter-has-complied-with-almost-every-government-request-for-censorship-since-musk-took-over-report-finds/)

• The site becomes inundated with the alt right, it’s become rife with bigotry.^[3](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/)

• There was the whole verified blue check mark debacle where verification became something you could pay for, with people making fake “official” accounts. For example a fake account impersonating a pharmaceutical company caused their stock to drop abruptly following a satirical tweet.^[4](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2022/11/12/fake-eli-lilly-twitter-account-claims-insulin-is-free-stock-falls-43/)

• Twitter engages in mass layoffs and multiple things break on the site. There are also reports that they can’t pay rent in certain locations across the globe. Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisors, as they record a 59% reduction in advertisement sales.^[5](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html)

• Elon Musk posts tweets seemingly apologizing for some of the changes and says he will follow the will of the people by posting polls for users to vote on policy changes. Musk asks if he should step down, to which the majority vote in favour of his removal. He then goes on a tirade about bots after losing in the poll. He goes on to say that only paid subscribers will be permited to vote in future polls. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.^[6](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/20/elon-musk-breaks-silence-after-10-million-twitter-users-vote-for-him-to-step-down)

• The crème de la crème is Elon Musk implementing a new restriction where you have to be logged in to see tweets and restricting the number of tweets you can view. Inadvertently DDOSing his own site.

1. New York Times - Why Elon Musk Can’t Back Out of Buying Twitter, According to Twitter

2. Forbes - Twitter Has Complied With Almost Every Government Request For Censorship Since Musk Took Over, Report Finds

3. The Atlantic -Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network

4. Forbes - Fake Eli Lilly Twitter Account Claims Insulin Is Free, Stock Falls 4.37%

5. New York Times - Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

6. The Guardian - Elon Musk breaks silence after 10 million Twitter users vote for him to step down

I’m a RiF refugee too. Used it for almost a decade, now that it’s gone I find the official app to be very difficult to use.

The Fediverse has been really cool and I’m glad I took the jump. I was apprehensive at first, but I’ve found Lemmy to be pretty fun so far!