A spokesperson for the regulator said it was also investigating concerns Grok has been producing “undressed images” of people.

The BBC has seen several examples on the social media platform X of people asking the chatbot to alter real images to make women appear in bikinis without their consent, as well as putting them in sexual situations.

X has not responded to a request for comment. On Sunday, it issued a warning to users not to use Grok to generate illegal content including child sexual abuse material.

Elon Musk also posted to say anyone who asks the AI to generate illegal content would “suffer the same consequences” as if they uploaded it themselves.

XAI’s own acceptable use policy prohibits “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner”, but people have been using Grok to digitally undress people without their consent.

Images of Catherine, Princess of Wales, were among many to have been digitally de-clothed by Grok users on X.

The BBC has approached Kensington Palace for comment.

The European Commission – the EU’s enforcement arm – said on Monday it was “seriously looking into this matter” and authorities in France, Malaysia and India were reportedly assessing the situation.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation told the BBC it had received reports from the public relating to images generated by Grok on X.

But it said it had so far not seen images which would cross the UK’s legal threshold to be considered child sexual abuse imagery.

‘Appalling’ and ‘disgusting’

Grok is a free virtual assistant – with some paid for premium features – which responds to X users’ prompts when they tag it in a post.

Samantha Smith, a journalist who discovered users had used the AI to create pictures of her in a bikini, told the BBC’s PM programme on Friday it had left her feeling “dehumanised and reduced into a sexual stereotype”.

“While it wasn’t me that was in states of undress, it looked like me and it felt like me and it felt as violating as if someone had actually posted a nude or a bikini picture of me,” she said.

Under the Online Safety Act (OSA), Ofcom says it is illegal to create or share intimate or sexually explicit images – including “deepfakes” created with AI – of a person without their consent.

Tech firms are also expected to take “appropriate steps” to reduce the risks of UK users encountering such content, and take it down “quickly” when made aware of it.

Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, said the reports were “deeply disturbing”.

She said the Committee found the OSA to be “woefully inadequate” and called it “a shocking example of how UK citizens are left unprotected whilst social media companies act with impunity”.

And she called for the government to take up recommendations by the Committee to compel social media platforms “to take greater responsibility for their content”.

Meanwhile, European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said on Monday it was aware of posts made by Grok “showing explicit sexual content,” as well as “some output generated with childlike images”.

“This is illegal,” he said, also calling it “appalling” and “disgusting”.

“This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe,” he said.

Regnier said X was “well aware” the EU was “very serious” about enforcing its rules for digital platforms – having handed X a €120m (£104m) fine in December for breaching its Digital Services Act.

A Home Office spokesperson said it was legislating to ban nudification tools, and under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tech would “face a prison sentence and substantial fines”.

“We started rapping from 1997 in Tema. Your favourite rapper Sarkodie is from Achimota, and he came to Tema to learn the genre” he stated.

In his new song titled “Statement,” Yaa Pono said he is one of the trailblazers, who has entertained Ghanaians through rap for over two decades.

Yaa Pono raps, addressing the perception that Sarkodie is a Tema native. “If you talk rap, it’s me. You cannot take me out, and I control the game.”

Yaa Pono’s rap is in response to lyrics in Sarkodie’s song “Brag,” where he appeared to diss other Ghanaian rappers.

“The time I no come then you people all be jons,” Sarkodie rapped, a line that didn’t sit well with Yaa Pono.

In his song, Yaa Pono insists that Sarkodie should pay respect to rap legends who paved the way for him to thrive in the industry.

“Give all the respect to who you believe… If Reggie and Obrafour didn’t come, we won’t be surviving [in this business],” he states.

Yaa Pono’s “Statement” is already trending on Twitter, as fans eagerly discuss the rapper’s bold declarations and his response to Sarkodie’s lyrics.

Check out some reactions concerning Yaa Pono’s statement below: 

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Taking to Twitter, he revealed plans to pay tuition fees for students during his upcoming school tour.

“I will be paying tuition fees for some students when my school tour commences, both high school and tertiary. Will pick 1 student from each school and cover their fees till they complete school,” Medikal tweeted.

I will be paying tusion fees for some students when my school tour commences, both high school and tertiary. Will pick 1 student from each school and cover their fees till they complete school.

— Medikalbyk (@Medikalbyk) May 16, 2024

Medikal’s announcement has garnered praise from fans and followers, highlighting his commitment to giving back to the community.

The rapper’s school tour is anticipated to provide further opportunities for him to connect with fans and make a positive impact on the lives of Ghanaian students.

Check out reactions below: 

The outage has sparked frustration among users, many of whom have taken to social media, particularly Twitter, to voice their complaints and share their experiences.

Reports of the outage began surfacing on various online platforms, with users encountering error messages when attempting to access Facebook and Instagram.

The disruption appears to be affecting users globally, leading to speculation about the cause of the outage.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram are yet to officially comment on the issue.

Check out reactions below:

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In a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the billionaire said a payment system was the only way to counter bots.

“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,” the Tesla and SpaceX boss said.

The BBC approached X for further details but has not yet received a statement from the company.

It is unclear whether this was just an off-the-cuff comment, or a signal of firmer plans that have yet to be announced.

Mr Musk has long said that his solution for getting rid of bots and fake accounts on the social media platform is charging for verification.

Since taking over Twitter last year he has looked to incentivise users to pay for an enhanced service, which is now called X Premium.

This has been done by giving paid subscribers more features, like longer posts and increased visibility on the platform.

However, users can currently still use X for free.

Although there is a clear financial interest for the company to charge users, Mr Musk insisted that getting people to pay for the service is aimed at tackling bots.

“A bot costs a fraction of a penny” to make he said. “But if somebody even has to pay a few dollars or something, some minor amount, the effective cost to bots is very high”.

X Premium currently costs $8 (£6.50) a month in the US. The price differs depending on which country a subscriber is in.

The world’s richest person said that he was now looking at cheaper options for users.

“We’re actually going to come up with a lower tier pricing. So we just want it to be just a small amount of money,” he said.

“This is a longer discussion, but in my view, this is actually the only defence against vast armies of bots,” Mr Musk added.

However, a risk is that by putting X behind a paywall it may lose a large chunk of its users. That in turn, could drive down advertising revenue, which currently accounts for the vast majority of the company’s income.

Mr Musk’s conversation with the Israeli prime minister also touched on antisemitism on X.

The platform has been accused by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) campaign group of not doing enough to stop antisemitic content.

In a statement, the organisation said that Mr Musk was “engaging with and elevating” antisemites.

Earlier this month, he said that the company would sue the ADL to “clear our platform’s name”.

In the conversation with Mr Netanyahu, Mr Musk reiterated that he was “against antisemitism”.

Mr Netanyahu accepted the balance between free speech and content moderation was a challenge but urged Mr Musk to get the balance right.

“I hope you find within the confines of the First Amendment, the ability to stop not only antisemitism… but any collective hatred of people that antisemitism represents,” he said.

“I know you’re committed to that”, Mr Netanyahu added.

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This bold move, he explained, is to protect himself from the barrage of trolls and negative comments that was affecting his mental health.

EL candidly admitted that, he had blocked nearly half of his followers on Twitter.

In an interview, he disclosed that, he took that decision after a conversation with fellow artist, Medikal on how he handles trolls on social media.

EL said Medikal urged him not to be overly concerned about what trolls write about him on social media.

The rapper therefore resolved to block any troll to preserve his personal aura, vibe, and energy.

EL added that, he is now unfazed by online negativity as he has developed a thick skin to match trolls boot for boot.

Users will not need a phone number for the features that will be available on Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and personal computers, Musk said in post on X on Thursday.

He did not give a timeline for the launch.

After rebranding Twitter as X, Musk signaled he would turn the platform into a super app offering a range of services from messaging and social networking to peer-to-peer payments.

The vision brings to mind Tencent’s (0700.HK) WeChat app – a ubiquitous part of daily life in China.

Musk, who continues to spearhead product development at X after appointing a new CEO in May, is also pushing to change how news links appear on the platform in a move that could undermine the reach of news publishers.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) said X Corp accused it of making “troubling and baseless claims” in its reports about the platform.

Elon Musk bought the platform last year promising to defend free speech.

Imran Ahmed, CCDH chief executive, said Mr Musk’s actions were “a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism”.

Twitter was rebranded as X by Mr Musk just over a week ago.

Since Mr Musk took over Twitter, the platform has been accused – including by former employees – of not doing enough to counter hate-speech and misinformation. Conversely, in December Mr Musk tweeted that hate speech was down by a third.

On Sunday the platform reinstated Kanye West after an almost eight-month ban for a series of offensive tweets – one of which appeared to show a symbol combining a swastika and the Star of David.

In the letter to the CCDH, X Corp lawyer Alex Spiro rejected the campaign group’s allegations that Twitter “fails to act on 99%” of hateful messages from accounts with Twitter Blue subscriptions.

Mr Spiro criticised the organisation’s methodology, writing that “the article is little more than a series of inflammatory, misleading, and unsupported claims based on a cursory review of random tweets.”

He also alleged that CCDH was supported by funding from “X Corp’s commercial competitors, as well as government entities and their affiliates”.

The letter accused the organisation of attempting to drive away advertisers and said X Corp was considering legal action. The company has lost lost almost half of its advertising revenue since his $44bn (£33.6bn) takeover, Mr Musk revealed in July.

In its reply CCDH’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said the allegations in the “ridiculous letter” had no basis in fact but were “a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online”.

CCDH says it does not accept funding from social media companies nor government bodies, “both of whom we praise or criticise without fear or favour”.

British politicians backed CCDH for its work on highlighting hate speech on social media.

Damian Collins, a British MP on the UK board of CCDH, said Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech didn’t seem to apply when his firm was criticised.

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• Goodbye to Twitter as Elon Musk rebrands platform to single letter, ‘X’

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The rebrand is another step in the ongoing transformation of Twitter, an online watering hole for hyper-connected people that aspires to become an app that can do “everything,” according to CEO Linda Yaccarino.

“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities,” she said on the platform. “Powered by A.I., X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”

Here’s what the shift means for X as Elon Musk seeks to reinvent Twitter, which he bought in 2022 for $44 billion. 

What will the app do now?

Musk has been vocal about his goal of turning Twitter into a so-called super-app, something akin to China’s WeChat. For now there’s no American equivalent, but industry experts imagine an app that encompasses basically anything a person wants to do online.

“Consumers of the app can do a lot of different things on the platform, whether it’s listen to a podcast, shop, watch videos,” said Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer of marketing firm Tinuiti.

Twitter already lets users engage in live audio conversations, send longer text messages and broadcast video, such as the new show former Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently launched on the platform. If Twitter’s push into paid subscriptions is successful, it could eventually expand into sharing some subscription revenue with users.

“In theory, they can become a more mainstream version of Patreon or other similar platforms,” Ahene said. “Whether they succeed remains to be seen. It’s not the reason people go to Twitter today, so to reposition the company … would take significant investment and time with what’s really a skeleton team.” 

What’s with the letter X?

Musk appears to have a longstanding fixation on the letter X, dubbing his very first startup X.com. (After a merger, the app became PayPal, although Musk reportedly pushed for it to keep the name X, according to biographer Walter Isaacson.) After buying Twitter, Musk reportedly texted Isaacson that he was “very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!”

The letter X surfaces throughout Musk’s other endeavors as well, including his space-exploration venture SpaceX,  his recently launched artificial-intelligence app xAI and the Model X, one of electric car company Tesla’s earliest models. Musk even refers to his son with singer Grimes, by the name X.

“It’s just X, the letter X,” he said on the Joe Rogan Experience recently, explaining how to pronounce  his son X Æ A-XII’s name.

Musk regained ownership of X.com six years ago. He formally changed Twitter’s legal name to X Corp in April. Over the weekend, X.com was redirected to Twitter.com, and on Monday a crane began to remove Twitter’s iconic bird logo from the company’s San Francisco headquarters. However, police stopped the work soon after it began.

What does this mean for Twitter?

For now, the platform’s rebrand is just a name change — no new features have been introduced, staying true to Musk’s apparent preferred product strategy of hype first, delivery much later.

But the name change suggests Musk is likely to keep control of the company for the near future, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. After Musk’s takeover in April of 2022, some observers believed the billionaire could make some changes to Twitter and quickly flip it to a different owner, Singh said.

“That option is off the table now given the name change — I don’t think there’s any other prospective buyer who will take it now,” he said.

What are the roadblocks?

To be sure, there are many ways an “everything app” could fail, from simply confusing its users to struggling to attract enough advertisers. 

“If you look at what Tesla’s done in terms of advertising, which is very little, [Musk’s] belief is that good product sells itself and you don’t need to advertise it. Meanwhile, you have many, many large brands and companies that spend millions of dollars on Twitter and would beg to differ,” said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer for Mediaocean, an advertising partner of Twitter’s. 

Expanding the platform’s reach to include things like shopping and paid subscription content could actually help it flourish in the long term by creating several revenue streams and making it less reliant on large companies’ willingness to spend money, analysts said. 

In the short term, building out those capabilities would require a massive investment in staff and infrastructure. It’s far from clear if a company that slashed about three-quarters of its staff and is now embroiled in multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills can deliver that. 

“The investment is a lot in terms of cloud infrastructure — we’re talking about $40 billion, $50 billion in upfront investments,” Singh said. “Twitter as a standalone app doesn’t have the infrastructure to become an everything app.”

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He pitched the app as a “friendly” rival to Twitter, which was bought by Elon Musk in October.

Experts say Threads could attract Twitter users unhappy with recent changes to the platform.

Threads allows users to post up to 500 characters, and has many features similar to Twitter.

Earlier, Mr Zuckerberg said keeping the platform “friendly… will ultimately be the key to its success”.

But Mr Musk responded: “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.”

When asked on Threads whether the app will be “bigger than Twitter”, Mr Zuckerberg said: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.

“Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

Competitors have criticised the amount of data the app might use. This may include health, financial, and browsing data linked to users’ identities, according to the Apple App Store.

Some users have also expressed concern that it is not possible to delete your Threads profile without deleting the associated Instagram profile. Meta told the BBC: “At this time, you can’t delete your Threads profile without deleting your Instagram account. This is something we’re working on. In the meantime, you can deactivate your Threads profile at any time.

“Deactivating your Threads profile will not deactivate your Instagram account”.

Deactivation will mean your Threads profile, your posts and interactions with others’ posts won’t be visible, the firm added.

Users can download and delete Threads data by visiting their Instagram settings, Meta says.

Threads is now available to download in over 100 countries including the UK, but not yet in the EU because of regulatory concerns.

‘Initial version’

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, called the new app an “initial version”, with extra features planned including the ability to interact with people on other social media apps like Mastodon.

“Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text,” the firm said prior to its launch.

Despite Threads being a standalone app, users log in using an Instagram account. Their Instagram username carries over, but there is an option to customize their profile specifically for Threads.

Users will also be able to choose to follow the same accounts they do on Instagram, Meta says. The app allows users to be private on Instagram, but public on Threads.

The new app’s release comes after criticism of Meta’s business practices.

Last year, Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen said the company had put “profits over safety” and criticised how the platform was moderated.

The company was also rocked by a scandal in which it allowed third parties, including British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, to access Facebook users’ personal data.

In an apparent reference to this controversial past, Mr Musk joked on Monday “thank goodness they’re so sanely run”.

There are several alternatives to Twitter available, such as Bluesky and Mastodon, but these have struggled to gain traction.

Threads has a significant advantage because it is connected to Instagram, and the hundreds of millions of users already on that platform.

How does Threads work?

On Threads, posts can be shared to Instagram and vice versa and can include links, photos, and videos of up to five minutes in length.

.

However, some early users on Wednesday reported problems when uploading images, hinting at teething problems.

Users see a feed of posts, which Meta calls “threads”, from people they follow as well as recommended content.

They are able to control who can “mention” them and filter out replies to posts that contain specific words.

Unfollowing, blocking, restricting or reporting other profiles is also possible, and any accounts users block on Instagram are automatically blocked on Threads.

While Meta stresses ties to Instagram, media coverage has focused on its similarity to Twitter, with some investors describing the app as a “Twitter killer”.

On Saturday, Twitter boss Elon Musk restricted the number of tweets users could see on his platform per day, citing extreme “data scraping”.

It was Mr Musk’s latest push to get users to sign up to Twitter Blue, the platform’s subscription service.

Twitter has also announced that its popular user dashboard TweetDeck will go behind a paywall in 30 days’ time.

Since Mr Musk took over, many users of Twitter have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the platform and his stewardship – citing erratic behaviour and political views.

Last month, Mr Musk and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg agreed – possibly in jest – to a cage fight, and Mr Zuckerberg’s early posts on Threads mentioned his interest in mixed martial arts.

While Threads will be available in the UK, it is not yet available in the EU because of regulatory uncertainty, particularly around the EU’s Digital Markets Act.

But the company says it is looking into launching in the EU.

That act lays down rules on how large companies such as Meta can share data between platforms that they own. The sharing of data between Threads and Instagram is part of the issue.

Meta maintains protecting privacy is fundamental to its business.

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“Rate Limit Exceeded” and “#TwitterDown” are the two top trending topics on the app in the US, for those who have used it.

The former had over 40,000 tweets as of Saturday noon.

Reports of outages began around 8 am EST, according to DownDetector, and shot up through the morning.

DownDetector showed more than 7,400 outage reports across the website as of noon EST.

Users, including CNN journalists, flagged that their feeds weren’t loading and that they were met with an error message saying, “Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again.” Others reported errors saying the site cannot retrieve tweets.

Musk changes policy

Hours after users began reporting the problems, billionaire owner Elon Musk tweeted that the site had applied temporary limits “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.”

Verified accounts are limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, he tweeted, while unverified accounts are limited to just 600. New unverified accounts are at 300 posts a day.

Musk began offering a blue verification check mark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue subscription service to grow revenue.

Later, Musk posted he will increase the limit “soon” to 8,000 tweets a day for verified users, 800 for unverified and 400 for new unverified accounts.

Many expressed their frustration with the connection problems. Other trending topics in the US included: “Wtf Twitter” and “Thanks Elon.”

Just yesterday, Twitter appeared to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account. It was unclear whether the change was an intentional policy update or a glitch.

Most of the reported problems Saturday were on the website, at 44%, followed by 39% of problems reported on the app.

CNN has reached out to Twitter for comment, but the platform responded with an automated poop emoji.

Twitter users faced similar wide-ranging service disruptions in March, one of the most significant outages since Elon Musk took over. More than 8,000 users reported disruptions in that instance.

Musk is trying to turn around the platform, which faced an exodus of advertisers, with the onboarding of a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino.

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The new CEO will assume the role at Twitter Inc., which recently changed its name to X Corp., in the coming weeks, Musk said. He did not provide a name. However, the Wall Street Journal reported — citing sources — that Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, was in talks for the job.

“Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” Musk said in a tweet.

Musk, who has had a chaotic reign as “Chief Twit” since buying the company in October, said he will become Twitter’s executive chair and chief technology officer, overseeing product, software and system operations.

In December, Musk ran a poll on the platform asking users whether he should step back as Twitter’s CEO, which ended with the majority of users voting in the affirmative. Musk said he would abide by the results of the poll but later backtracked, saying he would hand over the role “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” In February, he reiterated that he planned to find a replacement by the end of the year.

Musk has faced criticism for a series of policy changes at Twitter, which often came without clear justification and raised concerns about the impact on Twitter’s users.

He has also been attempting to convince advertisers to rejoin the platform, after many fled over concerns about hateful conduct on the platform, Twitter’s mass layoffs or questions about the company’s future. At the same time, he has been trying to sell users on a new paid subscription platform that includes the ability to pay for a blue verification check mark, but appears to have limited traction so far.

Musk — who runs or is involved in numerous other companies, including Tesla (TSLA) — has also faced criticism from Tesla (TSLA) shareholders concerned that he is distracted by Twitter.

Musk recently said that Twitter is now “trending to breakeven,” after previously saying it was at risk of bankruptcy. Now, the company’s new CEO will be tasked with trying to help turn around the struggling company and help Musk recoup some of the $44 billion spent acquiring the platform.

Even as Musk prepares to step back from the CEO role, he will likely maintain significant control over the future direction of the company. After taking over the company in October, Musk cleared out the C-Suite, dissolved the board and became both the CEO and sole director of the platform.

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The new legacy verification requirement has caused many to lose their blue checks across the world.

In Ghana, most of the celebrities, politicians, including companies and reputable government agencies are now required to pay the amount for extra services and advantages.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has disclosed he will be paying the verification fee for some celebrities including Stephen King and basketball star Lebron ‘King’ James.

Nonetheless, Ghanaian celebrities who have lost their blue checks includes Sarkodie, Stonebwoy, John Dumelo, Wendy Shay, Efya, Quamina MP and DKB among others.

Additionally, it is worth to note that some of them have paid, but it might take a while to update.

Check out the profile of celebrities without blue checks below:

MORE:

The entrepreneur-slash-singer has become the most followed woman on the social media platform.

At the time of writing this article, Rihanna has 108.2 million Twitter followers. She dethroned Katy Perry by less than five thousand followers.

While Rihanna is the most-followed woman on Twitter, overall, she’s actually in fourth place. Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Justin Bieber are in first, second and third place respectively. After Rihanna comes Perry, Cristiano Ronaldo and Taylor Swift.

Rihanna’s recent spark in followers could be due to a few things, including her Super Bowl halftime show in February, her Oscars performance, or news of her second pregnancy.

Additionally, Rihanna has been using social media to update fans on motherhood. She and boyfriend A$AP Rocky welcomed their first child in May 2022. In the recent weeks, she’s been uploading content around her son.

Her announcement of her second pregnancy also sparked conversations online, all of which have made her number one most followed woman.

Exclusive academic data plus testimony from Twitter users back up their allegations, suggesting hate is thriving under Mr Musk’s leadership, with trolls emboldened, harassment intensifying and a spike in accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.

Current and former employees of the company tell BBC Panorama that features intended to protect Twitter users from trolling and harassment are proving difficult to maintain, amid what they describe as a chaotic working environment in which Mr Musk is shadowed by bodyguards at all times. I’ve spoken to dozens, with several going on the record for the first time.

The former head of content design says everyone on her team – which created safety measures such as nudge buttons – has been sacked. She later resigned. Internal research by Twitter suggests those safety measures reduced trolling by 60%. An engineer working for Twitter told me “nobody’s taking care” of this type of work now, likening the platform to a building that seems fine from the outside, but inside is “on fire”.

Twitter has not replied to the BBC’s request for comment.

My investigation also reveals:

• Concerns that child sexual exploitation is on the rise on Twitter and not being sufficiently raised with law enforcement
• Targeted harassment campaigns aimed at curbing freedom of expression, and foreign influence operations – once removed daily from Twitter – are going “undetected”, according to a recent employee.
• Exclusive data showing how misogynistic online hate targeting me is on the rise since the takeover, and that there has been a 69% increase in new accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.
• Rape survivors have been targeted by accounts that have become more active since the takeover, with indications they’ve been reinstated or newly created.

Abuse on Twitter is nothing new for me – I’m a reporter who shares my coverage of disinformation, conspiracies and hate there. But throughout most of last year I noticed it steadily lessening across all of the social media sites. And then in November I realised it had got worse on Twitter again.

It turns out, I was right. A team from the International Center for Journalists and the University of Sheffield have been tracking the hate I receive, and their data revealed the abuse targeted at me on Twitter had more than tripled since Mr Musk took over, compared with the same period in the year before.

All of the social media sites have been under pressure to tackle online hate and harmful content – but they say they’re taking measures to deal with it. Measures that no longer seem to be top of the agenda at Twitter.

In San Francisco, the home of Twitter’s headquarters, I set out to look for answers. What better place to get them than from an engineer – responsible for the computer code that makes Twitter work. Because he’s still working there, he’s asked us to conceal his identity, so we’re calling him Sam.

“For someone on the inside, it’s like a building where all the pieces are on fire,” he revealed.

“When you look at it from the outside the façade looks fine, but I can see that nothing is working. All the plumbing is broken, all the faucets, everything.”

He says the chaos has been created by the huge disruption in staffing. At least half of Twitter’s workforce have been sacked or chosen to leave since Musk bought it. Now people from other teams are having to shift their focus, he says.

“A totally new person, without the expertise, is doing what used to be done by more than 20 people,” says Sam. “That leaves room for much more risk, many more possibilities of things that can go wrong.”

He says previous features still exist but those who designed and maintained them have left – he thinks they are now left unmanned.

“There are so many things broken and there’s nobody taking care of it, that you see this inconsistent behaviour,” he tells me.

The level of disarray, in his view, is because Mr Musk doesn’t trust Twitter employees. He describes him bringing in engineers from his other company – electric car manufacturer Tesla – and asking them to evaluate engineers’ code over just a few days before deciding who to sack. Code like that would take “months” to understand, he tells me.

He believes this lack of trust is betrayed by the level of security Mr Musk surrounds himself with.

“Wherever he goes in the office, there are at least two bodyguards – very bulky, tall, Hollywood movie-[style] bodyguards. Even when [he goes] to the restroom,” he tells me.

He thinks for Mr Musk it’s about money. He says cleaning and catering staff were all sacked – and that Mr Musk even tried to sell the office plants to employees.

Lisa Jennings Young, Twitter’s former head of content design, was one of the people who specialised in introducing features designed to protect users from hate. Twitter was a hotbed for trolling long before Mr Musk took over, but she says her team had made good headway at limiting this. Internal Twitter research, seen by the BBC, appears to back this up.

“It was not at all perfect. But we were trying, and we were making things better all the time,” she says. It is the first time she’s publicly spoken of her experience since she left after Mr Musk’s takeover.

Ms Jennings Young’s team worked on several new features including safety mode, which can automatically block abusive accounts. They also designed labels applied to misleading tweets, and something called the “harmful reply nudge”. The “nudge” alerts users before they send a tweet in which AI technology has detected trigger words or harmful language.

Twitter’s own research, seen by the BBC, appears to show the “nudge” and other safety tools being effective.

“Overall 60% of users deleted or edited their reply when given a chance through the nudge,” she says. “But what was more interesting, is that after we nudged people once, they composed 11% fewer harmful replies in the future.”

These safety features were being implemented around the time my abuse on Twitter seemed to reduce, according to data collated by the University of Sheffield and International Center for Journalists. It’s impossible to directly correlate the two, but given what the evidence tells us about the efficacy of these measures, it’s possible to draw a link.

But after Mr Musk took over the social media company in late October 2022, Lisa’s entire team was laid off, and she herself chose to leave in late November. I asked Ms Jennings Young what happened to features like the harmful reply nudge.

“There’s no-one there to work on that at this time,” she told me. She has no idea what has happened to the projects she was doing.

So we tried an experiment.

She suggested a tweet that she would have expected to trigger a nudge. “Twitter employees are lazy losers, jump off the Golden Gate bridge and die.” I shared it on a private profile in response to one of her tweets, but to Ms Jennings Young’s surprise, no nudge was sent.

Another tweet with offensive language we shared was picked up – but Lisa says the nudge should have picked up a message wishing death on a user, not just swear words. As Sam had predicted, it didn’t seem to be working as it was designed to.

During this investigation, I’ve had messages from many people who’ve told me how the hate they receive on Twitter has been increasing since Mr Musk took over – sharing examples of racism, antisemitism and misogyny.

Ellie Wilson, who lives in Glasgow, was raped while at university and began posting about that experience on social media last summer. At the time, she received a supportive response on Twitter.

But when she tweeted about her attacker in January after he was sentenced, she was subject to a wave of hateful messages. She received abusive and misogynistic replies – with some even telling her she deserved to be raped.

“[What] I find most difficult [is] the people that say that I wasn’t raped or that this didn’t happen and that I’m lying. It’s sort of like a secondary trauma,” Ms Wilson told me.

Her Twitter following was smaller before the takeover, but when I looked into accounts targeting her with hate this time around, I noticed the trolls’ profiles had become more active since the takeover, suggesting they’d been suspended previously and recently reinstated.

Some of the accounts had even been set up around the time of Mr Musk’s takeover. They appeared to be dedicated to sending out hate, without profile pictures or identifying features.

Several follow and interact with content from popular accounts that have been accused of promoting misogyny and hate – reinstated on Twitter after Musk decided to restore thousands of suspended accounts, including that of controversial influencer Andrew Tate.

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“By allowing those people a platform, you’re empowering them. And you’re saying, ‘This is OK, you can do that.’”

Several of the accounts also targeted other rape survivors she’s in contact with.

Andrew Tate did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

New research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – a UK think tank that investigates disinformation and hate – echoes what I’ve uncovered about the troll accounts targeting Ellie.

It shows that tens of thousands of new accounts have been created since Mr Musk took over, which then immediately followed known abusive and misogynistic profiles – 69% higher than before he was in charge.

The research suggests these abusive networks are now growing – and that Mr Musk’s takeover has created a “permissive environment” for the creation and use of these kinds of accounts.

On Saturday, he stated his decision to block everyone from his Twitter profile and gave out his reason for doing the same.

It was in October last year when the Tesla CEO formally took over Twitter. Since then, the billionaire introduced several erratic policy changes in the company. 

“I have unblocked everyone I blocked, apart from scammers. I recommend others do the same. Negative feedback is a good thing,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.

In the past, Musk has been an ardent supporter of establishing free speech on the social media platform.

However, he has kept a strong stance against the scammers and bots operating on the platform.

Musk’s recent move also came amid the reports that Twitter CEO is frustrated about the fact that he is not getting enough engagement on the social media platform. 

Is the Twitter layoff saga still on?

In November, Musk sat down with his remaining Twitter employees after firing half of the workforce from the company and announced that the lay-off saga is now over.

However, The Verge reported on February 22 that the social media site is still firing people. Last week, dozens of Twitter employees across the sales and engineering departments were laid off.

Some of the employees who were fired were directly reporting to the Tesla CEO.

With this, Twitter had three rounds of lay-offs after Musk promised that the storm is over, the Verge reported. 

Following the Saturday tweet, one Twitter user expressed his concerns about people giving death threats to others on the social media platform.

“True, but people giving death threats and things of that nature are not cool. So these people need to stay blocked,” the user commented on Musk’s Saturday tweet. In response, Musk made it clear that the death threat will result in “immediate account suspension”.

“Death threats should result in immediate account suspension. Lmk if that’s not happening,” Musk responded.

While Musk’s decision to unblock users received a mixed response among netizens, the concerns over the prevalence of death threats and trolling on the much-loved networking site remain.  

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A total of 57.5% voted “yes” after Mr Musk asked his 122 million followers whether he should stand down.

Mr Musk, who bought Twitter for $44bn (£36bn), said before the poll closed that he would abide by the result.

The technology tycoon, who also runs Tesla and Space X, has faced much criticism since taking over the site.

Mr Musk is yet to comment since the poll closed. Even if he were to resign as chief executive, he would remain as Twitter’s owner.

About 17.5 million people voted in his poll on Monday.

In the past Mr Musk has obeyed Twitter polls. He’s fond of quoting the phrase “vox populi, vox dei”, a Latin phrase which roughly means “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.

A former Twitter member of staff, who left the company recently, told the BBC that Mr Musk was “showing himself to be the incompetent fool we all knew he was”.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, they added: “His investors are surely looking at this now and questioning whether he was the right horse to back.

“I imagine he’s getting pressure from investors to step down and is using this poll to make it look like he’s following the will of the people instead of the will of those paying his bills.”

Minutes before the polled closed, the founder of crypto exchange Binance replied to Mr Musk saying he should “stay the course” and not step down.

Changpeng Zhao is thought to be one of Twitter’s investors and said in May he had backed Mr Musk taking over by making a $500m investment.

Dan Ives, senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, told the BBC before the poll closed that he believed the vote would “ultimately” lead to the “ending of Musk’s reign as chief executive of Twitter”.

There has been a flurry of controversial changes at Twitter since Mr Musk bought the social media site.

He has fired about half of its staff and attempted a rollout of Twitter’s paid-for verification feature before putting it on pause. The feature was relaunched last week.

He has also been criticised for his approach to content moderation, with some civil liberties groups accusing him of taking steps that will increase hate speech and misinformation.

On Friday, Mr Musk was condemned by the United Nations and European Union over Twitter’s decision to suspend some journalists who cover the social media firm.

The UN tweeted that media freedom is “not a toy”, while the EU threatened Twitter with sanctions.

‘Circus show’

Mr Ives said the last few weeks and months had been a “black eye for Musk and a black eye for Tesla” which he said was the “golden child” because it is where most of the billionaire’s wealth is.

“Twitter right now – it’s a quicksand situation and I think it’s gotten worse since Musk took over Twitter. It’s been a circus show,” he added.

“I think ultimately in the next 24 hours Musk will probably name a new temporary CEO of Twitter.”

After starting the poll, Mr Musk tweeted: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

He added later: “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.”

Mr Ives said he believed Mr Musk had realised he “cannot balance” being the boss of Twitter as well as his electric car company Tesla and space rocket firm SpaceX.

“The biggest problem is the more controversy he creates, advertisers leave and they run for the hills and that’s 90% of revenue for Twitter,” he added.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said investors at Tesla would be “closely watching” Mr Musk’s poll.

“Given how much of a distraction Musk’s tenure at Twitter has become, shareholders in the electric vehicle manufacturer will be breathing a big sigh of relief if he steps back from Twitter and gets back to the day job at Tesla,” he said.

“For someone who sets so much store by work ethic, Musk sure seems to spend a lot of time on social media. With Tesla shares having more than halved year-to-date, Musk needs to roll up his sleeves and get his main business back on the road.”

Musk’s electric car firm has fallen sharply in value, with some saying his obsession with Twitter is destroying the brand.

He received the backing of several investors to help get his purchase of the site over the line.

In May, it was reported the backers included massive firms such as Fidelity, which is known for managing retirement accounts, and Sequoia Capital, which has backed other technology firms Apple, Google and Airbnb.

Others are thought to include Binance chief founder Changpeng Zhao, Oracle co-founder and Mr Musk’s friend, Larry Ellison, sovereign wealth fund Qatar Holding and Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Mr Musk also announced on Twitter that major policy changes would be voted on in the future.

On Sunday, Twitter said it would shut down accounts solely designed to promote other social media platforms, however, the web page detailing the policy appears to no longer exist.

This evening, Musk logged into a Twitter Space to try to explain why, and ran a poll asking when the journalists should be unbanned — in both instances, things didn’t exactly go his way.

The reporters who have been banned all seem to have recently tweeted about Musk’s attempts to crack down on the sharing of the whereabouts of his private jet. Apparently, though, accounts that can’t post can still join a Twitter Spaces live audio chat. In a Space that included Harwell, Binder, and the ElonJet account, Musk eventually tried to explain himself.

In that conversation, Musk accused the journalists of “ban evasion.” Once the ElonJet account had been banned from Twitter, its owner set up accounts on Facebook and Mastodon. By posting links to those accounts, he argued, the journalists were trying to get around his ban.

The Washington Post’s Harwell asked Musk how Musk’s decision to ban accounts sharing the other ElonJet sites — as well as journalists reporting on the incident — was different from Twitter’s earlier treatment of a New York Post story about a laptop containing Hunter Biden’s personal information. In 2020, Twitter made a moderation decision to block links to The New York Post story.

Details on that moderation decision were released on Twitter earlier this month — with Musk’s support. (In April, he tweeted that suspending The New York Post’s account because of the story “was obviously incredibly inappropriate.) Musk even teased the release of the information by saying, “This will be awesome” and tweeting popcorn emoji. In the course of the release, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s email address was revealed.

Musk replied to Harwell by saying, “You dox, you get suspended. End of story, that’s it.” He then left the space.

In an email to The Verge, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, pointed to a policy update the company made yesterday prohibiting the sharing of “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.”

“Without commenting on any specific accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk,” Irwin said in the email. “We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts.”

In a tweet earlier in the evening, Musk said of the bans: “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service” he said. The ElonJet account in the links he objected to automatically shares publicly available information on the flight path for Elon Musk’s private jet. (It does not list the passenger manifest.)

Accounts like ElonJet —and the similarly suspended CelebJet and RUOligarchJets — are frequently used by climate activists to highlight the egregious effect private jets have on the environment. Musk, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, and Taylor Swift have all come under fire this year for using jets when alternative means of transportation could be used with less deleterious effects on the environment.

Musk has long had issue with the location of his private jet being shared in real time. At one point, he went so far as to offer thousands of dollars to the manager of the @ElonJet account to take it offline. On Wednesday, he implied in a tweet that the account had been used by a “crazy stalker” to find and climb on the hood of a car carrying one of his children. (It is unclear how the location of the jet led to a car.) He then tweeted a video of the alleged stalker and his license plate with the caption: “Anyone recognize this person or car?”

That same day, Twitter suspended the @ElonJet account, the account belonging to its owner Jack Sweeney, and other accounts he managed that were tracking the locations of private jets using publically accessible data. Today, the enforcement was ratcheted up to include journalists tweeting about the situation.

Musk also ran a poll asking when he should un-suspend the journalists who tweeted about “ElonJet.” “Now” won with 43 percent of the vote (“Longer” was runner up with 38.1 percent). In response, Musk said he’d redo the poll because the original had too many options. He then posted a second poll, which will run for 24 hours. As of this writing, “now” is still winning.

Musk’s polls supposedly have weight in his moderation decisions. Previously, he has said he unbanned Trump, as well as other previously suspended accounts, based on poll results.

It also appears that Twitter is not letting people post links to some instances of the competing decentralized social network Mastodon.

Specifically, our tests showed an error saying “we can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful” when trying to tweet links to Mastodon.social, Mastodon.lol, Mastodon.xyz, Mastodon.au, Mastodon.ie, Mastodon.scot, Mastodonapp.uk, Mastodon.world, and others. Earlier today, Mastodon’s Twitter account was suspended after it tweeted a link to the ElonJet Mastodon account.

“I have not received any communications from Twitter whatsoever, other than a notice at the top of my feed that I am permanently banned and in read-only mode,” said Rupar, one of the reporters who was suspended, in an email to The Verge. “I have no idea what could have prompted this.”

In a story on his Substack, he said that yesterday he posted a tweet “noting that the ElonJet account that was suspended from Twitter was still active on Facebook, with a link to the Facebook page”

A statement from The New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander echoes the sentiment, saying that “neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

The suspensions don’t appear to be entirely limited to journalists. Commentator Keith Olbermann has been suspended, as has the Twitter account for ADS-B Exchange, which describes itself as “the world’s largest source of open unblocked unfiltered flight data for enthusiasts.” The account recently quote-retweeted someone trying to track Musk’s jet, according to a WayBack Machine archive.

Musk has previously promised to make Twitter a hub for “free speech,” and held up the @ElonJet account as the type of thing he would permit on the platform, even though it could cause him harm. “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk” he tweeted on November 6th.

Update December 15th, 9:40PM ET: Added information that Twitter appears to be blocking links to certain Mastodon instances.

Update December 15th, 9:49PM ET: Added statement from CNN, and additional examples of blocked Mastodon links.

Update December 15, 10:48PM ET: Added Musk’s tweet calling the link of public information sourced by the ElonJet account “assassination coordinates”.

The team has hired a lawyer and sent a letter to the company demanding it complies with the West African nation’s labor laws, provide them with additional severance pay and other relevant benefits, in line with what other Twitter employees will receive.

They have also petitioned the Ghanaian government to compel Twitter to “adhere to the laws of Ghana on redundancy and offer the employees a fair and just negotiation and redundancy pay,” according to a letter to the country’s Chief Labour Officer obtained by CNN.

“It is clear that Twitter, Inc. under Mr Elon Musk is either deliberately or recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana, is operating in bad faith and in a manner that seeks to silence and intimidate former employees into accepting any terms unilaterally thrown at them,” the letter states.

Twitter laid off all but one of the African employees just four days after the company opened a physical office in the capital Accra following Musk’s takeover. But the staff of about a dozen were not offered severance pay, which they say is required by Ghana’s labor laws, based on their employment contracts. They also claim they were not informed about the next steps — unlike employees in the United States and Europe — until a day after CNN reported on their situation.

CNN contacted Twitter for comment but received no response.

In the letter to Twitter Ghana Ltd, obtained by CNN, the African employees rejected a “Ghana Mutual Separation Agreement” from Twitter, which they say was sent to their personal emails offering final pay that the company claims to have been arrived at after a negotiation.

Several members of the team and their lawyer told CNN that there was no such negotiation on severance pay. They claim it was below what is required by law and contradicts what Musk tweeted that departing employees would receive.

“Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk tweeted. Twitter informed the Ghana-based employees in early November that they would be paid until their last day of employment — December 4. And they will continue to receive full pay and benefits during the 30-day notice period.

“It was very vague, did not talk about outstanding leave or paid time off, and just asked us to sign if we agree. I never bothered to go back to the document because it is rubbish and is still in violation of labor laws here,” one former employee told CNN on condition of anonymity.

The Accra-based team accuses Twitter of dealing with them in bad faith, not being transparent, and discriminating against them compared to laid-off employees in other jurisdictions.

“The employees are distressed, humiliated, and intimidated by this turn of events. There are non-Ghanaian employees, some with young families, who moved here to take up jobs and have now been left unceremoniously in the lurch, with no provision for repatriation expenses and no way to communicate with Twitter, Inc. and discuss or plead their case,”the notice to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer says.

Their attorney, Carla Olympio, says the sudden termination of almost the whole team violated Ghanaian employment law because it is considered a “redundancy” which requires three-month notice to authorities and a negotiation on redundancy pay.

“In stark contrast to internal company assurances given to Twitter employees worldwide prior to the takeover, it seems that little attempt was made to comply with Ghana’s labor laws, and the protections enshrined therein for workers in circumstances where companies are undertaking mass layoffs due to a restructuring or reorganization,” she wrote in a statement to CNN.

The employees said in their appeal to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer that Twitter’s formal entry into the continent started with “great fanfare and with the support of the government,”and they expect similar attention to their plight now.

They are demanding 3 months’ gross salary as severance pay, repatriation expenses for non-Ghanaian staff, vesting of stock options provided in their contracts, and other benefits such as healthcare continuation that were offered to staff worldwide.

CNN has reached out to Ghana’s Employment and Labor Relations ministry for comment.

The Green falcons, ranked 51st in the world, flipped the game on its head to hit the two time winners twice in 10-minute period to grab three vital points.

Lionel Scaloni’s men came into the tournament as one of the favourites, on the back of a 36-game unbeaten run that included winning the 2021 Copa America.

The tournament will certainly be Messi’s closing act on the international stage.

Unsurprisingly, many from afar were quick to mock him on social media over his standing as the GOAT in football following their defeat.

Check out some of the reactions:

Posting from an iPhone on Sunday, the artiste formerly known as Kanye West first tested that he was still unblocked—his account had been temporarily suspended and restored at the end of October, which Musk said was not his decision—before following up with “Shalom : )”.

Ye’s earlier suspension had been due to an anti-Semitic tweet. The hip hop artiste last month agreed to buy social media platform Parler, embraced by conservatives as an alternative to Twitter.

Musk responded positively to Ye’s initial tweet, tweeting “Don’t kill what ye hate, Save what ye love.”

Twitter’s new leader, who’s also chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, spent the weekend polling his followers on the platform whether to restore the access of Donald Trump, the former U.S. president who was permanently suspended following the January 6 breaching of the US capitol.

Some 52% responded in the affirmative and Trump is now clear to return—though he’s responded saying that he’ll stick to his own social network, Truth Social.

Musk’s latest tweet depicts Twitter as a drug that Trump will be sorely tempted to return to.

The billionaire Twitter owner’s courtship of the network’s controversial figures—beside himself—threatens to further alienate advertisers, who have been wary about associating their brands with the service in recent times.

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“The people have spoken,” tweeted Mr Musk, saying that 51.8% of more than 15 million Twitter users voted for the ban to be lifted.

But the former US president may not return to the platform, earlier saying: “I don’t see any reason for it”.

His account was suspended in 2021 due to the risk of incitement of violence.

Twitter’s previous management acted just days after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January.

Hundreds of rioters entered the complex as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. The ensuing violence led to the deaths of four civilians and a police officer.

Soon after the riots, Donald Trump’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts, which all had tens of millions of followers – were also suspended.

Several months later, he launched his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Earlier this week, the Republican announced that he would once again run for the US presidency in 2024.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, took control of Twitter in October in a $44bn (£37bn) deal.

He immediately embarked on a series of radical changes within the social media giant, amid concerns that he might loosen Twitter’s regulations on hate speech and misinformation.

With just over a week before the US midterm elections on 8 November, he responded to questions about whether he would reinstate Mr Trump’s account by tweeting: “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!”

Earlier this week, he told employees that the company’s office buildings would be temporarily closed, with immediate effect.

The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after Mr Musk called on them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.

Will Trump take his megaphone back?

Donald Trump knew this poll was significant – even though his official position is that he doesn’t want to return to Twitter.

He urged his followers on Truth Social to take part in the poll. “Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special”, he said.

It’s an odd statement. If Mr Trump isn’t thinking of returning, why urge his followers to vote?

Part of Mr Trump’s dilemma is that Truth Social has relatively few users compared with Twitter. In September, app analysts Sensor Tower estimated that just 92,000 people downloaded Truth Social. Nearly 15 million people downloaded Twitter over the same period.

Mr Trump would love to have his megaphone back. Twitter was his favourite app, a platform he used to drum up support, and dominate the news cycle.

But while he would have a far greater reach on Twitter, he has a financial interest in making Truth Social succeed. The app is owned by the Trump Media & Technology Group, and if he were to go back to Twitter, it’s hard to see how Truth Social could continue.

That helps to explain why we are not seeing Donald Trump clamouring to come back to Twitter – yet.

But in the longer term, he will have to weigh up financial decisions with political ones, and with intentions to run for president again – don’t rule him out returning.

“The people have spoken,” tweeted Mr Musk, saying that 51.8% of more than 15 million Twitter users voted for the ban to be lifted.

But the former US president may not return to the platform, earlier saying: “I don’t see any reason for it”.

His account was suspended in 2021 due to the risk of incitement of violence.

Twitter’s previous management acted just days after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January.

Hundreds of rioters entered the complex as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. The ensuing violence led to the deaths of four civilians and a police officer.

Soon after the riots, Donald Trump’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts, which all had tens of millions of followers – were also suspended.

Several months later, he launched his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Earlier this week, the Republican announced that he would once again run for the US presidency in 2024.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, took control of Twitter in October in a $44bn (£37bn) deal.

He immediately embarked on a series of radical changes within the social media giant, amid concerns that he might loosen Twitter’s regulations on hate speech and misinformation.

With just over a week before the US midterm elections on 8 November, he responded to questions about whether he would reinstate Mr Trump’s account by tweeting: “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!”

Earlier this week, he told employees that the company’s office buildings would be temporarily closed, with immediate effect.

The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after Mr Musk called on them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.

Donald Trump knew this poll was significant – even though his official position is that he doesn’t want to return to Twitter.

He urged his followers on Truth Social to take part in the poll. “Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special”, he said.

It’s an odd statement. If Mr Trump isn’t thinking of returning, why urge his followers to vote?

Part of Mr Trump’s dilemma is that Truth Social has relatively few users compared with Twitter. In September, app analysts Sensor Tower estimated that just 92,000 people downloaded Truth Social. Nearly 15 million people downloaded Twitter over the same period.

Mr Trump would love to have his megaphone back. Twitter was his favourite app, a platform he used to drum up support, and dominate the news cycle.

But while he would have a far greater reach on Twitter, he has a financial interest in making Truth Social succeed. The app is owned by the Trump Media & Technology Group, and if he were to go back to Twitter, it’s hard to see how Truth Social could continue.

That helps to explain why we are not seeing Donald Trump clamouring to come back to Twitter – yet.

But in the longer term, he will have to weigh up financial decisions with political ones, and with intentions to run for president again – don’t rule him out returning.

The departures highlight the reluctance of some of Twitter’s 3,000 or so employees to remain at a company where Musk earlier fired half of the workforce including top management, and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and an intense pace.

Musk took to Twitter late on Thursday and said that he was not worried about resignations as “the best people are staying.”

The billionaire owner also added: “We just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage…,” without elaborating.

Musk met some top employees on Thursday to try to convince them to stay, said one current employee and a recently departed employee who is in touch with Twitter colleagues.

The company also notified employees that it will close its offices and cut badge access until Monday, according to two sources. Security officers began kicking some employees out of one office on Thursday evening, one source said.

Over 110 Twitter employees across at least four continents had announced their decision to leave in public Twitter posts reviewed by Reuters, though each resignation could not be independently verified. About 15 employees, many in ad sales, posted their intention to stay at the company.

In Twitter’s internal chat tool, over 500 employees wrote farewell messages on Thursday, a source familiar with the notes said.

A poll on the workplace app Blind, which verifies employees through their work email addresses and allows them to share information anonymously, had showed 42% of 180 respondents opting for “Taking exit option, I’m free!”

A quarter said they had chosen to stay “reluctantly,” and only 7% of the poll participants said they “clicked yes to stay, I’m hardcore.”

The exact number of employees intending to leave the company could not be immediately established.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

PLATFORM STABILITY

The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees.

On Thursday evening, the version of the Twitter app used by employees began slowing down, according to one source familiar with the matter, who estimated that the public version of Twitter was at risk of breaking during the night.

“If it does break, there is no one left to fix things in many areas,” the person said, who declined to be named for fear of retribution.

Reports of Twitter outages rose sharply from less than 50 to about 350 reports on Thursday evening, according to website Downdetector, which tracks website and app outages.

In a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave, according to the former employee.

And in a private Slack group for Twitter’s current and former employees, about 360 people joined a new channel titled “voluntary-layoff,” said a person with knowledge of the Slack group.

A separate poll on Blind asked staffers to estimate what percentage of people would leave Twitter based on their perception. More than half of respondents estimated at least 50% of employees would leave.

Early on Wednesday, Musk had emailed Twitter employees, saying: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore”.

The email asked staff to click “yes” if they wanted to stick around. Those who did not respond by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday would be considered to have quit and given a severance package, the email said.

As the deadline approached, employees scrambled to figure out what to do.

One team within Twitter decided to take the leap together and leave the company, one employee who is leaving told Reuters.

Blue hearts and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its internal chatrooms on Thursday, the second time in two weeks as Twitter employees said their goodbyes.

Notable departures included Tess Rinearson, who was tasked with building a cryptocurrency team at Twitter. Rinearson tweeted the blue heart and salute emojis.

In an apparent jab at Musk’s call for employees to be “hardcore,” the Twitter profile bios of several departing engineers on Thursday described themselves as “softcore engineers” or “ex-hardcore engineers.”

As the resignations rolled in, Musk cracked a joke on Twitter.

“How do you make a small fortune in social media?” he tweeted. “Start out with a large one.”

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A source told the BBC that only one person was left in the almost 20-member team.

“The company is re-organising its operations as a result of a need to reduce costs,” read the email to staff from Fidelma Callaghan, Director of People Services.

Mr Musk promised to make big changes at Twitter including laying off workers worldwide.

The employment termination emails were sent to the Ghana employees personal accounts having been denied access to their work ones.

The termination of employment notice warned staff not to “contact or deal with any customers, clients, authorities, banks, suppliers or other employees of the company and are required to inform the company if contacted”.

“It’s very insulting. The entire thing. From the mail to the lack of next steps to the tone of the letter. Just everything. Ridiculously insulting,” an affected staff told the BBC.

The letter told staff that their last day at work will be 4 December, but warned them against seeking any other employment before the date.

“You must ensure that the company knows where you will be and how you can be contacted during each working day to ensure your availability during the transition of responsibilities,” the notice reads.

Employment law in Ghana requires at least three months’ notice of termination.

It also demands redundancy pay which is to be negotiated between the organisation, and the employee or trade union.

Last year, Twitter announced it was opening its first Africa office, but its commitment to the continent is now in question.

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This happened just a week after business tycoon and owner of Tesla cars, Elon Musk, took over ownership of Twitter.

Drsey’s new app, which is in its testing stage, already has over 30,000 people signed up for its beta testing within two days of the announcement.

According to Business Insider, Bluesky’s website stated that the new platform gives creators independence from platforms and developers and the freedom to design, allowing users to choose their experience.

Dorsey co-founded Twitter 17 years ago and briefly served as its CEO. He returned as CEO from 2015 to 2021 when he resigned.

Meanwhile, Bluesky has announced a number of job openings which include mobile application developer, react native expert, animation creator, and UI site manager.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email. The New York Times and Washington Post both reported on the layoffs and cited the internal email.

All employees will receive an email on Friday, the notice said. Those who will keep their jobs will get an email to their work account, those being laid off will receive a notification to their personal email. Employees were reminded not to disclose “confidential company information” on social media or with press.

The layoffs come as Musk was speculated to cut as much as 50% of Twitter’s workforce, just days after becoming the head of the company he purchased for $44bn. That could mean thousands of jobs lost, as the company had more than 7,000 employees at the end of 2021 according to a regulatory filing.

Twitter said in the email to employees that its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended in order “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data”.

Musk already fired several top Twitter executives immediately upon taking control of the company, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal, finance chief, Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.

Musk’s job slashes come as part of a broader effort to make the company profitable after purchasing it for $44bn, a price he admitted constituted “overpaying”. To complete the deal, Musk put forward a combination of his own funding and loans of approximately $13bn, which he is now facing pressure to pay back.

On Thursday, Musk directed Twitter’s teams to free up $1bn in annual infrastructure cost savings by slashing funding for cloud services and servers. He has floated a number of ideas to make profit at Twitter, including a plan to charge for “verified” badges, and creating an “everything app” that would combine several platforms into one.

The Washington Post, citing an internal source, said the pending layoffs were anticipated to impact the company broadly, with cuts in marketing, product, engineering, legal, and trust and safety.

Experts in misinformation and civil rights advocates have warned that cutting Twitter staff just days before midterm elections in the US could have grave consequences, as the platform has already struggled with content moderation and will now have fewer resources.

“With the horrific attack on Paul Pelosi, we only just witnessed how social media conspiracy theories can result in real-world violence, yet Musk is dangerously speed-running through this process,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director at the Tech Oversight Project.

Twitter employees shared messages of support with one another on the platform on Thursday as layoffs loomed, many using the workplace hashtag #OneTeam.

On Thursday evening into Friday morning, Twitter employees began tweeting about being fired – with some saying they’d learned by being locked out of their work email, laptops, or the company’s internal communications app, Slack.

#OneTeam forever. Loved you all so much,” Senior community manager Simon Balmain tweeted. “So sad it had to end this way.”

“Can a heart be full and broken at the same time?” the company’s head of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, James Loduca tweeted before removing references to Twitter from his Twitter bio.

The upheaval wasn’t just limited to Twitter’s US operations. In Australia, the company’s local marketing manager also tweeted on Friday “bye Twitter, it’s been a ride.”

Workplace morale has reportedly been suffering for months as the chaotic saga of whether Musk would purchase Twitter wore on, with employees quitting in droves.

The initial price of $20 which is equivalent to GH₵ 281 (at the time of this story) caused an uproar on the digital platform with many celebrities voicing out against it.

Some have labelled it outrageous and not in line with the company’s core rules, but Elon Musk is certain the new directive will keep the platform active and up the business ladder.

Disclosing what led him to implement the charges he said:

“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullsh*t. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month. Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.”

According to Musk, the charge for the blue badge will give users VIP services in terms of security and easy business flow that regular users can’t have – even with less advertisement distracting their interface.

He tweeted: “You will also get: – Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam – Ability to post long video & audio – Half as many ads.”

Adding that, the charges will help the platform pay for content creators who engage with their followers daily. “And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us. This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” he said.

Giving more incite into the 8-dollar verification fee, Elon Musk said, “There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.”

Interestingly, after sharing clear-cut objectives, some celebrities are still having a great time dealing with it.

But Elon Musk has asked all complainers to accept it because it has come to stay.

Nonetheless, users will have to wait to see how and when the charges will take effect fully.

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The changes are set to be introduced in the Twitter Blue subscription and even the verification process which provides a ‘Blue tick’ to verified accounts.

The Twitter Blue subscription will reportedly be linked to the Twitter Blue subscription and Musk also plans to hike the subscription prices considerably. 

According to a report by The Verge, Musk plans to charge users $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Furthermore, Twitter accounts that already have the verification, will have to comply with this new mechanism and pay up for the blue tick.

The report suggests that verified users will have a total 90 days to move to Twitter Blue or they will end up losing their checkmark. Additionally, Twitter employees have been asked to move fast on this new subscription plan or pack and leave. The employees have been given a deadline of November 7, according to the report.

Twitter Blue Subscription

Twitter Blue was introduced last year and it is an opt-in, paid monthly subscription that offers exclusive access to premium features. Twitter claims this will let you customize your Twitter experience. The subscription service has been launched in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

It is to be seen how Musk plans to both roll out this service globally while changing the entire payment structure. In the eligible regions, Twitter Blue is available for in-app purchase on Twitter for iOS and Android. 

Elon Musk recently shared screenshots from Twitter’s internal conversations showing that he was lied to by the Twitter board, before the acquisition was complete. In the screen grab the security head talks about “fraudulent metrics” being presented. However, there was no mention of bots. Musk has claimed that he’ll reveal more info in the days to come. 

According to a January 2021 report from The Washington Post, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s then-top legal and policy executive, led the team that decided whether to ban Trump.

Meanwhile, Twitter permanently suspended Trump from the platform on January 8, 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” after the Capitol riot. 

Gadde was one of the key shot-callers regarding the Trump ban. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was vacationing on a private island at the time, per The New York Times.

When asked about the role she played in banning Trump, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN Business in October 2021 that decisions regarding bans are made by the Trust and Safety team, which reported to Gadde.

Gadde was also tasked with asking her Twitter colleagues to have patience while they decided what to do with Trump, per The Post. The former president was slapped with a permanent Twitter ban less than three hours after Gadde held the emergency meeting, The Post reported.

Gadde worked for Twitter for more than 11 years, her LinkedIn profile shows. She joined the company in July 2011 as a legal director.

The other executives Musk fired on Thursday include Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and general counsel Sean Edgett. The fired executives stand to make a total of $88 million in payouts. 

It’s unclear if Musk fired Gadde because of her role in the decision to ban Trump. Gadde, Musk, and representatives for Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

Musk said in May that he would reverse Twitter’s Trump ban, saying that booting Trump off Twitter was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.”

“I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” said Musk, per the Associated Press.

The former president has said that he won’t return to Twitter. However, that might change, considering Twitter was Trump’s main form of outreach when he was president. The “@realDonaldTrump” account had more than 88 million followers when Twitter permanently suspended him in January 2021.

Trump has his own social media site now, Truth Social. The former president has resolved to post on Truth Social before any other social media site, according to a regulatory filing in May.

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In a tweet on Thursday, the tech guru cited reasons why he closed the deal, with one of them championing free speech across the world.

According to him, he hopes the platform will continue to be a digital town square for years to come.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla/SpaceX explaining his reasons for the $44 billion purchase, said:

“There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide in our society.”

He continued, “In the relentless pursuit of clicks, much of traditional media has fuelled and catered to those polarized extremes, as they believe that is what brings in the money, but, in doing so, the opportunity for dialogue is lost.”

He added that, “That is why I bought Twitter. I didn’t do it because it would be easy. I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”

“And I do so with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility.”

Earlier, the business guru posted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s headquarters carrying a sink, raising speculation about the fate of his planned takeover.

The billionaire faces a Friday deadline to complete the $44bn (£38bn) purchase, which he announced months ago but then tried to abandon.

He agreed to move forward earlier this month, just weeks before a court trial over those moves was due to start.

“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” Mr Musk wrote.

In business parlance, “kitchen sinking” means taking radical action at a company, though it is not clear if this was Mr Musk’s message – he also updated his Twitter bio to read “chief twit”.

Mr Musk has said the social media site needs significant changes. At least one report has suggested he is planning major job cuts.

It was not clear whether the Tesla boss met with executives at Twitter on Wednesday, but he listed his location as the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on the social media platform.

But Mr Musk, the world’s richest man and a prolific Twitter user known for his impulsive style, balked at the purchase just a few weeks later, citing concerns that the number of fake accounts on the platform was higher than Twitter claimed.

Twitter executives denied the accusations, arguing that Mr Musk wanted out because he was worried about the price.

It eventually filed a lawsuit to hold him to the deal, and Mr Musk revived his takeover plans for the company on the condition that legal proceedings were paused.

Investors voiced scepticism that the takeover would go ahead, especially as Mr Musk was seen as offering a heady price for a firm struggling to attract users and grow.

However, the deal must be completed by 28 October, or he will face trial over the contract.

A deal that is now surely done

Given the history of this deal, you can see why people are hesitant about announcing it prematurely.

This is Elon Musk we’re talking about, an erratic and capricious character.

However, everything we have seen today here in San Francisco would suggest that he will own Twitter in the coming days.

It is hard to believe he would be meeting staff if the deal wasn’t as good as done.

He laughed and smiled as he entered Twitter, but he has a lot of work to do to warm up Twitter employees.

Reports he would dramatically reduce headcount have not gone down well with staff.

Talk of allowing Donald Trump and other banned accounts back onto the platform has also frustrated many employees.

It has been widely reported he is due to speak to Twitter workers on Friday, about what lies in store.

Perhaps then we’ll finally get more information about “X”, the app for everything that Mr Musk wants Twitter to become.

“I’m excited about the Twitter situation,” Mr Musk said during a recent Tesla earnings call.

“I think it’s an asset that has just sort of languished for a long time but has incredible potential, although obviously myself and the other investors are overpaying for Twitter right now,” he added.

It came as Tesla, the electric car maker, reportedly faces a criminal investigation in the US over claims that the company’s electric vehicles can drive themselves.

According to Reuters reports, three people familiar with the matter said that the US Department of Justice launched the investigation last year after more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system known as “Autopilot”, which was in use during the accidents.

During the same call, Mr Musk said Tesla would soon release an upgraded version of “full self-driving”, although its website says customers must keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of their cars even when using the Autopilot feature.

Neither Twitter nor Tesla responded immediately to the BBC’s request for comment.

In a statement, Twitter confirmed it had received Musk’s letter that “the intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.”

The agreement follows months of legal drama after Musk tried to back out of his original agreement to buy the company for $44 billion this spring. The two sides were set to go to trial later this month as Twitter attempted to force Musk to keep up his end of the agreement.

Musk had claimed Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on the platform and had raised concerns about issues disclosed by the company’s former head of security who filed a whistleblower complaint against the company.

But Musk, once again, abruptly reversed course on Tuesday, telling Twitter that he would be willing to proceed with the original terms of the deal.

In the letter filed with the SEC, Musk’s lawyers say they will go ahead with the agreement first struck in April if Delaware Chancery Court will “adjourn the trial and all other proceedings related” to the ongoing lawsuit.

It’s not yet clear when the acquisition could actually close. Twitter’s shareholders have already voted to approve the deal, but both sides will now also need to wait for Delaware’s Chancery Court’s response.

Musk, who has said he intends to take Twitter private, could eventually bring dramatic changes to Twitter. He has publicly mused about opening sourcing the site’s algorithms and taking a more lax approach to content moderation.

In messages to CEO Parag Agrawal, made public last week, he also stated that he wanted to “unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence.”

Mr Musk is seeking to end his $44bn deal for Twitter after alleging the firm failed to provide enough information on fake account numbers.

But the social media site is suing Mr Musk to try to force him to buy it.

The case will be heard in Delaware, US, in October unless both parties decide to settle outside of court beforehand.

Twitter hopes that a judge will order Mr Musk – who is the world’s richest man – to complete the takeover at the agreed price of $54.20 per share.

But as part of the trial preparations, lawyers for Mr Musk have called on his friend, the former boss of Twitter Mr Dorsey, in the hope that he will help support the Tesla boss’s argument that the social media company hasn’t been honest about the volume of fake accounts on its platform.

A subpoena legal writ or document summons a person to attend court or orders the submission of evidence, as records or documents, before a court.

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In July, the billionaire said he planned to walk away from his deal to buy Twitter, which prompted the company to sue him.

Mr Musk accused the company of withholding information about fake accounts, but Twitter argued that these were excuses to cover buyer’s remorse.

The site has issued its own subpoenas to people who had planned to invest in the deal with Mr Musk.

Mr Dorsey stepped down as chief executive of Twitter in November last year and tweeted in support of Mr Musk when he announced his bid to buy the company in April, saying: “Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”

Last month, a US judge ruled that Twitter’s lawsuit against Mr Musk should go to trial in October.

Earlier in August, Mr Musk sold another 7.92 million shares in Tesla, worth around $6.88bn (£5.7bn), stating that he needed the money in case he is forced to buy Twitter.

Mr Musk has countersued Twitter, claiming a third of visible Twitter accounts, assessed by his team, were fake. Using that figure the team estimated that a minimum of 10% of daily active users are bots.

But filings made by his legal team in his battle with Twitter have been questioned by leading bot researchers.

Twitter says it estimates that fewer than 5% of its daily active users are bot accounts.

The mother of two was arrested in January 2021 while on holiday in Saudi Arabia just as she planned to return to the United Kingdom, where she was a PhD student at the University of Leeds.

Daily Mail reports that she was accused of using Twitter to ’cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security’ after she posted tweets calling for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.

Al-Shebab, who has two young sons aged four and six, was earlier sentenced to six years in prison but a Saudi terrorism court, on Monday, increased her jail term to 34 years after the activist appealed her sentence.

She is said to also be facing a 34-year travel ban upon the expiration of her jail term.

In sentencing, the court cited Al-Shebab’s social media activity where she tweeted in support of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and expressed solidarity with imprisoned women’s rights activists such as Loujain al-Hathloul and called for their release.

Al-Shebab was arrested after she retweeted a post from Al-Hathloul’s sister Lina which read: ‘Freedom for Loujain Al-Hathloul … Freedom for all prisoners of conscience. Your freedom is my first wish for this New Year – Happy New Year.’

She was accused of ‘providing succor to those seeking to disrupt public order and undermine the safety of the general public and stability of the state, and publishing false and tendentious rumours on Twitter‘.

The sales took place after the firm’s annual shareholder meeting last week, regulatory filings show.

Mr Musk says he needs the money in case he is forced to buy Twitter for $44bn.

The multi-billionaire is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the social media platform after saying last month he would pull out of a deal to buy it.

The latest transactions were carried out on 5, 8 and 9 August, according to six filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

After news of the share sale was made public Mr Musk responded to a tweet asking whether he had finished selling Tesla shares with “yes”, adding that he needed the money in case he was forced to buy Twitter and was unable to secure some of the funding for the deal.

“It is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” he said.

Yes.

In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022

Asked by another user whether he would buy Tesla shares again if the Twitter takeover does not take place Mr Musk also responded “yes”.

In July, Mr Musk said he planned to walk away from his bid to buy Twitter, prompting the company to sue him.

The world’s richest person has accused the company of withholding information about fake accounts.

Last month, a US judge ruled that Twitter’s lawsuit against Mr Musk should go to trial in October.

Twitter hopes that the court will order Mr Musk to complete the takeover at the agreed price of $54.20 per share.

Mr Musk has countersued Twitter, although the details of that lawsuit have not been made public.

Also in July, Twitter said that between April and June it had spent $33m on the proposed deal.

It also said its number of monthly daily users had risen to 237m – but it reported a net loss of $270m, which was worse than expected.

Meanwhile, Tesla revealed last month that it had offloaded 75% of its Bitcoin, which was worth about $2bn at the end of 2021.

The company made waves last year when it revealed a major investment in in the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.

Tesla said it bought traditional currencies with the $936m proceeds of its Bitcoin sales.

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It also said its number of monthly daily users had risen to 237m – but it reported a net loss of $270m, which was worse than expected.

Mr Musk has since changed his mind about the purchase, and a court date is now set for October because Twitter wants to force through the sale.

There is a $1bn termination fee potentially at stake.

Twitter declined to discuss its latest financial results, citing the “pending acquisition” as the reason.

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The report covers the period from April to June 2022.

Twitter has doubled-down on its position on the amount of spam and fake accounts on the platform – the reason Elon Musk had given for terminating the deal.

“We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the second quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our [monthly active users] during the quarter,” it said – although it added that the figure was an estimate.

In 2021, Twitter’s revenue was $5bn (£4.2bn), but in the last 12 months its share price has fallen by 45%.

Analyst Mike Proulx from the firm Forrester said Twitter was in “purgatory”.

“Twitter now has an acquirer who no longer wants it, a CEO and board who wants to get rid of it, and an employee base which is caught in the middle of it all,” he said.

“The real victim from all this drama is Twitter itself.”

On Thursday Snap, which owns Snapchat, reported revenue of $1.11bn for the three months to the end of June, which missed Wall Street expectations.

Its shares slumped by more than 25% after the news.

It said some of its advertisers had cut their spending, faced with rising costs.

It also said it had been affected by a change made by Apple last year, which meant iPhone and iPad users could opt out of being tracked by apps.

This has affected the personalisation of ads – a very valuable service to tech firms – because they can no longer see their users’ other online activities and tailor advertising accordingly.

Twitter said its ad revenue had increased by just 2%, to $1.08bn.

Meta and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is due to report its earnings next week.

Sources close to the case told The New York Post that the countersuit was intended to push a Delaware Court of Chancery judge to grant Musk’s legal team more time to gather information about bots on Twitter – the primary reason Musk gave for reneging on the deal.

Twitter sued Musk last Tuesday in a bid to force him to complete his $44 billion takeover of the social media company, accusing him of “outlandish” and “bad faith” actions that have the platform irreparable harm and “wreaked havoc” on its stock price.

Musk pledged in April to pay $54.20 a share for Twitter, which agreed to those terms after reversing its initial opposition to the deal. But the two sides have been bracing for a legal fight since the billionaire said a week ago that he was backing away from his agreement to buy the company.

In a filing with the Delaware Court of Chancery on Friday, Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter of withholding information about fake accounts and of creating delays, providing evasive responses and putting up technical obstacles.

The filing also disputed Twitter’s request for an expedited trial, claiming that it would take months to obtain information from Twitter and to depose numerous witnesses on the subject of fake accounts.

The filing repeated several other accusations Musk has lodged previously, including the claim that Twitter violated the acquisition agreement when it fired two high-level managers without first informing Musk.

Musk has 20 days from when Twitter filed his lawsuit against him, to file his own counterclaims. The first hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Twitter’s legal team wants a four-day trial starting in September, while Musk is pushing for a later court date.

Delaware Court of Chancery chancellor, Kathaleen McCormick, is expected to weigh Twitter’s request for an expedited trial.

McCormick would also hear Musk’s countersuit were his legal team to file one.

Mr Musk walked away from his $44bn (£36bn) bid to buy Twitter earlier in July, prompting the company to sue him.

Twitter hopes that the court will order Mr Musk to complete the takeover at the agreed price of $54.20 per share.

The tech billionaire has accused Twitter of withholding information about fake accounts.

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His legal team has called for the trial to be held early next year due to its complexities, but Twitter asked for a September date.

On Tuesday, a judge in the state of Delaware agreed with the company and said a delay to the trial would cast a “cloud of uncertainty”.

“Delay threatens irreparable harm,” Chancellor Kathaleen St Jude McCormick said. “The longer the delay, the greater the risk.”

The lawsuit accused Mr Musk of a “long list” of violations ahead of the potential merger and argued that he had “cast a pall” over the company.

At the hearing on Tuesday, Twitter’s lead counsel William Savitt said the ongoing uncertainty about whether the takeover would go forward or not “inflicts harm on Twitter everyday”.

It comes after Mr Musk announced he was walking away from his proposed $44bn (£37bn) takeover of Twitter on Friday.

He claimed Twitter had not given information about the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform.

Now Twitter has asked a Delaware court to order Mr Musk to complete the merger at the agreed $54.20 per Twitter share.

“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, [Mr] Musk apparently believes that he – unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law – is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” said the lawsuit.

The lawsuit went on to accuse Mr Musk of “a long list” of violations of the merger agreement that “have cast a pall over Twitter and its business”.

Twitter chairman Bret Taylor tweeted that the microblogging site wanted “to hold Elon Musk accountable to his contractual obligations”.

Mr Musk tweeted on Tuesday: “Oh the irony lol [laughing out loud].”

The lawsuit said Mr Musk, who is also boss of electric car company Tesla, had backed out of the deal because it “no longer serves his personal interests”.

The lawsuit said that after Mr Musk agreed to the deal, the stock market fell, along with Tesla shares.

“The value of Mr Musk’s stake in Tesla, the anchor of his personal wealth, has declined by more than $100bn from its November 2021 peak. So [Mr] Musk wants out,” it said.

“Rather than bear the cost of the market downturn, as the merger agreement requires, [Mr] Musk wants to shift it to Twitter’s stockholders,” it added.

Twitter’s share price has fallen more than 8% in the past month, and in May tumbled from highs of more than $50 per share, as Mr Musk questioned the number of fake and spam accounts on Twitter and said the deal was “temporarily on hold”.

On Friday, Mr Musk said he was pulling out of the deal, claiming a lack of information about spam accounts and inaccurate representations amounted to a “material adverse event”.

He also said Twitter sacking executives meant it was not living up to its obligations.

In response, Twitter said it planned to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement, saying it was “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr Musk”.

The original merger agreement includes a $1bn break-up fee.

The announcement is the latest twist in a long-running saga after the world’s richest person decided to buy Twitter in April.

Mr Musk said he had backed out because Twitter failed to provide enough information on the number of spam and fake accounts.

Twitter says it plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement.

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr Musk,” Twitter chairman Bret Taylor wrote in a tweet, setting up a potentially long and protracted legal battle between the two sides.

The original merger agreement includes a $1bn (£830m) break-up fee.

Row over fake accounts

In May, Mr Musk said the deal was “temporarily on hold” as he was awaiting data on the number of fake and spam accounts on Twitter.

The billionaire businessman had asked for evidence to back the company’s assertion that spam and bot accounts make up less than 5% of its total users.

In a letter filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr Musk’s lawyer said Twitter had failed or refused to provide this information.

Elon Musk has for weeks been trying to get information about how many daily active users Twitter has.

Twitter has a problem with bots. In fact only yesterday it said it removed a million spam accounts a day.

In a filing, Mr Musk said he’d repeatedly been refused information about the number of bot accounts on Twitter – which is why he wished to terminate the deal.

Elon Musk though has already put pen to paper on this deal, and it is not totally clear whether he can back out at this stage. Mr Musk will need to prove that Twitter breached their agreement.

There are other potential reasons why Mr Musk might want to pull out of the deal.

The stock market price for large tech companies has fallen steeply in the last few months – did Musk offer too much?

And then there was the impact the potential merger was having on Mr Musk’s other companies. Tesla’s share price has fallen significantly since he announced his interest in Twitter.

His position on free speech and how Twitter might moderate in the future – based on the laws of individual countries – also at times came across as naïve. Did Elon Musk ultimately decide he had bitten off more than he could chew?

“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr Musk incomplete or unusable information,” the letter reads.

Spam accounts are designed to spread information to large numbers of people and manipulate the way they interact with the platform. On Thursday, Twitter removed around 1 million such accounts daily.

Mr Musk believes that spam or bot accounts could account for 20% or more of Twitter users.

Shares in Twitter fell by 7% in extended trading after the announcement.

Mr Musk said to be the world’s richest person, is the founder of rocket company SpaceX and electric car company Tesla.

A self-described “free speech absolutist”, he had pledged to loosen Twitter’s content moderation rules once the company was under his ownership.

He has long criticised Twitter’s ban of some accounts, like that of former US President Donald Trump.

He has also called for more transparency over how the platform presents tweets to users, a system that currently allows some to be promoted and given wider audiences.

The social media giant has filed a petition with the high court in Karnataka state resisting “several” such orders, sources told the BBC.

Twitter was reacting to a letter from the government in June warning of “serious consequences” of non-compliance of such orders.

Twitter has more than 24 million users in India, by one estimate.

Hours after the petition was filed, federal minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar tweeted that all foreign Internet platforms had to comply with Indian laws.

#TuesdayMusing

In India,all incldng foreign Internet intermediaries/platforms have right to court n judicial review.

But equally ALL intermediary/platforms operating here,have unambiguous obligation to comply with our laws n rules. #Open #SafeTrusted #Accountable #Internet

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar ?? (@Rajeev_GoI) July 5, 2022

Sources familiar with the matter said the government had warned Twitter in June, saying it was the company’s “last opportunity” to comply with a number of blocking orders.

They fall under India’s information technology law which allows the government to block online content that “threatens the security of the state” and public order among other things.

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They said Twitter had chosen to go to court due to the “seriousness of the threats” as failure to comply with the law could lead to criminal proceedings.

The social media giant believes that the orders are “procedurally and substantially deficient” of the requirements of the law and many of them “demonstrate excessive use of power and are disproportionate,” sources said.

In several cases, for example, there are demands for entire accounts to be blocked, the sources added. And several accounts could involve content posted by “official handles of political parties”.

This is the latest move in a continuing face-off between Twitter and India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government.

Over the past year, authorities have asked the social media giant to remove tweets and block accounts, citing objections based on public order. These include accounts and tweets related to last year’s massive protests by farmers and tweets critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic.

During the farmers’ protests Twitter briefly blocked some 250 accounts in response to a legal notice by the government, citing objections based on public order.

These included accounts of an investigative news magazine, and activists and groups associated with supporting the months-long protests on the outskirts of Delhi.

But Twitter restored the accounts in six hours, citing “insufficient justification” for continuing the suspension.

Last year in February, Twitter was told that it was “welcome to do business in India”, but it had to follow the laws of the country “irrespective of Twitter’s own rules and guidelines”.

In May, Twitter expressed concerns over freedom of expression in India, days after police visited its offices in the capital, Delhi.

The police served notice to the site after it labelled a tweet by the BJP as “manipulated media”.

The social media platform normally limits posts to 280 characters.

Twitter said the move was a response to seeing people use the platform to post pictures of longer announcements and steer followers to outside newsletters.

The test will run for two months and involve a small group of writers in Canada, Ghana, the UK and US.

The new feature aims to keep audiences in the Twitter eco-system, with readers able to see a headline and access the longer note by clicking on a link.

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Writers will be able to embed gifs, photos and other features into long-form essays that can be read on and off Twitter. Notes can also be edited after they have been published.

“Since the company’s earliest days, writers have depended on Twitter to share their work, get noticed, be read, create conversation – everything but the actual writing,” the company said, making the announcement using the new Notes product.

“With Notes, the goal is to fill in that missing piece.”

The move follows Twitter’s purchase last year of Revue, a Dutch newsletter start-up.

Social media expert Dr Laura Toogood said the trial was a significant step for Twitter. She said the feature would encourage people to stay within the platform itself, rather than linking out to other websites that can host long-form content.

“Adding this extra capability means that Twitter is now in a position to compete with some of the popular blogging platforms and potentially attract a new audience and a different type of user,” she told the BBC.

“It will also encourage existing users to blog within Twitter, rather than move to other websites for this purpose, which will help to retain their audience.”

In 2017 Twitter increased the maximum number of characters for tweets from 140 to 280, following a trial among a small group of users.

The latest move comes amid scrutiny of the Twitter’s business prospects, as Elon Musk’s planned takeover of the company raises questions about its direction.

The firm announced in April it was working on an edit button, shortly after Mr Musk – who had called for such a feature – revealed he had bought a large stake in the company. Twitter said the events were unrelated.

Mr Musk has also said he sees potential in a subscription model in which people would pay to use the platform.

Dr Nikki Usher, a journalism professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said it was hard to know whether Twitter was trying out new formats out of profitability or a genuine desire to try to improve the platform.

“In this case, one of the things we do know is that people do not like to read long texts online,” they told the BBC.

“So whether giving people 2,500 characters to work with will ultimately make a difference in the quality of the digital public sphere – well, I think it’s unlikely. Is it a chance to grab headlines in advance of some major changes at the company? Absolutely.”

He also addressed topics like remote working, freedom of speech and potential extra-terrestrial life.

Mr Musk was talking to staff for the first time since launching his bid for the firm in April.

He has said he may quit the deal if he is not given data about fake accounts.

On a wide-ranging video call with Twitter employees on Thursday, Mr Musk said layoffs at Twitter would depend on the company’s financial situation.

“The company does need to get healthy. Right now the costs exceed the revenue,” he said.

However he added: “Anyone who’s… a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about”.

He also stated his preference for working from the office unless “somebody is exceptional”.

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However, he did not provide an update on takeover discussions and Twitter employees took to an internal communications channel to express their disappointment about his views on the business and employee compensation.

Mr Musk, who is the boss of electric vehicle maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, also discussed the possibility of life beyond earth although he said he has not seen “actual evidence for aliens”.

“Can we travel to other star systems and see if there are alien civilisations?” he asked, adding that the platform could help “civilisation and consciousness”.

Separately, a group of employees at SpaceX – where Mr Musk is chief executive – called Mr Musk a “frequent source of distraction and embarrassment” in an internal letter to the company’s executives on Thursday.

Meanwhile, he was also sued for $258bn (£209bn) later in the day by a investor in the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, who accused him of running a pyramid scheme to drive up its price.

The complaint filed in New York alleges that Mr Musk “used his pedestal as world’s richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure and amusement”.

Earlier this month, Mr Musk threatened to walk away from the takeover bid and accused Twitter of “thwarting” his requests to learn more about its user base.

In a letter filed with regulators, he said he was entitled to do his own measurement of spam accounts.

The letter formalised a dispute that had simmered for weeks after he declared the deal was “on hold” pending further information.

Shares in the company stood at $37.36 each at the end of New York trading on Thursday, well below Mr Musk’s offer price of $54.20.

The multi-billionaire Tesla boss is expected to take questions from Twitter’s workers at the meeting.

Mr Musk has warned he may quit the deal if the firm fails to provide data about fake accounts on the platform.

The event was announced by Twitter’s chief executive Parag Agrawal in an email to staff on Monday.

Mr Agrawal told employees they could submit questions to Mr Musk in advance of the meeting.

The news, which was first reported by Business Insider, was confirmed to the BBC by a spokesperson for Twitter.

The all-hands meeting will be the first time Mr Musk will have spoken directly with the company’s workforce since launching his takeover bid.

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Earlier this month, he threatened to walk away from the deal, accusing the social media company of “thwarting” his requests to learn more about its user base.

In a letter filed with regulators, Mr Musk said he was entitled to do his own measurement of spam accounts.

The letter formalised a dispute that had simmered for weeks after he declared the deal “on hold” pending further information.

Analysts have said that Mr Musk might be using the issue to try to renegotiate the price or even walk away from the deal. They said his decision to raise the matter on social media was unconventional, making it difficult to establish how serious he was.

When Mr Agrawal defended the company’s process for identifying fake accounts in a series of tweets, Mr Musk responded with a poo emoji.

The company’s shares stood at $37.03 each at the end of New York trading on Monday, well below Mr Musk’s offer price of $54.20.

In a letter filed with regulators, Mr Musk said he was entitled to do his own measurement of spam accounts.

The letter formalises a dispute that has simmered for weeks after Mr Musk declared the deal “on hold” pending further information.

Twitter has defended its estimates.

But Mr Musk has said he believes spam and fake accounts represent a far greater share than the less than 5% of daily users that Twitter reports publicly.

“As Twitter’s prospective owner, Mr Musk is clearly entitled to the requested data to enable him to prepare for transitioning Twitter’s business to his ownership and to facilitate his transaction financing. To do both, he must have a complete and accurate understanding of the very core of Twitter’s business model – its active user base,” lawyer Mike Ringler wrote in the letter.

“Based on Twitter’s behaviour to date, and the company’s latest correspondence in particular, Mr Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights,” the letter said.

“This is a clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the merger agreement and Mr Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement.”

The dispute has raised more doubts about the future of the takeover, which Twitter’s board approved in April.

“Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement,” the company said in a statement.

Twitter, which has said Mr Musk waived typical rights to due diligence in his eagerness to clinch the deal, added that it intended to complete the takeover at the agreed price and terms.

Mr Musk, who faces a $1bn break-up fee and possible lawsuit if he opts out, first raised the issue of the spam accounts on social media last month, saying the deal was on hold but he remained committed to the acquisition.

Analysts have said the Tesla boss might be using the issue to try to renegotiate the price or even walk away. They said Mr Musk’s decision to raise the issue on social media was unconventional, making it difficult to establish how serious he was.

When Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal defended the company’s process in a series of tweets, Mr Musk responded with a poo emoji.

Mr Musk has said he believes that bots could account for 20% or more of Twitter users. The letter, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, confirms that the two sides have gone back and forth on the issue since early May.

It says Mr Musk merits “reasonable cooperation” as he tries to line up financing for the deal.

“Twitter’s latest offer to simply provide additional details regarding the company’s own testing methodologies, whether through written materials or verbal explanations, is tantamount to refusing Mr Musk’s data requests,” the letter says.

“Twitter’s effort to characterise it otherwise is merely an attempt to obfuscate and confuse the issue.”

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton entered the debate on Monday, saying he had launched an investigation into Twitter for “potentially false reporting over its fake bot accounts”. Twitter has until 27 June to respond to his request for information.

Mr Musk’s plans for the company have drawn intense scrutiny from regulators around the world, while raising some alarm among investors of electric car company Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX, which Mr Musk also leads.

He has lined up outside investors to help pay for the takeover and is also using equity and loans backed by his Tesla shares, which have been hit in recent weeks as market turmoil wipes billions from the values of companies including Tesla.

The decline has also made Mr Musk’s offer of $54.20 per share for Twitter look even more generous. On Monday, Twitter shares were trading below $39, down 3%, though they later regained some ground. They have yet to return to the highs they hit last month shortly after Mr Musk revealed he had purchased about 9% of the firm’s shares.

Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the letter marked the “strongest signal yet that the Tesla founder is prepared to walk away”.

“This is a move Twitter investors have for weeks been steeling themselves for: the moment when Elon Musk’s haphazard ruminations in tweets have been distilled into an official letter to regulators,” she said. “However, given the added volatility which has hit the tech sector since Mr Musk made his offer, it’s highly likely he’s after a cheaper price even if Twitter does provide the data requested in support of its initial analysis.”

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The case alleges he violated California corporate laws in a number of ways.

It accuses the Tesla boss of “wrongful conduct” as his “false statements and market manipulation have created ‘chaos’ at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco”.

Twitter shares are around 27% lower than Mr Musk’s $54.20 offer price.

The proposed class action lawsuit was filed this week at the US District Court for the Northern District of California by investor William Heresniak, who said he was acting “on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated”.

A class-action is a lawsuit that has been filed or is defended by an individual acting on behalf of a group of people.

The lawsuit claimed Mr Musk benefitted financially by delaying the disclosure of his significant stake in Twitter, and his plan to become a board member of the company.

It also claimed that several tweets posted by Mr Musk, who is a regular Twitter user with more than 95m followers, were “misleading”.

It included a post in which Mr Musk said his takeover bid for the social media firm was on hold because of his doubts over the number of fake accounts on the platform.

The tweet on 13 May “constituted an effort to manipulate the market for Twitter shares as he knew about the fake accounts,” the lawsuit said.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

It also said Mr Musk “doubled down” on his allegations four days later, by stating on Twitter that the deal “cannot go forward”.

On Friday, Frank Bottini, who is one of the lawyers representing the Twitter investors, told the BBC that the lawsuit was filed as Mr Musk “continues to disparage the company he wants to buy for $44bn in an effort to renegotiate the purchase price”.

“The complaint we filed in San Francisco seeks to hold Musk liable for his unlawful conduct,” Mr Bottini said.

Mr Musk’s lawyers and Tesla did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment on Friday.

Twitter declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.

Analysts have speculated that Mr Musk may be looking for ways to lower his takeover offer or walk away from the deal.

He has tweeted several times that he was concerned about the number of fake accounts, or bots, on Twitter.

A bot is a software programme that sends out automated posts and is often associated with misinformation on social media platforms.

Mr Musk has also hinted that he may seek to pay less for Twitter than the $44bn agreed with the company’s board in March.

Speaking at a technology conference earlier this month, he said striking a deal at a lower price was “not out of the question”.

Earlier this month, a Florida pension fund also challenged Mr Musk’s move to buy Twitter as it claimed a deal could not be struck in months as planned.

The Orlando Police Pension Fund said Mr Musk was an “interested shareholder” in Twitter, as he had made agreements with major shareholders, including its co-founder Jack Dorsey, before he offered to buy the business.

Citing the law in the US state of Delaware, where Twitter is incorporated, it said the deal should not be allowed to close before 2025.

The fund did not disclose its stake in the social media platform, although it said it has been “a beneficial owner of Twitter common stock” at “all relevant times”.

Despite numerous questions about the future of Twitter, the company’s executives had little to say about Musk, who did not attend the meeting.

“We’re working through the transaction process,” CEO Parag Agrawal said during the meeting. The status of the deal has been somewhat unclear since Musk announced it was “on hold,” due to his concerns about bots on the platform. Twitter executives have maintained they are moving forward with their plans.

“Even as we work towards closing this transaction, our teams and I remain focused on the important work we do every day to serve the public conversation,” Agrawal said.

Twitter had said ahead of the meeting that it wouldn’t answer questions related to Musk’s acquisition of the company, which will need to be formally approved by Twitter stockholders at a later date. Even so, shareholders tried to get Twitter executives to address the issue.

The very first question in the Q&A portion of the meeting asked what will happen to Twitter shareholders’ stock if “someone” buys the company and takes it private. “We aren’t able to address these questions today,” Sean Edgett, Twitter’s General Counsel, said, directing people to the company’s previous SEC filings.

Shareholders also raised questions about the future of the company’s content moderation policies. Agrawal said the company remains “focused” on existing its current policies and “decreasing our reliance on user reports.” Though he didn’t directly address comments Musk has made about loosening its rules, he said that “silencing political commentary is antithetical to our commitment to free speech.”

The meeting also marks the end of co-founder Jack Dorsey’s tenure with Twitter. He had stepped aside as CEO in November, but remained on the board of directors until the meeting. As with much of Twitter’s future, it was unclear who will succeed him.

Whether it’s celebrities denouncing their association with the app because they disagree with him or A-listers trying to gain a piece of the pie, there is no shortage of interest around the estimated multi-billion-dollar deal.

AfroTech previously reported that Meek Mill tweeted his desire to purchase shares of Twitter after the billionaire bought it. 

Now, LA rap legend Snoop Dogg has entered the chat, and he doesn’t just want to buy a part of it — he wants the entire thing.

In a tweet from May 13, Snoop Dogg wrote, “May have 2 buy Twitter now.”

While it’s unclear whether the California rapper was serious or not, he did follow up his original tweet with some detailed plans if he were to go through with purchasing the social media platform.

From changing up the board of directors to giving everyone a verified blue checkmark, Snoop’s hypothetical purchase comes with some big shake-ups. He even started the hashtag #WhenSnoopBuysTwitter to chronicle his list of ideas.

With all of this activity coming from Snoop, he gained the attention of Musk. The Tesla CEO responded to Snoop’s original tweet with two fire emojis. Snoop continued by replying, “You bring the fire I’ll bring the smoke!!”

Next Steps For Twitter

This saga of events comes on the heels of Musk putting the official acquisition of Twitter on hold.

As previously reported by AfroTech, Musk is waiting for details confirming that less than five percent of its users have spam/ fake accounts.

There has been no update on these details or why Musk has great concern for the data. Whatever the case, the billionaire is waiting to make things official.

With no set date to complete the acquisition set in stone other than by the end of 2022, Musk is playing the long game in ensuring the purchase is done on his terms.

Regarding Snoop Dogg’s request to Elon Musk, the world will have to be on watch to see how much fire and smoke comes out of this conversation.

He said he was waiting for information “supporting [the] calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users”.

Following the announcement, Twitter shares fell 25% in pre-market trading.

Mr Musk has been vocal on cleaning up spam accounts.

Twitter reported nearly two weeks ago that fake accounts accounted for less than 5% of its daily active users during the first three months of this year.

Mr Musk is now examining that figure.

Under the terms of the deal, if either Twitter or Mr Musk walk away they must pay the other side a termination fee of $1bn.