We woke this morning to find the hashtag #RIPTwitter trending, following the news that Twitter headquarters is currently closed, won’t reopen until Monday, and that no one is maintaining the platform after Musk’s latest ultimation to Twitter staff. Outages have gone through the roof in the last 24 hours and engineers are widely predicting Twitter will stop working in very near future.
It’s not unexpected.
Since Elon Musk purchased the platform at the start of November, there have been a number of key developments that have led directly to this point. I’ve outlined the main ones below that affect business profiles, with the tips as to how you can mitigate the risk, with step-by-step instructions where necessary (which hopefully will still work!).
Safety concerns
Twitter is a hugely complex system that has been set up to enable grass-root conversations and so people can find global contacts and discussions that are of interest to them. It is also responsible for a mammoth amount of data. Therefore, it is concerning that many of the company’s most experienced engineers have left or been fired over the last couple of weeks or so, apparently without being asked or enabled to pass on their specialist knowledge. Musk has also been posting regular requests for information about how the platform works, which isn’t exactly reassuring.
Many engineers, and other key personnel who were core to the platform functioning properly on a daily basis, have also been fired or have left. Users reported the platform was starting to unravel at the edges within a few days, with some tweets not loading, the retweet function not working properly, and people unable to change their account names. Two-step verification currently doesn’t work, so people are having to remove it or go through a long-winded process of getting codes in order to log in to their own profiles (see below for instructions if you need to do this).
Editorial update: Some people have being claiming “Well it’s fine, clearly it didn’t need so many engineers after all”, but Twitter Engineers (who likely know more than anyone) have a different view (here’s one explaining why it’ll break over the coming weeks), as do experienced System Admins.
In addition, Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth; Chief privacy officer, Damien Kieran; its chief information security officer, Lea Kissner, and its chief compliance officer, Marianne Fogarty, all resigned last week. There is currently no Communications section. There is currently no one actually in Twitter Headquarters at all. In addition, it is reported that EU laws covering employment rights and data safety and security laws have been breached, and many individuals and companies are apparently currently considering suing – or are already in the process of starting to sue – Twitter.
The Blue Tick fiasco
Then there is the fiasco otherwise known as the ‘Blue Tick’ verified accounts that Musk changed to a paid system overnight. At $8 a piece, they weren’t actually verified in any form at all, just paid for. As literally everyone predicted, this led to a tsunami of fake ‘verified’ accounts, many targeting Musk himself, but also other prominent individuals and – of particular concern to the business community – company profiles. The most notable to date was a fake but ‘verified’ account for Eli Lilly, that tweeted: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” It was up for three hours and had over 10,000 likes, and cost them $16 billion in market cap. Legals eagles are saying that Eli Lilly could sue Twitter for ‘false advertising’.
Musk stated that if people want to impersonate accounts then they can do so, as Twitter will just remove them and keep their $8 fee. However, it’s been pretty much impossible to get Twitter to sort it over the last few weeks, or to be able to prove to them which is the real account. They have continued to call all paid-for verified accounts ‘verified’, even though they aren’t, which has been hugely confusing.
In addition, according to Musk historic Blue Tick (i.e. previously unpaid and properly verified) accounts will apparently have their Blue Ticks removed if they haven’t paid their $8 fee, which is going to make the situation even more misleading and confusing. It’s also worth noting at this point that Musk has stated he’ll make Twitter subscription only, which is likely to be the final kiss of death if it survives.
Spooked advertisers
On 4th November, Musk complained “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
However, it turned out that the huge pause in advertising was self-inflicted by Musk himself, who had not just gutted the content moderation teams, but also fired the Twitter staff members who liaised with the marketers and advertisers, including the CCO.
Musk then had a call with some of the biggest advertisers to discuss strategy, and when it transpired he had no plan at all, confusion reigned, with many CMOs apparently shifting their budgets DURING the call. Advertisers who paused advertising included General Mills, Mondelez International, Pfizer, Volkswagen (Audi, Porsche, Bentley), Coca-Cola and Unilever.
In direct contrast to Musk’s claims, companies actually cited concerns about content moderation and security owing to the huge levels of staff redundancies, considering it likely their brands would be contaminated or damaged by association with something unpleasant. However, when one of the top marketers, MMA Global president Lou Paskalis, tweeted his concerns about it to Musk, Musk blocked him.
Hashtag #RIPTwitter
Finally, there’s a very real risk that Twitter will simply cease to exist in any meaningful form in the near future. It’s a hugely complex infrastructure that currently isn’t being maintained, and outages have skyrocketed in the last 24 hours.
However, even if it limps on in some form or another, it may simply cease to exist even before before it completely implodes. Musk is also saying he could file for bankrupcy despite Twitter being in a healthier situation than at any point in its history when he bought it.
Biden has stated that Musk’s Twitter acquisition is “worth looking into’ and Twitter may have already violated its consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, which could be hugely damaging to Twitter – and Musk personally – if proven, as they have the power to fine Twitter billions. Senator Ed Markey referenced the latter after his Blue Tick account was impersonated and Musk replied with less concern than Senator Ed Markey might have wished.
In Senator Ed Markey’s tweet he references another legal case, currently investigating Tesla’s very poor safety standards. Seems there might be a pattern here of company mismanagement, so when senior Twitter engineers say that Twitter is extremely hackable right now and represents a security risk to users, they probably should be taken seriously.
Consequently it is wise for all businesses with Twitter profile to take immediate steps to secure their data and protect their business reputation, while maintaining a watching brief while it still exists. It may all be resolved, although that is looking increasingly unlikely, but in the meantime we are advising all clients and contacts to take the following actions:
- Close your DMs if you haven’t done so already – the changes have prompted a huge uptick in bots and other unpleasant spam.
- Delete all non-essential app permissions.
- Move your marketing activities to other platforms. Even if Twitter survives it represents a security risk while there aren’t enough staff to maintain it properly.
- Pause advertising – who knows what horrors you are likely to be placed alongside when no one is moderating content, or how the adverts will perform as the system starts to break down.
- Downloaded all data, lists and contacts. You can do this in the app itself or there are paid-for apps that can help. Note there are currently delays (you guessed that would be the case, right?).
- Add your other profiles on other platforms to your profile and contact key contacts – ask if they would like to sign up to your newsletters or connect elsewhere. Follow key contacts on other platforms.
- If you leave the platform (before it implodes), do not delete your account as someone might pay for a Blue Tick account and impersonate you (see Eli Lilly), but do save an earlier ‘vintage’ Blue Tick date stamped screensaver as your pinned post so people know this account is the real you.
- Remove two-factor verification if you feel happy doing so. If not you can get up to five login codes. Remember to use them in order of download.
- Take all steps you can to protect your account, including changing the password daily, restricting who has access and from where, taking all steps above.
- You can also consider deleting all your history – if you want to do this, you can do so here. Remember to download all your account data before doing so.
- Buy popcorn, and enjoy the ride with hashtag#SpaceKaren.
Disclaimer: Note that circumstances are changing on an almost hourly basis and so this is very likely to become obsolete within a very short space of time.
