This past April, Elon Musk set off to try to purchase Twitter, and now, it’s official. On October 27th, Musk officially acquired Twitter for the high price of $44 billion. Many questions and concerns were raised by users regarding the new owner, and some answers to these concerns have been fulfilled. Overall, there’s been lots of negative feedback.

With the introduction of Twitter Blue, users have been unhappy with the state of the website. Twitter Blue is an optional, monthly subscription service, where users pay $8 in exchange for a number of features, including half the amount of ads, the ability to tweet longer videos, and a checkmark next to their name. Elon believed users would enjoy the idea, but instead, there has been plenty of backlash. People are tweeting and talking about how they do not enjoy this idea of paying money for something on a free app. The intention for this service was to generate revenue for the newly-bought company, and to better the state of Twitter, but users believe it partially lacked that. For those that purchased Twitter Blue, some wanted to enjoy the new features. But there was another reason for purchase, which would put companies at risk. 

Users decided to abuse the checkmark next to their name, which used to represent the officiality of the account, but now some users are being tricked into thinking an account is a verified public figure, group, or company. So, people abused this aspect to impersonate companies and other accounts, resulting in even more “trolls” than before this feature was added. The addition of this subscription service was partially intended to prevent scammers, impersonators, or trolls from using the platform but it has done the opposite. Some companies have had a negative impact on their publicity from impersonators tweeting outrageous statements, including Eli Lilly and Company, through a fake tweet saying,“We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” Also, many companies, a few being Oreos, Chipotle, and Jeep, have discontinued paying for advertisements on Twitter, as a result of everything happening (via Mashable). These issues became so problematic that Twitter Blue is now temporarily unavailable for purchase. As a result of all of these issues, many are against Musk’s new Twitter and are concerned about the future of the website.