A timeline of Elon Musk's tumultuous reign at Twitter so far

It’s hard to remember a time where Twitter didn’t have Elon Musk’s fingerprints all over it.

But it was only back in October that Musk entered the social media platform’s HQ in San Francisco for the first time after purchasing it for a whopping $44bn.

Little did anyone of us know how much would change, and how quickly.

In the months that followed, the company has changed dramatically both publicly and behind the scenes and the way many of us use the app will never be the same.

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Here’s everything Elon Musk has done since buying Twitter.

Kicked things off with a dad joke

“Let that sink in…”

Made half of the staff redundant

Twitter announced in November that it was laying off half of its workers – a cut of around 3,740 jobs.

“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,” Musk wrote at the time.

"Unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day," Musk tweeted

Then publicly humiliate an employee who asked if he's been sacked

Musk was forced to apologise after the humiliating exchange in which he appeared to mock a disabled Twitter worker.

Days after having access to his work computer cut and following numerous unanswered emails, one worker was forced to directly tweet Elon Musk asking him a seemingly straightforward question: had he been sacked?

Rather than answer it, or get his HR team to do so, Musk decided to publicly put the man through the wringer – subjecting him to a brutal tweet exchange which included a pair of “rolling on the floor laughing” emojis.

The thread has been branded “disgraceful” by thousands of users, who have condemned Musk as the “worst boss ever”.

In the original tweet, senior product designer Halli Thorleifsson wrote: “Dear [Elon Musk], 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees. However, your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails. Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?”

The platform’s infamous boss replied curtly: “What work have you been doing?” before proceeding to engage in a back-and-forth that reads like a live job interview, with questions including: “What changes did you make to help with the youths?” and infantile comments like: “Pics or it didn’t happen”.

The Twitter boss later said that he had received bad information about the situation, and had a video call with the affected staff member to apologise.

Announced that people would have to pay for Twitter Blue

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On October 30, Musk took to Twitter to share that the "whole verification process is being revamped".

After months of speculation, Musk recently revealed that the social media platform’s legacy account verification tags will be removed by mid April.

In an interview with the BBC, the Tesla and SpaceX boss said Twitter’s legacy blue ticks “will all be gone by next week”.

The changes would mean only accounts that paid the company $8 or $11 per month would have the badge.

It’s going to change the face of the app forever – who knows what it’ll look like in the coming months.

Tweet some of the strangest memes of all time

Musk loves a meme, and he’s been posting hundreds of strange ones in the months since the takeover. See a selection here.

Changed the logo to a dog

The Twitter CEO switched the site’s usual logo featuring the blue bird to the Doge meme featuring a Shiba Inu named Kabosu. The change led to Dogecoin prices surging by 33 per cent.

It seemed like a very random decision, but it turns out he’s had the idea for a pretty long time. Back in 2022, Musk engaged with Twitter user @WSBChairman, who said on March 26 that he should “just buy Twitter… and change the bird logo to a doge”.

Ban a number of journalists

A number of journalists reporting on Musk temporarily had their accounts suspended. These included political video tweeter Aaron Rupar, Washington Post journalist Drew Harwell,CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan and the New York Times’ Ryan Mac.

Then, a Twitter Space was hosted by BuzzFeed journalist Katie Notopoulos to discuss all of this, during which suspended journalist Harwell was able to challenge Musk on the suspensions – pointing out the same contradiction noted by Binder - thanks to a bug in the feature.

In a short response before leaving the Twitter Space completely, Musk replied: “You doxx, you get suspended, end of story, that’s it.”

Seen the value of the company cut in half

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Since buying Twitter for $44 billion, its valuation has plummeted by more than half and is currently worth just over $20 billion.

In an email to employees seen by The Wall Street Journal back in March, Musk told them they would receive stock awards based on a $20 billion valuation of the firm.

He also told workers that Twitter “can be thought of as an inverse startup” due to the rapid reshaping that he has undertaken over the last five months. During that same time, Musk’s net worth has fallen by around $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“I see a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation,” Musk wrote in the email.

Reinstated and then re-blocked Kanye West

Musk reinstated Kanye West and a number of other controversial accounts to the platform after taking over – only to have some words of advice for him after banning the rapper from Twitter once again a few weeks later.

West, who also goes by Ye, was formally banned from Twitter after posting an image of a swastika superimposed into an image of the Star of David.

The symbol comes after West went on a long anti-Semitic rant on Alex Jones' show where he claimed, "I like Hitler."

Horrified viewers called on Musk to ban West from Twitter, citing his dangerous rhetoric.

Musk told followers he tried to "fix" West but ultimately his account would be suspended for inciting violence due to the photo.

Soon after, West's account was suspended and his tweet was deleted.

Musk then tweeted following West's suspension, writing: "FAFO.”

"FAFO" stands for "F*** Around and Find Out" a popular acronym used to give someone an ultimatum.

Divided the home page into “For You” and “Following”

One of the bigger changes to the site itself came in January when an update saw the timeline split into two with ‘for you’ and ‘latest’ feeds.

A thread from Twitter Support read: “See the tweets you want to see. Starting today on iOS, swipe between tabs to see Tweets recommended ‘for you’, or tweets from the accounts you’re ‘following’.

“The ‘for you’ and ‘following’ tabs replace ‘home’ and ‘latest’ and will be pinned to the top of your timeline so you can easily switch between them. Swipe to switch timelines instead of tapping the [stars] icon.”

The Tesla and SpaceX owner also implemented a "view count" on tweets to let others know how many times a post has been seen. This follows in the footsteps of the video model, where fellow tweeters are shown how many views a video has accumulated.

One of the stranger moves also saw him introduce a marker that lets people see how many times a post had been bookmarked.

Lost his place as the world’s richest man

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Musk is no longer the richest man in the world and it could all be down to his tweets.

The Twitter CEO has been knocked off the top spot of the annual Forbes rich list. He is now second after $39 billion was reportedly stripped his worth in the last 12 months – and Forbes thinks that he has “tweeted himself out” of the top spot.

Musk has been replaced as the richest man in the world by Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault, who is the CEO of LVMH.

LVMH is the world’s biggest luxury goods company and owns brands such as Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Co.

LVMH has experienced record profits and it’s meant that Arnault’s wealth has reportedly risen $53 billion to $211 billion.

Musk, meanwhile, is in second place after dropping down to a net worth of $180 billion.

The report from Forbes read: “Musk has mostly tweeted himself out of the top spot on the ranks, with Tesla stock down nearly 50 percent since he announced his $44 billion takeover of Twitter last April.”

‘Stood down’ as Twitter CEO

Much has been made about Elon Musk’s long-term future at Twitter after he mentioned on numerous occasions that he was looking to appoint a new CEO at the end of last year.

He even ran a Twitter poll and let the people vote on the subject, with the results coming back pretty clearly in favour of Musk resigning and letting someone else take charge.

Well, now he’s claimed that he did in fact step down and appoint a new leader.

So who’s in charge now? According to Musk, his dog is calling the shots.

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