Elon Musk removes letter from Twitter sign for the most childish reason

As Twitter continues to combust right before our very eyes, we’re constantly wondering if each decision made by new(ish) CEO Elon Musk will be his most pathetic move yet.

Monday saw him change Twitter’s desktop logo to the classic Doge meme (apparently getting the idea from another social media user a year ago), and last month he decided to turn on an auto reply on Twitter’s official press email to send back a poop emoji.

Though if you thought all of that was pathetic, it turns out Musk has gone one further – by reportedly removing the ‘w’ from Twitter to spell… well, you know exactly what it spells.

Apparently, Musk set up a poll in April last year – since deleted from his account – whereby he asked his followers if he should “delete the w in Twitter”.

The two options were ‘yes’ and ‘of course’, if you were wondering whether Musk was actually being serious about something for once.

Well it seems the Tesla founder has followed through on his intention to act like a 12-year-old, as William LeGate – CEO of the US pillow and mattress company Pillow Fight – pointed out a change to the sign at the social media company’s San Francisco headquarters.

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He tweeted on Thursday: “Elon Musk, in a remarkable show of maturity, has removed the ‘w’ from Twitter’s logo outside their San Francisco HQ. The company now reads as ‘T**ter’.”

Sure enough, attached to the post was a photo of the @twitter sign outside the building, with the letter ‘w’ poorly covered over to spell the childish alternative.

Following the image being shared online, many people weren’t seeing the funny side – and rightly so. Instead, many issued the same response:

As if that wasn’t enough, Thursday also saw the company’s ‘Twitter Verified’ account mass unfollow everyone – namely the ‘legacy’ blue tick accounts the profile had automatically followed when they were verified.

The move came amid ongoing confusion as to what exactly will happen to users who were verified before Musk opened up the tick to anyone – that is, anyone who received a blue tick because they were a “notable” individual such as a celebrity.

Now, anyone willing to shell out at least $8 a month (or at least £9.60 in the UK) can be ‘verified’ on Twitter, ruining the whole original point of verification - to reduce impersonation - in the first place.

Late last month, Twitter said it would be removing ticks from ‘legacy’ verified accounts from 1 April – yes, from April Fool’s Day.

This didn’t happen, and instead, not long after the verification was meant to be removed, tapping or clicking a blue tick on any account on the mobile app now comes up with a message that “this account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account”.

Just to make things even more confusing, of course.

At this point, Twitter Verified’s mass unfollow spree has been branded “petty” by many Twitter users:

It is not known whether the @verified account will be deactivated, only follow Blue subscribers, or just lie dormant for the time being.

Fun.

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