Gary Zhou 
Elon Musk announced that negative and hate tweets will be “max deboosted & demonetized.” He said that Twitter’s new policy is freedom of speed, but it is not freedom of reach. He made this announcement after reinstating three Twitter accounts, one of which was Kathy Griffin, who was one of many of his impersonators following the launch of the new Twitter Blue verification service.
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from the rest of the Internet,” he said on Friday. He added that this new policy applies to the individual tweet and not the whole account.
On Thursday night, several critics of Elon Musk and now of Twitter panicked at the thought of Twitter dying. Several mainstream media reports reflected and amplified the panic with headlines such as “Twitter will be dead within a week” and “is Twitter dead yet?”
This panic was brought on by the resignations of more Twitter staff members, as well as reports of the offices being locked and badge access being revoked. Alex Cohen, a former employee at Twitter who was laid off on Thursday afternoon, said that he was in charge of managing badge access to Twitter offices. In a tweet, Cohen explained what happened.
“Elon just called me and asked if I could come back to help them regain access to HQ as they shut off all badges and accidentally locked themselves out,” he tweeted. Elon Musk thanked Cohen, adding that he is “a lifesaver.”
The chaos of the locked offices and lack of badge access led to those aforementioned reports of Twitter dying which in turn led to Twitter hitting another all-time high usage. #RIPTwitter and other similar hashtags were trending, and even Elon Musk joined in on the fun with a few jokes and memes.
