I imply, certain, he’s reinstated a heap of beforehand banned accounts, a lot of which have been re-banned once more. And he’s additionally made the platform much less welcoming to advertisers by upping the parameters for content material removals, and permitting Group Notes to be added to promoted tweets.

However when it comes to guidelines and approaches, Twitter’s both just about the identical because it was, or it’s slowly reverting again to its previous techniques, as Musk and his Twitter 2.0 crew study why these authentic guidelines had initially been put in place.

Take, for instance, verification, which Musk initially used as an actual ‘altering of the guard’ component, an announcement that issues would now be a lot completely different beneath his regime.

Musk and Co. then unexpectedly rolled out their new $8 verification plan, which led to an speedy flood of impersonations and points, forcing Twitter to close it down inside just some days.

Everybody had predicted that might occur. However Elon was eager to push forward along with his new technique anyway, forcing him to up the worth to keep away from dropping out resulting from app retailer taxes.

A month later, when Twitter re-launched verification, new parameters had been added, which instantly started to reflect the ‘lords and peasants’ system that Musk had criticized. Authorities entities and companies would have separate classifications, whereas Twitter would implement new checking measures to attenuate impersonation, together with the removing of the checkmark each time a Twitter Blue subscriber modified their username or profile picture.

These parameters make sense, after all, however once more, the modifications moved the system extra into line with how Twitter had beforehand managed this component. In the meantime, Twitter additionally gifted verification to its prime 10,000 advertisers, in addition to people with over 1,000,000 followers, in recognition of their significance to the app.

In different phrases, Twitter’s nonetheless giving out verification, based mostly by itself inside standards, and people customers are certainly being handled otherwise. Not solely do these profiles not must pay for a verification tick, in addition they don’t even want to use. Basically, the Twitter 2.0 crew has now acknowledged that these customers want verification with a view to shield their id within the app, which is precisely what the unique verification course of was applied to handle. And now, by its personal trial and error, Twitter has come to the identical conclusion as its earlier administration, although Musk and Co. proceed to border it in any other case.

That’s been additional underlined once more this week, with Twitter launching a brand new utility process for government-affiliated profiles, which features a vary of checks and qualifiers to substantiate your id and eligibility for the marker.

The brand new process is sensible – Twitter desires to make sure that those that are given a gray checkmark are certainly who they are saying they’re. However once more, this simply strikes the system extra into line with what it was. And whereas anybody can now purchase a checkmark if they need, the suggestion that Twitter is taking some radically completely different strategy right here is inaccurate, and belies the fact of its strategy.

You can say the identical about its varied practical additions, like longer tweets, subscriptions and Group Notes. All of those had been both in improvement or launched lengthy earlier than Elon took over, with Twitter merely clearing its experiment deck, and framing every as a brand new choice.

For all of the noise about change on the app, Twitter’s really not far faraway from its earlier state. Lots of the rule modifications and updates that Elon applied have both been rolled again resulting from points in utility, or reformed into comparable guidelines to what that they had beforehand been.

Twitter’s additionally nonetheless bowing to authorities requests, with Indian, Chinese language and Russian authorities now seemingly getting higher remedy beneath Musk, regardless of Musk’s ‘Twitter Recordsdata’ venture which proclaimed to uncover comparable initiatives during which Twitter had labored with authorities teams.   

Twitter’s nonetheless the identical, it’s simply that the particular person making the decision on the way it operates is completely different. That could be seen as a greater scenario by some, however the concept Twitter is now extra open, much less restricted, and fewer influenced by administration isn’t right.

The one actual distinction is that Twitter desires to cost individuals more cash for utilizing its instruments, be it by way of verification, API utilization, and so forth. Nevertheless it’s attention-grabbing to notice that its techniques are nonetheless largely the identical, and with far fewer employees, it’s tough to see how Twitter’s going to implement important modifications with a view to additional advance its choices.

However I’m certain that Elon has a plan, which fits past merely bullying customers into paying him $8 a month for elevated tweet attain.

Possibly Tucker Carlson’s new present is the subsequent stage of Twitter’s content material and creator focus that’ll convey extra customers to the app.