On October 28, Elon Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars. It took him 7 months to make the deal, with him trying to back out multiple times, only buying it after Twitter’s lawsuit forced him to do it.

After driving up a massive debt for the company, he has now turned to mass layoffs to balance out the costs. Last Friday, he laid off half of Twitter’s workforce, leaving over 3,700 without jobs. He will also be eliminating the option to work from home, forcing employees into the office.

The effects of Musk’s leadership will be felt beyond the office as well. For the past week, Musk has talked about how he believes Twitter should be a place of free speech.

“..It is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk wrote in a tweet on October 27.

Some users fear what the looser restrictions could mean. “I feel like he’s asking for offensive tweets. He knows people are going to take advantage of less restrictions [on the site],” Janelle Kwatia, freshman, said.

Another freshman at West Po concurs, “Why would you do that?,” Kniyannah Farmer, freshman, said. ‘I feel that that speaks a lot about you as a  person to lift [the restrictions] when you know that there’s people who want to say something offensive,” 

Another issue is the revaluation of past bans, which includes former president Donald Trump, known for his many tweets. Though Musk has put off bringing him back until after midterms, his eventual return still causes concern. His tweets are credited with inciting the January 6 riots, with Capitol infiltrators saying his tweets encouraged them and even gave them the idea for the riots. Considering this, many people are worried about how he could influence further political events.

“It’s gonna turn into the slimiest place,” Amy Wheeler, English teacher, said. “I don’t want to be on a platform where I have to look at hate speech and sift out what’s true or not.”