Musk announces that Twitter will be Dark Mode only but changes his mind

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Elon Musk has admitted that the value of his investment in Twitter has dropped precipitously since he bought the social media platform in October. From trying to monetize the verification checkmark to firing employees whose expertise was essential to running the platform, Musk got off to a bad start. In May, he hired a new CEO, and more recently capped the number of tweets that a Twitter user can view in one day.

Musk wants Twitter (or “X”) to be the next super app after China’s WeChat

And that was before he rebranded the platform from Twitter to “X” all because he wants the site to become a platform that does more than publish comments from users around the world. He wants Twitter to be another WeChat, the Chinese super-app that offers instant messaging, video games, mobile payments, social media, and more. Because of its multiple capabilities, the app has more than 1 billion monthly active users and is the largest standalone mobile app worldwide.
From left to rig - Light Mode, Dim Mode, and Dark Mode - Musk announces that Twitter will be Dark Mode only but changes his mind

From left to rig

Light Mode, Dim Mode, and Dark Mode

Musk has created a particular process for his changes. First, there is an initial tweet with a change so distasteful that Twitter users complain. So Musk then changes the new edict ever so slightly allowing Twitter users to think that they are getting what they want when Musk is actually making a change he wanted to make all along. That happened yesterday when Elon first announced that Twitter would eliminate Light Mode (black print on a white background) and Dim Mode leaving Dark Mode (white text on a back background) as the only option.

In his tweet, Musk wrote, “This platform will soon only have ‘dark mode’. It is better in every way.” The complaints soon started coming in from Twitter users not happy about the change. And sure enough, Musk soon rolled back the removal of light mode and instead announced that only the “Dim” Theme setting will be removed. This is a Dark Mode variant with a slightly lighter dark background. So Musk came to the decision that he will leave Light Mode and Dark Mode with the latter as the default setting.
If this process sounds familiar, when Musk first announced the cap on daily tweet views when this month started, he announced that new unverified members were limited to viewing 300 tweets a day, existing unverified members would be allowed to read 600 tweets daily, and verified members could see 6,000 posts a day. But after existing Twitter users tweeted their displeasure with these limits, Musk raised them to 400 Tweets daily for new unverified members, 800 tweets a day for unverified members, and 8,000 Tweets a day for those paying $8 per month for verification.

Musk made the right call by leaving Light Mode and Dark Mode

This writer believes that Musk actually made the right call by leaving light mode and dark mode. Most people feel more comfortable with Light Mode since it is easier to read in the daytime. Dark Mode is great for those who don’t want the bright white background from their phones burning the retinas of innocent bystanders while they view Twitter in a dark room or at night. 

Musk changes his mind again and removes Dim Mode instead of Light Mode - Musk announces that Twitter will be Dark Mode only but changes his mind

Musk changes his mind again and removes Dim Mode instead of Light Mode

And on OLED phones, Dark Mode can actually save battery life since creating the color black on such a display requires the appropriate pixels to be turned off. Pixels that aren’t on do not consume battery power. So a Dark Mode setting can reduce battery consumption by a small amount on phones sporting an OLED screen..

No one but Elon Musk knows how he plans on turning Twitter into “X,” the super-app. Even knowing that he wants to mold Twitter into another app like WeChat that has multiple capabilities doesn’t necessarily help us understand all of the moves he has made since buying the platform. One thing that we hope he learns is that not all Twitter users have the same tastes and preferences as he does.

Musk needs to stop shooting from the hip and tweeting out changes he wants to make to the platform without first doing some research. And now that Twitter has a CEO (Linda Yaccarino) hopefully Twitter can be run more like a business and not like a rich man’s hobby.

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