Some Twitter employees were engaged in a company-wide planning process for next year on Tuesday when their phones began buzzing with news that Elon Musk had again reversed course in his on-again, off-again $44 billion bid to buy the company.

This time, the deal was on. The plans they were in the middle of presenting? Perhaps not.

One employee described a brief pause in a meeting to note the news, then continuing with discussions.

"I think everyone is used to the drama," said the person. "We're just along for the ride."

Months of whiplash over the deal have left employees used to uncertainty, and many greeted the news of Musk's proposal to return to his original offer with a sense of deja vu, three company sources who were not authorized to speak publicly told Reuters.

Since the world's richest person disclosed in April that he had acquired a stake in the social media platform, Musk has accepted and rejected a seat on Twitter's board, launched a bid to take the company private and tried to back out of the deal altogether.

The social media company is only pursuing about half the projects it normally would due to uncertainty about how many employees will flee, and to ensure it can deliver on commitments, one employee told Reuters.

Many blew off steam on the platform they run, tweeting about their confusion and perceived futility about planning for the future when Musk is expected to call for seismic shifts in how Twitter works.

"All of the frazzled nerves, all of the uncertainty, all of the worrying, all of the back and forth and back and forth, people I care about struggling and anxious," tweeted JP Doherty, an engineering manager at Twitter.

"And we just come right back to where it started, maybe. Unbelievable."

Multiple staffers tweeted a meme showing a paper labeled "2023 Planning," with a cartoon character first exclaiming "woah" and then saying "this is worthless."

Another meme popular with Twitter employees showed characters from the cartoon show SpongeBob SquarePants, with one labeled Elon and the other labeled Jack, for Twitter's founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who publicly backed Musk's bid.

The two stood smiling as buildings burned around them. "We did it Elon! We saved Twitter," the caption said.

Some employees in Twitter's internal Slack channel lamented they had sold some Twitter shares the day prior, before Musk's return to the deal prompted the stock to surge more than 22%, according to a source.

Others expressed skepticism that Musk would ever make good on his offer, after so much uncertainty.

"Wouldn't be surprised if it's a delay tactic to get more time for trial discovery and he'll back out again after a month or something," wrote one employee on Slack.

Employees will revolt.

Another easy prediction to make about Mr. Musk’s takeover is that it will generate enormous backlash among Twitter’s rank-and-file employees.

Twitter, more so than other social media platforms, has a vocally progressive work force and many employees who are deeply invested in the company’s mission of promoting “healthy conversation.” Those employees may believe — for good reason! — that under Mr. Musk’s leadership, Twitter will abandon many of the projects they care about in areas like trust and safety. Or they may simply not want to deal with the drama and tumult of a Musk regime, and start looking for jobs elsewhere.

Some employees have already quit, anticipating a Musk takeover. And it’s safe to bet that many more will follow if the deal actually closes.

It’s worth noting that in his texts with Mr. Musk, Mr. Agrawal claimed that a “large silent majority” of Twitter employees supported Mr. Musk’s vision. But virtually every Twitter employee I’ve spoken to in the last six months has told me that he or she plans to leave if Mr. Musk takes over.

It’s also worth noting that Mr. Musk may not mind if thousands of Twitter employees show themselves the door. He has implied that the company’s staff is bloated, and now that he needs to justify a $44 billion price tag, an exodus of unhappy employees might be the kind of savings he’s looking for.

Donald Trump will return to Twitter, along with a swarm of other right-wing culture warriors.

Mr. Musk, who has framed his bid for Twitter as an attempt to preserve free speech on the platform, has long said that, if successful, he would allow former President Donald J. Trump to reclaim his Twitter account, which was permanently suspended last year after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

That will happen almost immediately, I predict. (And, yes, Mr. Trump will come back to Twitter if he’s invited, no matter how much fun he’s having on Truth Social.)

But Mr. Musk’s “replatforming” will extend far beyond the former president. A host of right-wing culture warriors could come back to the service with Mr. Musk’s blessing, including those who were barred for expressing hateful views, spreading false conspiracy theories and harassing other users. (In his text messages, Mr. Musk told Mr. Agrawal that he wanted to reverse all permanent Twitter bans “except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence.”)

Mr. Musk, who styles himself a centrist but often crusades against the “woke left,” has made no secret of his plans to make Twitter a friendlier platform for right-wing voices. He has expressed support for The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site whose Twitter account was suspended after it published a transphobic humor piece about a Biden administration official. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account was suspended this year for repeatedly sharing misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, has urged Mr. Musk to reinstate her along with other right-wing commentators, including Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars.

Along with one-off reversals of high-profile bans, I’d also expect that Mr. Musk would tear up Twitter’s existing rules and rewrite new ones, and that he might dismantle Twitter’s content-policy and trust-and-safety teams, which are responsible for enforcing the platform’s rules as they currently exist. (That is, if those teams don’t quit en masse first.)

He might even name his own set of free-speech absolutists. One friend of Mr. Musk’s suggested that he install someone like Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate from Arizona, as Twitter’s head of enforcement, according to the trove of text messages released during the court battle. (Mr. Musk did not respond to the suggestion.)

It probably won’t change the midterms, but 2024 could be the Elon Election.

Mr. Musk’s takeover could happen before next month’s midterm elections. And if it does, there could still be time for him to make decisions, like allowing Mr. Trump back on the platform or loosening restrictions on political ads, that could reshape the conversation about some races.

But Mr. Musk — who, let’s not forget, runs several other companies — will have his hands full between now and November. And I don’t think that, with only a month left until the elections, there will be a straight line from Mr. Musk’s takeover to, say, a Republican sweep of close House and Senate races.

The 2024 election, though, will be a different story. By then, if the deal is consummated, Mr. Musk will have been able to more fully mold Twitter in his own image. The platform could look radically different by then — more right-wing trolls, fewer guardrails against misinformation and extremism — or it could be largely the same. But Mr. Musk will be firmly in charge, and if Twitter still plays anywhere near the role in American political and media culture that it does today, he will emerge as a central, polarizing figure in the 2024 election cycle.

Republicans are, for obvious reasons, excited about Mr. Musk’s taking over. But the ultimate political consequences of his ownership are harder to predict. It’s theoretically possible — though, I concede, probably unlikely — that Mr. Musk’s owning Twitter could be good for Democrats in 2022 and 2024, if it allows more Republican politicians to stake out extreme positions on Twitter that end up backfiring on them at the ballot box.

But whatever moves Mr. Musk makes before 2024, it’s a good bet that they will be closely scrutinized for signs that he is putting his thumb on the scale.

Twitter will kill unpopular features, go after bots and introduce new subscription products.

Some of the most revealing exchanges in Mr. Musk’s trove of text messages were about his thoughts on Twitter’s products.

In particular, Mr. Musk was dismissive of Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription-based product that gives users access to premium features like ad-free articles and an undo button for tweets. Perhaps surprisingly, given his love of cryptocurrency, Mr. Musk also appeared skeptical of proposals to rebuild Twitter on a decentralized blockchain, saying that “blockchain Twitter won’t work.”

Based on his statements, and pitches he made to investors this summer while trying to pull a deal together, I’d expect Mr. Musk to make several changes to Twitter’s products early on. First, he will move to shut down many of Twitter’s noncore features — including some of those in Twitter Blue, but also any other features that don’t generate much revenue for the company. He will try to rid the site of spam bots, a problem that he has long singled out as one of the worst parts of Twitter. (And which formed the basis of his spurious attempt to get out of the Twitter deal, back before he decided to buy it again.)

Mr. Musk will also try to shift Twitter away from advertising revenue and toward other moneymaking opportunities — including payments features, data-licensing agreements and a mysterious new subscription product, which he has called only X, and which he has claimed will have 104 million paying users by 2028.

Musk will remain the center of attention.

Perhaps the easiest prediction to make about Mr. Musk’s Twitter takeover is that it will make him an even bigger celebrity.

Mr. Musk is, of course, already one of the most well known people in the world. But until now, his power has largely been a function of his extreme wealth and the size of his online following. He could get in flame wars, make crude jokes about senators or threaten to move his companies out of California, and all of this mattered a great deal to the people involved — but it was all ultimately soft power that was contingent on Twitter’s willingness to let him keep throwing bombs at his 108 million followers, and the public’s willingness to keep paying attention.

Owning Twitter is different. If the deal closes, Mr. Musk will have direct control over one of the world’s largest megaphones, and will be able to use it entirely as he sees fit — whether that’s to turn it into a lawless free-for-all, take revenge on his political enemies, promote his own business ventures or do something else entirely. And given Mr. Musk’s penchant for seizing the spotlight, we can expect that whatever he chooses to do with Twitter, it won’t be boring.

There was already no escaping Mr. Musk. Now, looking away will be truly impossible. -New York Time.