Elon Musk news - live: Musk dumps $4bn worth of shares in Tesla shares as personal wealth drops below $200bn

Twitter’s monetizable daily user (mDAU) growth has accelerated to more than 20 percent, while “Twitter’s largest market, the US, is growing even more quickly,” since Elon Musk took over.

Twitter has reportedly added more than 15 million mDAUs, “crossing the quarter billion mark” since the end of the second quarter

An internal Twitter FAQ for use with conversations with advertisers gives more insight into how Twitter could be changing.

The new Twitter Blue subscription, documents obtained by The Verge suggests, that paid verification “will not affect existing verified accounts at this time” and that “large brand advertisers who are already verified will now have an additional ‘Official’ label beneath their name upon Twitter Blue’s relaunch this week.”

Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus, has created a virtual reality headset that intentionally kills people.

Named ‘NerveGear’, the system aims to closely tie people’s virtual life to their real one – by bringing them both to an end at the same time.

If someone dies in a virtual reality game or experience while wearing the headset, then they will be killed in real life at the same time, Mr Luckey said.

Andrew Griffin has the full story.

The current Twitter Blue only has around 100,000 active subscribers, it has been reported, and Elon Musk’s new plans could see it lose more money.

Mr Musk’s idea is that users of Twitter Blue will only see half as many ads.

Estimates indicatethat Twitter will lose about $6 in ad revenue per user per month in the United States by making that change.

With Apple and Google’s share of the $8 monthly subscription, as the platforms take a tithe for being on the iOS and Android stores, Twitter would likely lose money on Blue if Mr Musk’s plan goes through.

Twitter’s employees have been split into two groups: those on projects Elon Musk finds interesting, and everything else.

“The couple of teams that are on his pet projects are doing 20-hour days,” one employee said.

“But the majority of the company is kind of just sitting around. No chain of command, no priorities, no organization chart, and in many cases, no idea who your manager or team is.”

Some managers were asked to submit to Elon Musk’s team two sentences about the people they were managing: one sentence explaining what the employee did, and another justifying why they should keep working at Twitter, Casey Newton reports.

“You were like, this better be a fucking good sentence,” one person claimed.

“I prefer to stay out of politics." Those were Elon Musk’s words when the tech exec was forced to respond to a claim by Texas governor Greg Abbott that he supported the state’s anti-abortion laws.

If so, Mr Musk has a funny way of showing it. Over his decade-plus of public fame as the chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter, the South-African-born tycoon has attacked everyone and everything, from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders through individual regulatory officials to Covid rules, trade unions, and "pronouns".

In November, the day before the US midterms, he urged his 115m Twitter followers to vote Republicans into Congress in order to balance against a Democratic presidency and “curb [its] worst excesses”.

It came after his announcement in June that he had voted Republican for the first time ever in a special congressional election in Texas, as well as suggesting that he would support the Florida’s GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, should he run for the White House.

Yet despite these outright shows of support, Mr Musk still claims to be an independent who is willing to vote for either party when the occasion demands it.

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has pushed users to alternative platforms, including a perculiar one called Mastodon.

The social media site has reportedly gained over 230,000 in the wake of Mr Musk’s buyout, with a total of 655,000 users.

However, Mastodon is not as simple to use as Twitter - despite looking superficially similar - and users may need some guidance in getting the most out of the site.

Elon Musk has rejected a suggestion from fellow billionaire Mark Cuban to offer free Twitter subscriptions to some users.

Mr Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, ventured that an $8 verification fee could be waived for the “most accurate” users of a new Notes feature, that allows people to flag and respond to inaccurate posts on the platform.

“You might consider proactively offering your $8 verification program for free to those you deem the most accurate Notes contributors. Won’t be easy to confirm accuracy. But if AI can try to model out bias, maybe it can model in accuracy?”

Mr Musk knocked back the idea outright, replying: “$8 for all.”

“Your business. Your decision,” Mr Cuban responded.

Tesla stock sank to hit a new 52-week low on Monday as chief executive Elon Musk’s rocky start to his Twitter regime appeared to spook investors.

Shares in the electric vehicle maker plunged more than 4 per cent to $196.66 on Monday after Mr Musk tweeted that “independent-minded” voters should support Republicans in Tuesday’s midterms.

The stock had recovering slightly to $198.40 by 3.40pm, but was still among the worst performers on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes on Monday.

The company has seen its value fall by 14 per cent since Mr Musk completed the $44bn acquisition of Twitter on 28 October.