Elton John has taken the Yellow Brick Road. Penn & Teller have disappeared. Jim Carrey couldn't see the funny side. And, this week, the Glasgow School of Art announced that it, too, would no longer be posting on Twitter.

Now known as 𝕏, the social media site has been in turmoil since a takeover by the controversial billionaire Elon Musk in October 2022.

The Tesla CEO had initially tried to back out of the $44bn acquisition of Twitter but, after the company filed a lawsuit, he reversed course and walked into the San Francisco headquarters carrying a sink - "let that sink in" being the internet meme he was going for on this occasion.

Musk announced he would focus on 'free speech', removing the ability to report misleading posts and scrapping the company's Covid misinformation policy.

The billionaire also introduced a paid-for service, Twitter Blue, wherein the blue ticks to 'verify' the identity of a brand or person could instead be bought - in return for their money, subscribers were given preferential treatment in the algorithm.

The move, touted as a move toward equality by Musk, opened up the prospect of impersonation of news outlets, brands and celebrities, and sparked a backlash from some notable names.

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LeBron James, considered by many the greatest basketball player of all time, announced he would not be paying for a blue tick, as did bestselling author Stephen King.

As many pointed out at the time, James has a lifetime contract with Nike worth $1bn while King has sold more than 400 million books worldwide, many of which became successful films - that they and others like them were using Twitter for free was a boon in itself, never mind asking them to pay for the privilege. Indeed, King quipped "f*** that, they should pay me".

Those two were passive-aggressively 'gifted' blue ticks by Musk, with the decision made in April this year to automatically give the tick to accounts with over 2,500 paying followers - essentially ensuring the big celebrity accounts would be given one by default.

While the company would claim record engagement since the takeover, analysis suggests things are not going well.

Some of the world's major football leagues, including the Premier League, LaLiga, the Bundesliga, and Serie A have written to the company calling it "the home of unlawful social media piracy" and calling out "persistent failings" to protect their intellectual property.

In the US, a report found active users had declined 13% in 12 months. Musk claims a "monthly user" base of 54 million, but as of August of 2013 under one million of those were estimated to be members of  𝕏 Premium (the rebranded name for Twitter Blue).

(Image: PA)

That's a problem for the company, as paid users were supposed to fill the gap left by advertisers wary of the new regime's more lax approach to moderation.

In 2017, YouTube creators and the platform itself suffered what was dubbed an 'adpocalypse' as brands withdrew their funding en masse following numerous incidents of their adverts appearing on the channels of far-right provocateurs.

A new opt-out for categories like "sensitive social issues" or "sensational and shocking" was introduced which, in practice, meant that simply mentioning something like the Holocaust as part of an educational video on World War II would be treated the same as denying it happened and see a video demonetised.

While that issue appears to have been ameliorated to some extent, Musk does not appear to have learned the lesson.

Twitter has restored previously banned accounts belonging to the likes of white supremacists Richard Spencer and Stefan Molyneux, far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins and, most famously, former President Donald Trump.

Musk himself promoted an anti-semitic conspiracy when he responded to a post reading "Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them" by saying "you have said the actual truth".

Advertisers including Airbnb, Microsoft and Coca-Cola all halted ad spending, as did Apple, IBM, Disney, and Sony.

Rather than enforce more strict moderation, Musk turned to the courts.

On August 6, 𝕏 filed a lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible media; the World Federation of Advertisers; and four companies,  Ørsted, CVS Health, Unilever and Mars, accusing them of colluding in a boycott of the platform.

The move was announced in a frankly odd video by CEO Linda Yaccarino in which she declared: "People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is constricted, no small group of people should be able to monopolise what gets monetised."

Quite how this squares with 𝕏's policy of promoting the content of premium, paid users above those who haven't bought a blue tick and only allowing their content to be monetised is unclear.

One imagines that the parties' involved first line of defence will be the words of Mr Musk himself.

Asked about advertising in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, the billionaire replied: "I hope they stop. Don't advertise. If someone's going to try to blackmail me with money? Blackmail me with advertising? Go f*** yourself. Go. F***. Yourself."

This would likely be branded 'unwise' by all except Musk's army of online supporters, who see him as some sort of real-life Tony Stark. As one memorable tweet put it, were he to slam his appendage in car door said fans would respond: "masterful gambit, sir".

Not that the South African entrepreneur is quite so bullish with everyone.

When the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift announced the release of 1989 (Taylor's Version), Musk tweeted to her account saying "I recommend posting some music or concert videos directly on the 𝕏 platform".

Swift did not take up this recommendation, instead releasing a concert film of her Eras Tour to cinemas and, later, Disney+ and grossing close to $300m.

(Image: Vue)

Musk also called it "rather disappointing" that the comedian Russell Brand, who has been accused of rape, assault and emotional abuse, was promoting rival Rumble.

Then, of course, there was his longstanding courtship of President Trump.

The former Apprentice host had his account suspended in the wake of the January 6 riots, but it was reinstated by Musk in November 2022.

Trump, however, steadfastly refused to return to the platform, insisting he was happy with his own app, Truth Social.

The former President has also been cutting about the Tesla CEO in the past, calling him a "bulls*** artist".

In 2022 he wrote on Truth Social: "When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it."

If not quite on his knees, Musk was certainly in obsequious mood as he finally welcome the man hoping to return to the White House in November back to the platform with a live interview on Monday night - not that it went smoothly

The 𝕏 live audio platform, Spaces, crashed as hundreds of thousands attempted to listen in to the chat, with users unable to log in for close to an hour. Musk blamed it on a DDOS attack, something staff at the company said was a lie.

It followed a similar issue which affected the campaign launch of one of Trump's campaign rivals, Ron DeSantis, in May. At the time the former President wrote: "Wow! The DeSanctus (sic) Twitter launch is a disaster! His whole campaign will be a disaster. Watch!"

While he may have managed to tempt Trump back to the platform, lax moderation and Musk's own actions are driving many away.

During the far-right riots which swept across the UK, the billionaire made several allusions to "civil war", and retweeted a post claiming Keir Starmer is setting up "detainment camps" in the Falkland Islands.

The 𝕏 algorithm is designed to boost posts by its owner, reportedly in response to his failure to achieve high engagement during the Super Bowl.

Musk frequently responds to accounts such as Libs Of Tik Tok, Catturd and End Wokeness, often simply posting an exclamation mark - enough to put their posts into millions of feeds.

An out of context video of former First Minister Humza Yousaf talking about the need for diversity in senior roles in public bodies, governments and trades unions has been seized upon by the far-right and amplified by Musk, who described Yousaf as "super, super racist" and claimed he "loathes white people".

With advertisers and users alike fleeing, what happens to the social media site formerly known as Twitter remains uncertain.

Musk has spoken of the desire to turn the platform into an "everything app" but it's just the 12th most used social media site worldwide, dwarfed by Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and beaten by the likes of TikTok, Snapchat and Telegram.

Under Musk it looks more likely to be the next Myspace or Bebo - whatever the owner's vociferous fans would have you believe.