Elon Musk said he did not trust Twitter’s current leadership to make the necessary changes to promote freedom of speech on the platform.
Elon Musk can sometimes be impenetrable, and his policies are elusive, making it somewhat difficult to determine exactly what the billionaire would do if he successfully acquired Twitter. But in recent weeks and months, Mr Musk has given more hints about what he would change on Twitter – in interviews, regulatory documents and, of course, on his personal Twitter account.
Here are the main areas that Mr. Musk could look for:
Free speech and content moderators. Mr Musk is often concerned that Twitter content moderators go too far and interfere too much in what he sees as the “de facto town square” of the internet.
In the regulatory documentation in which he announced his offer to buy Twitter, he wrote: “I invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to be a platform for freedom of speech around the world and I believe that freedom of speech is a public imperative for a functioning democracy. “
He added that he did not trust the current management of the company to make the changes he deems necessary and to give priority to his ideas about freedom of speech in the platform. “Since I made my investment, I now realize that the company will neither thrive nor serve this social imperative in its current form,” he wrote.
In a tweet on Monday, Mr Musk said he hoped even his “worst critics” would continue to use the platform, “because it means freedom of speech”.
The question of Trump. Mr Musk has not commented publicly on how he will deal with former President Donald Trump’s banned Twitter account. But his comments on free speech have sparked speculation that Twitter under his ownership could reinstate Mr Trump, who was banned from the platform last year. Following the January 6 Capitol riot, Twitter said Mr Trump had violated its policies by inciting violence among his supporters. Facebook also banned Mr Trump for the same reason.
The former president, who has been known for tweets criticizing his opponents and sometimes announcing policy changes, is also trying to launch his own social media site. His startup, Truth Social, is struggling to attract users, and the problem could get worse now that Mr Musk has proposed changing the rules for moderating Twitter content. Mr Trump said in a recent interview that he probably would not rejoin Twitter if he could.
The algorithm. At a TED conference this month, he developed plans to make the company’s algorithm an open source model that will allow users to see the code showing how certain publications have appeared in their timelines.
He said the open source method would be better than “tweets somehow mysteriously raised and lowered without knowing what’s going on.”
Mr Musk also pointed to the politicization of the platform before and recently tweeted that the policies of each social media platform are “good if the top 10 percent on the left and right are equally dissatisfied”.
Social media platform policies are good if the top 10% on the left and right are equally dissatisfied
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2022
Who and how uses the platform. Before Mr Musk offered to buy Twitter this month, he expressed concern about the suitability of the platform.
When an account posted a list of the 10 most followed Twitter accounts, including former President Barack Obama and pop stars Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, Mr. Musk responded and wrote: “Most of these ‘top’ accounts rarely tweet and post a lot. little content. Is Twitter dying? “
Most recently, Tesla’s CEO promised in a tweet on Thursday that he would “beat spam bots or die trying!”
If our Twitter offer succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
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