Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, is buying Twitter for $44 billion. If the transaction is approved by regulators, Musk promises to make “major enhancements to Twitter.” On Monday afternoon, he announced those plans in the acquisition announcement.
Twitter is being purchased by the world’s richest man. Elon Musk, the wealthy CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, added another title to his portfolio on Monday afternoon: Twitter owner. Musk will pay $54.20 per share for Twitter, totaling $44 billion, matching his first offer. When the purchase is completed, Twitter will revert to being a privately held firm.
So, what does Musk have planned for Twitter?
Based on his remark in Monday’s press release announcing the acquisition, we have a very solid notion of his main priorities:
“Free expression is the foundation of a healthy democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where important issues affecting humanity’s future are argued,” he stated. “I also want to make Twitter better than it has ever been by adding new features, opening up the algorithms to increase trust, combating spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
Musk, a long-time Twitter user with more than 80 million followers, has been vocal about his dissatisfaction with the platform for years. Based on his previous comments, here’s what we anticipate to see at Twitter if the purchase is approved by authorities.
1. Loosening content moderation is the first step.
Based on Musk’s comments, it appears that he will at the very least fight for looser Twitter moderation.
He has displayed this sentiment at least once in recent weeks, when he rebuffed efforts “by some countries (not Ukraine)” to ban news broadcasts from Russia at his satellite internet business, Starlink.
2. Algorithm modifications
Another argument Musk has brought up in the past is Twitter’s influence on society.
Last month, he asked his followers if they thought Twitter’s algorithm should be “open source” – a word for software that is freely available and can be changed by many different contributors.
3. Getting rid of spambots
Some of Musk’s rumored plans are more about his own Twitter usage than anything else. He’s previously claimed that he wants to eliminate “crypto spam bots,” which are spam accounts that promote what look to be crypto-based schemes and frequently use Musk’s Twitter image.
The “single most unpleasant problem” with using Twitter, according to Musk, is the spam problem. He’s even publicly begged Twitter to address the problem. In February, he said, “How long must this go on?”
4. Adding a button to edit
Musk supports the edit button, which has been requested by Twitter users for years.
He’s been a long-time supporter of the idea that Twitter should add an edit capability to its service so that users may correct basic spelling errors or misplaced links as soon as they publish them. In a poll he conducted last month, his 80 million+ followers overwhelmingly backed introducing the feature.
Twitter, for example, has stated that it had been working on the feature for some time.
