What will Elon Musk do with Twitter? Prospective owner tweets his plan for the site
The Tesla CEO has big plans for the social media site and outlined some of his priorities for free speech and security in a series of Twitter posts.
Elon Musk is reportedly close to a deal to purchase Twitter after the social media site’s board agreed to a $44 billion offer earlier this week.
The shock bid came less than two weeks earlier, and little over a month since it was first revealed that Musk is the second-largest Twitter shareholder. Throughout the period the Tesla CEO has continued his frequent Twitter posting, something that may have unsettled the company’s directors.
However it has also given some insight into his ideas to change the site, a number of which came in a series of tweets on Wednesday…
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Twitter must be ‘politically neutral’
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Twitter was one of the first major social networking sites to impose restrictions on the account of former President Donald Trump in response to false information.
However this is the antithesis of Musk’s intentions for the site and he has claimed that Twitter must stay “politically neutral” or risk alienating the public.
Censorship is perhaps the most contentious issue on Twitter at the moment and one which appears central to Musk’s ambitions with the site. A staunch believer of online freedoms, the 50-year-old is extremely reluctant to curb free speech on the platform.
He also replied to his own post about the surge in interest for Donald Trump’s Truth Social app, by saying that the platform only exists “because Twitter censored free speech.”
Musk wants encryption on Twitter DMs
Twitter’s use as a direct messaging resources is rarely considered, but with hundreds of millions of daily users its DM service is one of the largest of its kind. But, as it stands, the DM function is fairly basic and offers few of the features you can get from innumerable free apps.
Musk may look to bridge the gap and bolster Twitter’s messaging service, perhaps by adding end-to-end encryption for the first time. Online privacy is a key matter for Musk and he cites the popular cross-platform encrypted messaging service Signal as an example.
What else did Elon Musk say about Twitter?
As is often the case when Elon Musk takes to Twitter, it was as much about pleasure as business. And there are few things that bring as much pleasure to the billionaire as some chaotic social media posting.
Alongside the Joe Rogan memes, Musk said on Wednesday that he was “buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in,” in reference to the fact that an extract of the coca leaf was included in early recipes for the beverage. Perhaps he intends to return Twitter to its earlier, non-regulated, days.