Tesla Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Elon Musk has struck a deal with Twitter to buy the social media site for roughly $ 44 billion, and wants the world to know that change is coming to Twitter.
Here are four changes Musk could push for at Twitter:
- Tweak content moderation
What is and isn’t allowed on Twitter is a subject Musk has been tweeting about since before he disclosed his stake in the company. At the end of March, for instance, Musk tweeted a poll inquiring whether users believed Twitter was protecting free speech. He said the poll results would be “very important”.
Musk tweeted, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” About 70% of two million respondents responded no.
The United States of America’s First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies, such as Twitter, which can create their own rules about what is allowed. In 2020, Agrawal, then Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), told MIT Technology Review the company’s role is “not to be bound by the First Amendment” but “to serve a healthy public conversation”.
In a follow-up tweet, Musk said: “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?”
He also asked whether a new platform was needed.
Musk isn’t the first person to question whether Twitter is censoring some voices. Conservatives criticised the company for banning former US President Donald Trump after the deadly 6 January Capitol Hill riots, though Dorsey has defended the call, made because of the risk of inciting violence. Some Twitter users have been calling on Musk to allow Trump back on the platform.
Musk tweeted this week that “a social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy”. He didn’t answer questions about how Twitter would measure this.
How much influence Musk can have on content moderation is an open question. Twitter says its policy decisions aren’t determined by either the board or shareholders, and it has no plans to reverse any existing policies.
For what it’s worth, Musk’s tweets haven’t been free of controversy. Musk was accused of violating Twitter’s rules against harmful coronavirus misinformation in 2020 when he falsely tweeted that “kids are essentially immune” from Covid-19. In reality, children can catch the virus. Twitter told Axios the tweet didn’t violate its rules because it wasn’t “definitive”.
- Combat cryptocurrency scams
Cryptocurrency scams have been a thorn in Twitter’s side, and they’re a problem that has personally impacted Musk.
Scammers have impersonated Musk using fake accounts on various social media sites in an effort to get people to give away cryptocurrency. In 2020, Musk’s account was also among high-profile Twitter accounts that were hacked to push a bitcoin scam.
In January, Musk complained that Twitter was spending time on products such as profile pictures that showcase non-fungible tokens, assets verified on a blockchain, rather than fighting crypto spam bots.
“Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!? [sic]” he tweeted.
He’s also tweeted that bots are the “single most annoying problem” on Twitter. On Thursday, Musk tweeted if a Twitter bid succeeds “we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!” and “authenticate all real humans”.
- Release an edit button
Twitter users have long asked for a way to edit their tweets for typos and other problems, but the highly requested feature hasn’t been at the top of the company’ priorities. Twitter did include a way to undo tweets as part of its Twitter Blue $ 3-a-month subscription plan.
On 4 April, Musk brought up the idea of an edit button again, tweeting another poll. “Do you want an edit button,” he tweeted, misspelling the words yes and no. More than four million votes were cast, with almost three quarters supporting the idea.
Musk hasn’t offered his own view of whether he thinks an edit button is needed. On 5 April, Twitter tweeted that it’s been working on an edit feature since last year – “no, we didn’t get the idea from a poll,” Twitter’s communications team tweeted with a winky face emoji. The company said it will start testing the tool to learn what works and is possible.
Twitter has expressed concerns before that an edit tool could lead to issues such as people sharing tweets that are then altered to change their meaning. In 2020, Dorsey even told Wired that Twitter would probably never add an edit button.
“We started as an SMS text messaging service. So, as you all know, when you send a text, you can’t really take it back,” Dorsey said in the interview. “We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling in the early days.”
It seems like Twitter is putting the feature higher on its priority list. On 4 April, Agrawal used familiar language to respond to Musk’s edit button poll.
“The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully,” Agrawal tweeted.
- Open up Twitter’s algorithm
Social media users have complained that algorithms control their lives, enticing them to spend more time on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms. Some Twitter users prefer to see tweets in chronological order. In March, Twitter rolled back a change that would show the algorithmic feed by default after user complaints.
Musk has suggested Twitter could make the algorithm open-source. Musk didn’t specify what that would entail, but open-source software is freely available and can be altered. He posed the idea in a 24 March poll. About 83% of one million respondents said yes.
Dorsey appeared to endorse the results, tweeting: “The choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone.”
In a TED Talk earlier this month, Musk said he thinks Twitter users should be able to see if a tweet has been demoted or promoted on the site so there’s no “behind-the-scenes manipulation”. Twitter’s code should be on Github, he said, so people can look for errors and suggest changes.
(CNET)
