On April 25, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk closed a deal to buy social network Twitter for $44 billion in cash. Here’s a look at what may change in Twitter with the arrival of a new owner.
Freedom of speech
It is known that the billionaire has criticized the platform’s policy regarding content moderation, arguing that Twitter should be a platform where you can express yourself freely. Musk himself calls himself an “absolutist of free speech.”
In a statement after the deal, he called free speech “the foundation of a functioning democracy.
Privacy
The company will become private. According to WP, Musk expects to retain as many current shareholders as possible, but it is still unknown what the company’s ownership or board of directors will look like.
It is unknown who will run Twitter and how Musk intends to combine the development of the social network with the rest of his companies – Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and Boring Company.
Meanwhile, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Monday published a series of tweets in which he thanked Musk and current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal for “pulling the company out of a hopeless situation.”
Open Source
At the TED 2022 conference, Musk said that he wanted to turn the social network’s algorithms into an open-source model. In particular, this will allow users to see why a particular tweet appeared in their feed and how exactly publications on the platform are promoted.
Monetizing
The social network has many financial problems: Twitter earns most of its money from advertising, the revenue from which is unstable. Musk stated that he is not buying Twitter for profit, but he also offered to give all paid Twitter Blue subscribers the status of confirmed users of the social network and hinted at paying for their subscription using the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
Relevant content and the fight against bots
Musk expressed dissatisfaction in early April that users with a large number of subscribers almost do not use the platform. Twitter named the 10 most popular accounts on the social network, to which the entrepreneur responded that most of them do not publish anything.
The billionaire also promised to defeat bots in the social network.