Elon Musk Has One Major Change In Mind For Twitter
Elon Musk didn't hold back about the one major change he has in mind for twitter.
This article is more than 2 years old
Last week Elon Musk set his sights on Twitter, offering to purchase the company for approximately $40 billion. In early April, the Tesla boss said he had become the social media platform’s largest shareholder with a 9.2% stake in the firm. According to an SEC filing, the tech mogul wants to acquire all the shares he does not own for $54.20 per share. That represents a 38% premium over the closing price on April 1, CNN Business reported at the time.
Following questions about his intentions, Elon Musk defended his offer to purchase Twitter during an on-stage interview at a TED conference. The SpaceX founder said his proposed deal is not about the economics of Twitter’s business, or making money. “This is not a way to make money,” Musk told TED chief Chris Anderson. Instead, he sees the acquisition as a turning point for civilization and talked about the one major change he has in mind for the micro-blogging site.
“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization, Elon Musk explained via CNN Business. He went on to rage against, what he considers a lack of free speech on Twitter. He added that the site should open-source its algorithm to increase transparency in content moderation decisions. That would be a major change in how Twitter operates.
“The code should be on Github so people can look through it and say, ‘I see a problem here,’ ‘I don’t agree with this,’ they can highlight issues, suggest changes,” said Elon Musk, as he pitched his ideas to listeners. When asked how he would change content moderation, the Tesla CEO said that his free speech test is simple. “Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like?” he explained. If that is the case, then we have free speech.”
However, Elon Musk was quick to clarify that every post on Twitter shouldn’t be given a reach boost. He said if a particular tweet was controversial, perhaps it should not be promoted by the social media company. But it shouldn’t be removed either. “I think we want to be very reluctant to delete things and just be very cautious with permanent bans. Timeouts are better.”
Interestingly, Elon Musk acknowledged that even if he did manage to purchase Twitter, there would still be errors in the system. And he is very aware that users would blame him when things went wrong. “I think everyone will still blame me for everything,” he said. “If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong, it’s my fault, 100%. I think there will be quite a few errors.”
When the interviewer asked if he had a different plan if his offer to purchase the social media site fell through, Elon Musk said he has several ideas. However, the 50-year-old did not elaborate on any further plans he had for Twitter. He simply stated that those would need to wait for another time. But he did hint at the possibility of a hostile bid in which he would bypass Twitter’s board and put the offer directly to its shareholders, News24 reports.
