On Monday, 25th April 2022, the world’s richest man, Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, acquired Twitter as one of the most significant social media ventures.
So what are Musk’s intentions in buying Twitter? Well, looking at the press statement announcing his Twitter acquisition, Elon said:
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he remarks. “also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source for defeating the spambots, authenticating all humans & increase overall trust.”
Based on his statements and previous tweets followed along with the matter, we have a good idea of his top priorities to optimize the platform. Here are the top 5 significant changes we can expect on Twitter.
Also Read: How to change Twitter handle (on website and app) in 2 easy steps
1. Improving content moderation
“Twitter is the de factor public town square of the modern era,” – said Elon reportedly in the interviews, which means a digital frontier of a public forum.
Furthering the matter, he has also been reproving Donald Trump’s permanent ban on Twitter following the insurgence of the US capital building of 2021.
His sentiments were demonstrated at least once over a few weeks: At his satellite internet startup, Starlink, he denied requests “by some governments (not Ukraine)” to block news broadcasts coming from Russia.
Based on his recent tweets, he is repeatedly pushing his sentiments to improve content moderation by loosening the rules that are a barrier to free speech.
“We will not do so unless at gunpoint,” Says Elon. “Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.”
2. Change in Algorithm
Elon furthered his intentions by discussing Twitter’s prior role in shaping our society.
By creating a poll last month on whether the followers think Twitter’s algorithm should be (Open Source) – a term for software to be free to distribute and allowed to manipulate openly by the various users.
The concept may sound technical, but his goal is to create an ecosystem to cultivate free speech without any sociopolitical barriers.
3. Removing spam bots
As a long-term user of Twitter, Elon speaks more about his personal user experience than anything else. For instance, he stated his desire to ban (crypto spambots) – spam Twitter accounts promoting possibly crypto scams using Elon’s Twitter resemblance.
In the recent April 14th TED interview, Musk addressed the top priority after taking ownership of Twitter would be to eliminate all the spambots and bot armies on Twitter, making the product much worst.
4. Adding an edit button
Since the edit button for Twitter has been a controversial topic for long enough, Elon also seems to favor bringing the edit button that has been requested for years.
Supporting a long-running hope of bringing back the edit button on Twitter, users will be able to correct basic grammatical mistakes or faulty links immediately after posting them (Preferably for a certain amount of time). Influencing more than 90 million followers, a recent poll on edit button preferences has gotten overwhelming support.