What Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter buy could mean for the platform

Twitter’s current tweet limit may be 280 characters, but it has added one of the biggest ones to its fold: Elon Musk.

On Monday, the company announced in a press release that they have agreed to Musk’s purchase offer, which is valued at approximately $44 billion. “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,” Musk said in a statement. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

With this move, Musk — who runs a portfolio of companies including Tesla and Space X — would turn Twitter back into a privately held company by the end of 2022. The sale is not without controversy or consternation given the billionaire’s track record ranging from the brilliant to the bonkers. In the past, his own tweets have garnered criticism and caused chaos. In 2021, he was ordered by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board to delete a previous anti-union tweet he’d posted (Tesla appealed the ruling), and in 2018 he settled a securities fraud charge brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission, who said in their complaint that Musk’s tweets on Aug. 7 of that year “led to significant market disruption.”

Elon Musk

Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images Elon Musk

So what can we expect from the social media platform once it is under Musk’s control? Here are some things based on what he has said in the past:

No more permanent Twitter bans?

Musk, including in his statement regarding the Twitter purchase, has been vocal about advocating for free speech. But how free speech plays out in society continues to be a tricky space to navigate. At its best, everyone has the right to their voice and opinion, which is especially important for the oppressed, disenfranchised, or the underrepresented. But when you throw in things like hate speech, among other things, it gets…complicated.

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Currently, there are folks like former president Donald Trump who are permanently banned from Twitter, along with other platforms. (The Twitter permanent ban list also includes people like David Duke and Alex Jones).

But will this banning be something Musk continues? Maybe not — and maybe.

In a recent TED2022 talk recorded on April 14, he seemed to make room for Twitter, “is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So there are some limitations on free speech in the US and of course Twitter would have to abide by those rules.”

In the same conversation, he added that he favors “time-outs”:

“I’m not saying I have all the answers here,” he added. “I do think we want to be very reluctant to delete things…just be very cautious with permanent bans. Time-outs I think are better than some permanent bans. Just in general, like I said, it won’t be perfect, but we want to really have an obsession and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible. A good sign as to when there is free speech is when someone you don’t like is allowed to say something you don’t like.”

Bringing back the Biebs?

In the run-up to the sale, Musk (naturally) took to Twitter with some of his recent observations of the platform. One of those musings was around the list of top accounts by followers.

The top ten included Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber, who — as Musk pointed out — are not highly active on the platform. A sign that caused him to ask: “Is Twitter dying?”

It remains to be seen if some of the potential changes — like the ability to edit tweets (which is a feature Musk proposes should come with a time limit), eliminating bots and authenticating users —can draw back user engagement. But his call-outs on Swift and Bieber show Musk’s intent to reinvigorate the platform’s town hall ethos and be the place for conversation.

In Twitter, we, uh, trust?

In Musk’s TED conversation with Chris Anderson, he mentioned that, “having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”

That concept of trust naturally extends to news. On April 9, he shared a chart summarizing some finding from a recent The Economist/YouGov poll about trust in select organizations including The Weather Channel, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, Reuters, and NPR among others.

“Truth is the first casualty,” Musk wrote. As part of his initial batch of ideas, he cited opening up the algorithm so there is more transparency regarding the platform, including more insight on what is promoted and demoted.

While his stated intent is lofty, he has been somewhat measured about the unpaved path it will take to get there. As he told Anderson: “I think the civilizational risk is decreased the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform. And so I do think this would be somewhat painful. I’m not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it.”

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