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By Alys Key
Elon Musk.
Since announcing his intention to take over Twitter in a $44 billion deal, Elon Musk has had plenty of time to elaborate on his ideas for transforming the platform.
Cracking down on spam, increasing premium users, and adding payment functions (perhaps even in Dogecoin) are all ideas that have been floated by the billionaire Tesla CEO.
The deal itself remains up in the air, with Musk saying that the deal ‘cannot move forward’ pending further details of spambots on the platform, even as he committed $33.5 billion to his takeover bid.
Throughout, he’s continued to discuss his intentions for Twitter, telling fellow tech big-wigs on the All-In podcast there was potential for the platform to become a WeChat-style ‘super app’, with multiple functions in one place.
If all these grand ideas come to fruition—and the deal itself is done—what could the Twitter of Elon Musk look like?
Perhaps the most (appropriately) talked-about aspect of Musk’s takeover bid has been free speech. Twitter’s prospective new owner has repeatedly underscored the need for what he calls a “digital town square”.
Musk has clarified that his pursuit of free speech means being “against censorship that goes far beyond the law”. So that could mean the new Twitter will have refreshed moderation rules and could see the return of familiar faces—Musk has already said he would reinstate Donald Trump’s account.
He’s also claimed that were he to take ownership of Twitter, it would be “geared towards the middle 80% of the population,” leaving both the far right and the far left “dissatisfied.”
While free speech has been the most headline-grabbing of Musk’s ideas, it is the elimination of spam bots that he has fingered as his top priority. The issue is the current hold-up on the deal, with Musk suggesting that the company’s estimate that only 5% of its daily active users are bots is too low.
Twitter’s machine-learning methods already detect and challenge between 5 to 10 million accounts every week, according to a blog post from last year. But Musk thinks he can do better.
Without bots, what would the platform be like? Judging by recent Twitter purges of automated accounts, most people’s follower count would take a hit. By one estimate, Musk himself could lose half his own followers.
For Musk one of the goals appears to be fewer scams, including crypto scams. At TED 2022, in Vancouver, he said that bots and “scam armies” make Twitter “much worse.”
"If I had a Dogecoin for every crypto scam I see, I'd have 100 billion Dogecoins."
Twitter Blue, which costs $3 a month, was introduced last year as the platform’s first-ever subscription offering. It offers various extra features for paying users such as bookmarks folders and a 30-second ‘undo tweet’ button.
Musk has said, in a since-deleted tweet, that anyone who pays for the service should also get a blue “verified” check mark, though he clarified that these should appear different to the badges Twitter already gives out to users it deems active and notable. He has also said the site should be ad-free for subscribers.
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