Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. After days of speculation, the tycoon has gained full control of the social network, which will cease to be listed on the stock market and become a private company when the deal is completed. Hours before the news broke, a South African-born businessman gave clues that could be related to the outcome; the most important, message against his detractors.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX assured that he wants his “worst critics” to keep using Twitter, promote freedom of expression. “I hope even my worst critics stay on Twitter because that’s what freedom of speech is all about,” the tweet read. As expected, the post did not go unnoticed, receiving over 1 million likes and over 150,000 retweets in the first two hours available.
This can be seen as Elon Musk’s chosen way of showing his benevolence, even to users who strongly disagree with his purchase of the social network. The businessman criticized Twitter for a clear lack of freedom of speech and assured that he would try to “unleash its full potential.” However, there are big questions about how this will be achieved and how it will affect the company’s content moderation policy.
Last week, for example, Twitter announced that it would ban ads promoting denial of the causes and effects of climate change. While this decision was announced as part of the company’s Earth Day commitment, it also was seen as a test for Elon Musk. The fact is that this is one of the cases when the employer is faced with conflicting positions; on the one hand, promoting through Tesla efforts to massively use renewable energy sources and combat climate change; on the other hand, allowing deniers to continue to voice doubts about global warming and the ecological crisis when there is proven scientific evidence to disprove them.
Elon Musk wants to “unleash the potential of Twitter” and reveal its algorithms

In official statements that were released after the announcement of the Twitter purchase, Elon Musk again drew attention to freedom of expression; however, he went a little further. The new owner of the social network also reaffirmed his commitment to fighting spambots, one of the biggest problems on the platform; as well as your intent to check all human users and make algorithms open source.
Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is a digital public forum where vital questions about the future of humanity are discussed. I also want Twitter to be better than ever by improving the product with new features, making algorithms open to boost trust, defeating spambots, and authenticating all people. Twitter has huge potential. I look forward to working with the company. and the user community to unlock it.
Elon Musk on buying Twitter.
Twitter algorithms have always been a source of controversy and it will be interesting to see what Elon Musk comes up with in his potential release. In recent years, the social network has taken various initiatives to address its shortcomings, such as cropping images in favor of white people. The company itself admitted that there was a bias in its code that favored discrimination and increased right-wing political content. Let’s see what is the approach of the new owner of the company to this issue..
Source: Hiper Textual
