It’s confirmed! On April 25, 2022, Elon Musk formalized his definitive agreement with Twitter and purchased the entity for approximately $44 billion. Once the transaction is completed, Twitter will be 100% owned by Elon Musk and become a private company. This could be accompanied by major changes to the platform.
Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter?
In the press release explaining the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, we learn that the transaction was unanimously approved by the board of directors of Twitter. It should be closed during 2022, if Twitter shareholders accept the terms and if Elon Musk obtains the applicable regulatory authorizations.
The boss of Tesla and SpaceX also shares his ambitions for the future of the platform. In particular, he wants to improve Twitter with new features, but also by destroying spambots and making the algorithms open source, for example.
Edit button and other new options.
Elon Musk wants to bring new options to Twitter, including an edit button, a feature long-awaited by users that would allow correcting and modifying his tweets after publication. Via a tweet from April 2022, Elon Musk had asked his community if they wanted to have access to an editing option for tweets already published. Nearly 74% of respondents were in favor of the implementation of such an option. Twitter had also announced on April 5, 2022, that they were starting to work on a feature to allow editing of tweets.
Additionally, the businessman could allow longer tweets to be written, which are currently limited to 280 characters.
More transparency with an open source algorithm
User confidence in the platform is one of Elon Musk’s essential objectives. To do this, he would like, among other things, to make the algorithms open source in order to allow Twitter users to better understand the content suggestions submitted to them by the algorithm. This proposal was also supported by the former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.
More flexibility in moderation rules
In the press release announcing the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, the latter also expressed his desire to make the platform more flexible regarding moderation. He considers that freedom of expression is one of the main pillars of democracy and that “ Twitter is the digital public square where vital questions for the future of humanity are debated ”.
Thus, he wants users to be able to express themselves freely as long as the comments made remain within the limits of the law in the countries where Twitter is present. It is also possible that he will unban some users permanently, stating that this is not a solution.
A change of Twitter teams
With such a turn in the structure of Twitter, it is not impossible that the team evolves as well. The current CEO, Parag Agrawal took over the reins after the resignation of Jack Dorsey in November 2021, but his continuation within the structure is still uncertain.
An exit from the stock market
As we mentioned before, Twitter could well become a private company, which would allow Elon Musk to take Twitter out of the Stock Exchange. The objective would be, among other things, to be able to make the desired
changes to the operation of the platform more easily.
The fight against spam botsAnother great desire of Elon Musk is to fight against automated accounts designed for malicious purposes, also called “spam bots”. The goal is “[to] authenticate all real humans” and defeat spam bots.
With this purchase, Elon Musk wants to make the platform freer by allowing users to express themselves within the limits of the law and to bring a new wind to Twitter. If the changes mentioned above and the way Elon Musk intends to go about it is not yet formalized, it is certain that we will learn more in the future. To be continued!
