Elon Musk, over the past couple of weeks, has taken the internet by storm over his talks with Twitter. The eccentric entrepreneur made his plans for a Twitter takeover known to the public on April 4, 2022, but he has actually been planning this for much longer. On January 31, Musk started buying shares of the company, possibly alluding to the fact that this move was far more thought out contrary to the media’s initial impressions.

Musk’s Plans

Although this purchase may seem very confusing, Musk has actually announced some of his plans and reasons for buying the company. His first and probably most controversial change is to roll back Twitter’s restrictions on speech. This means “offensive” comments will now be allowed as Musk wants to have truly free speech. This could mean that harassment could become more rampant on Twitter. It is unclear whether or not misinformation will still be cracked down on or the more likely outcome, that such posts will be tolerated on the platform.

One new addition he plans to add to Twitter is an edit button to change tweets after they have been posted. It has not been made clear yet if history will be kept. Dorsey, the former CEO of the company had always objected to adding an edit feature despite many social media platforms incorporating it. Dorsey along with many experts in the field fear that abusers may use the feature to cover up past actions and that gaslighting-like behavior may take place. Still, current Twitter users are praising Musk’s proposal. 

Part of his move for more transparency and freedom within the realm of social media are his plans to make Twitter’s algorithm public. So far, the conversation is divided where many think that more openness with social media is great and even manage to help with mental health and social media by seeing how stuff comes up on your feed. Although this move wouldn’t necessarily hurt anything, skeptics say that Twitter’s algorithm is so complex and hard to understand that it will barely help anyone. 

By far one of the most well-received announced plans for Twitter has been the potential crackdown on bots. As of late, Twitter has seen a rise in bot accounts promoting scam crypto-currencies. Bot accounts have been a huge issue across all social media platforms, Twitter hasn’t been any more active than other platforms in cracking down on them. This is what Twitter employees are the most excited about as bot accounts on Twitter are a huge issue with many real-life implications so they are happy to welcome this change. As for now, we will just have to wait and see how these plans are executed.