The richest man in the world just bought one of the world’s most used platforms. What’s next?
Elon Musk recently bought Twitter on Oct. 27, making many promises such as prioritizing freedom of speech and firing company leaders that cannot “successfully” perform their jobs. Though the process of buying Twitter initiated on Apr. 14, the purchase was not finalized until now. However, the feat was not easy. When Musk first suggested buying Twitter for $44 billion, he mentioned how he wanted to introduce new features to the app including making its algorithms open-sourced, combating spam accounts, and promoting free speech. But when Twitter refused to disclose information about the platform’s spam bots, he pulled out of the deal, leading to a lawsuit filed against him demanding that he fulfills his promise. The case was set to go to court, but that plan never saw itself through because he ended up sealing the deal.. Twitter is now officially in the hands of the billionaire, leading many to question if his newfound influence on the platform is justified.
Regardless, a platform with no restrictions on what is posted may appear great at first glance, but people will find many ways to abuse that freedom.
After buying Twitter Musk tweeted out what buying this app would lead to and referenced China’s popular messaging app WeChat by mentioning his app X that he hopes becomes similar to WeChat.
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” Musk tweeted.
Along with the purchase of Twitter, one of Musk’s biggest promises was giving all of twitter’s users freedom of speech. Before Musk bought the app many people were banned from the app, majority being conservatives. This made many believe that they were not able to talk about certain topics or have their own opinions on things because they may get banned from using the app. Many also believed the app was not giving its users their right to free speech. Some examples of people who got banned are Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Randy Hillier who all coincidentally are a part of the conservative party. Greene was banned for spreading misinformation about Covid -19 Trump got banned after his supporters stormed the Capitol, to which he was tweeting out that day motivating the crowd to storm the Capitol.
Trump took to Twitter on January 6th during the storm on the Capitol.
“States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt processes never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!” tweeted Trump.
Many have been asking Musk whether or not he will reinstate Trump’s account giving Trump and many like-minded people the freedom they want to have on the app. Musk bringing back freedom of speech to twitter is something very important and great especially during this day in age. Everyone should have the freedom to think and express how they feel about certain issues in the world even if people will disagree or if they are plain out wrong.
With Musk becoming the new CEO of twitter and advocating for freedom of speech on the app, many took that in an awful way. Within 12 hours of Musk becoming CEO there was a surge in the use of the N-word with 50,000 tweets from 300 different accounts using that particular word. Which obviously we all know is an awful and demeaning word that shouldn’t be used in any case. The app never had this word censored or any words for that matter, but they did have policies on hateful conduct. They blamed this problem on a trolling campaign. Although within that time frame Musk had not made any changes to twitter yet. The accounts that participated in this trolling campaign have since been banned and were unauthentic.
Musk took to twitter after this occurred on what he has and plans to do with Twitter.
“To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to twitter’s content moderation policies.” Musk said. “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”
There is no doubt that Musk’s purchase of Twitter drastically altered the platform’s future. However, with the way everything is headed, this may not have been the best decision considering that this newfound freedom will surely be taken advantage of. Over the past year, moderators were suspending certain accounts for simply having controversial views in politics or just the world itself. Even if people’s claims are perceived as being politically incorrect in today’s society, individuals still have the right to believe in what they would like to believe in, and therefore post what they would like to post. Everyone should be allowed to speak on any topic regardless of what others may think. But of course, the idea that too much of anything can be a bad thing still holds true, and seeing the future of Twitter unravel is something that everyone can look forward to.
