Twitter’s deal with the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, fueled speculations on the future of this social media website. Although the agreement seemed very unlikely at first, the Twitter board eventually took Elon’s offer more seriously about how he would finance the said purchase.
But the biggest question is what will Elon Musk do with Twitter if he’s willing to finance the purchase of the platform, the possibility of one of the biggest deals in Wall Street history?
In ancient history, we have Agora, which serves as a public place for people to discuss religion, politics, business, legal issues, and philosophy. Here historical names, just like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, will gather 2400 ago to propose ideas. Today, we have Twitter.
Twitter is like Agora, where people can discuss important topics through SMS-like groups with a small number of groups of people. It has become one of the largest social networks in the past 16 years, having over 200 million users all over the globe.
If Twitter was a nation, it would be labeled as the sixth most populated nation in the world.
On the 25th of April 2022, news that the SpaceX billionaire made it into the headlines of several news platforms for successfully dealing with Twitter.
If this goes well, the social media platform will be sold for about $44B. Even if you are earning $50,000 per day, it will take you 2,400 years to have the amount. However, the documents are yet to be signed, and the deal is yet to undergo legal processes.
Why is this billionaire so pushy and obsessed with buying this giant social media platform?
An Inclusive Transparent Global Arena
In the billionaire’s recent talk, he mentioned that he wants Twitter to be an “inclusive transparent global arena” used for free speech— but within the limitations of the law. He wants it to be the modern-day Agora that is for free discussion without backstage manipulation.
Elon essentially wants people to break free from manipulative schemes on most social media platforms. He wants to risk this huge financial commitment for the moral good of man, which is almost too good to be true.
The biggest question is: where should people draw the line?
Freedom of speech is a fundamentally important human right on which most progressive nations in the world pin one’s hopes when it comes to creating positive change.
The narratives that are uncovered because of free speech have brought us to be powerful movements in history— the civil rights movement and a more robust women’s rights. It also gave people the right to speak up when in disagreement with the government’s way.
On the other hand, having laws and guidelines in place will protect people who would otherwise suffer from the hate speech of perpetrators. This is why it is important to draw a line to posts that might cause damage to a person.
Twitter has been censoring some voices for quite a long time, and Elon isn’t the first person to question this. As a matter of fact, a lot of conservatives have banned former United States President Donald Trump after cadaverous riots in Capitol Hills. Trump loyalists have called out to Musk in order to bring Former President Trump to the platform.
According to Tesla CEO, “A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy.”
Elon’s vision for Twitter sounds too poetic, though. Perhaps, does this highly intelligent business magnate have a dark agenda at play behind the scenes?
Profitability of the Platform
In 2021 alone, Twitter made about $4.5 billion in revenue through advertisements alone. Hence, some capitalist says that Elon’s agenda is to make Twitter its new money-making machine.
Nonetheless, Elon put an end to all these allegations with his statement, saying that he would altogether remove all advertisements on the platform. This is a good thing for people who are getting tired of seeing the same ads over and over again, but it would eliminate about 90% of Twitter’s revenue.
Perhaps, Elon has reached the point that we would willingly buy a giant social network as if he’s just buying a sound system? This isn’t far from reality. In fact, a lot of billionaires are doing this.
Back in 2013, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million. Bill Gates gave out hundreds of millions of dollars to some media outlets.
Or maybe, honing the news is truly the next thing to do after reaching a particular level of wealth in order to acquire more.
The new development in the social media realm has agitated a lot of people because of the uncontrollable disinformation. However, there’s also a possibility that these capitalists are afraid of having other capitalists hold power in media.
Fight cryptocurrency scams
Cryptocurrency scams directly impacted Elon Musk since he was known for his admiration for these digital coins, especially Dogecoin.
Scammers have impersonated the billionaire on different social media sites in an effort to make people hand away cryptocurrencies. His name was used to push the Bitcoin scam in 2020.
Elon quibbled about how this platform is showcasing assets verified on blockchain and non-fungible tokens instead of battling against cryptocurrency spambots. He tweeted that Twitter has been funding engineering resources on bs while the cryptocurrency spammers are flinging a spambot block.
According to Musk, if Twitter bid success, he will “defeat spambots or die trying.” He wants to authenticate the real humans.
Add Edit Button to the Platform
A big portion of Twitter users has been asking for an edit button for typographical errors and other problems. However, this hasn’t been on the top of the company’s priorities. Only privileged individuals who are willing to pay $3 a month for Twitter Blue have the luxury to undo tweets as part of the subscription plan.
On April 4, Elon Musk has brought up the sentiment of the edit button on the platform once again by tweeting a poll “Do you want an edit button,” with misspelled words of yes or no.
There’s no direct statement from Musk whether he thinks an edit button is essentially needed. But according to Twitter, they have been working on editing features and highlighted that they didn’t get the idea from the billionaire’s poll.
Twitter Algorithm
Most social media algorithm has made people slaves, enticing them to consume most of their time on Facebook (now called “Meta”), YouTube, Twitter, and other social media outlets. The algorithm was basically controlling people’s lives.
According to Elon, Twitter could make the algorithm of the platform open-source but didn’t specify how he would make this open-source software freely available.
In a TED Talk, SpaceX revealed that Twitter users should be able to know whether a particular tweet was promoted or demoted on the website. Hence, avoiding behind the scene manipulation of certain individuals.
Musk’s free speech is surely awesome, but there is no way to make false tweets true. On the 13th day of May, the billionaire tweeted that he put the deal on hiatus since 5% of users of the platform are spam bots and fake accounts.
Tesla founder stated that he is still committed to the acquisition, but some investors sold off Twitter stocks, assuming that Musk’s tweets have meaning.
