Elon Musk’s Twitter look like? ‘Chief Twit’ plans to unleash free speech and defeat spam bots

As Elon Musk confirmed Thursday he has closed the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter and now the question on everyone’s minds is what will the social media platform look like under control of the new ‘Chief Twit’?

Some users look forward to the free speech version of Twitter run by Musk, while others believe the site will be a dumpster fire and ‘we are all doomed’ under his leadership – even though the new boss announced Thursday that he promises not to turn it into a ‘hellscape.’ 

In interviews and his own Twitter posts, Musk has shared insights on how he would overhaul Twitter when he became boss, including making it a haven for free speech, open sourcing algorithms for developers to make suggestions and defeating spam bots he believes are running rampant on the site.

The Tesla CEO has been very vocal about easing content moderation policies, noting in April that if a tweet includes contents that are ‘a gray area’ it should stay, but Musk is also aware that those with a lot of controversy should not necessarily be promoted.

Musk strolled into Twitter headquarters in San Jose, California Wednesday afternoon, but did so in his own unique way.

He posted a video on Twitter of himself while carrying a sink into the lobby, with text reading: ‘Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!’ And today, he is officially the man in charge.

Shortly after announcing the $44 billion bid in April, the flood gates of his Twitter ideas were open and he let the world know his big plans for the platform.

Musk was said to favor a subscription-based model over advertiser funding, as it would make Twitter less beholden to advertiser pressure – but this was not one of the priorities outlined in the official announcement.

He even suggested users could pay with cryptocurrency, including joke currency Dogecoin which Musk has long had an affection for.

Dan Ives, Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst at Wedbush Securities, told DailyMail.com: ‘We can see a paid subscription service unveiled with the free speech dynamic with power users worried the floodgates can open.’

Musk, however, shared an open letter Thursday telling the world that although he aims to provide a digital town square, ‘Twitter obviously cannot be a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.’

The ‘free-for-all hellscape’ has been what those opposed to the deal are concerned about.

TIME magazine posted an article stating that Musk’s Twitter would reverse policies that are ‘designed to make the platform safer for vulnerable users—typically women, LGBTQ individuals and people of color—such as its ban on misgendering transgender people.’

This idea builds on Musk’s statement about tweets having a gray area.

‘If in doubt, let the speech exist,’ Musk said in an on-stage interview in April.

‘If it’s a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist. But obviously in the case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.’

A text message exchange between Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in April, which were released earlier this month, reveals the billionaire will not let Twitter ‘be turned into some right wing nuthouse. Aiming to be as broadly inclusive as possible.’

However, the Chief Twit is aware his idea of free speech could push the buttons of the political left and mostly please those on the right. 

Should he unleash full-on free speech, he would have to allow Donald Trump and others who have been banned for controversial tweets back onto the site. 

This also includes ‘many, many others that were removed as a result of QAnon conspiracies, targeted harassment of journalists and activists, and of course all of the accounts that were removed after Jan. 6,’ said Joan Donovan, who studies misinformation at Harvard University. 

‘That could potentially be hundreds of thousands of people.’

Musk has taken public stands against those on the left, noting that ‘the far left hates everyone, themselves included!’

How he will pull off the idea of allowing free speech on Twitter has yet to be seen, but Musk seems to be all for penalizing those who do not abide by the rules.

During an interview with Financial Times, Musk said: ‘We should not have permanent bans. Now that doesn’t mean that somebody gets to say whatever they want to say.

‘If they say something that is illegal or otherwise, you know, uh, just, you know, just destructive to the world then, then that there should be perhaps a timeout, a temporary suspension or, or that particular tweet should be made invisible or have very limited traction.’

Musk also floated the idea of open sourcing the algorithm Twitter uses as open source to promote transparency and free speech.

It would allow people outside of the company to suggest changes and even create fixes to Twitter’s code.

Speaking in a TED talk in April, the billionaire explained the promotion or demotion of a tweet is done by algorithms in the background, which he would upload to the software hosting platform GitHub that is available to anyone.

‘People can look through it and say, ‘Oh, I see a problem here, I don’t agree with this,’ Musk said.

‘They can highlight issues and suggest changes, in the same way that you update Linux or Signal.’

But such ‘code-level transparency’ gives users little insight into how Twitter is working for them without the data the algorithms are processing, said Nick Diakopoulos, a Northwestern University computer scientist. 

Also in April, he suggested that users who paid for Twitter Blue would be able to receive a check mark which shows their account is ‘authenticated’.

Diakopoulos said there are good intentions in Musk’s broader goal to help people find out why their tweets get promoted or demoted and whether human moderators or automated systems are making those choices. 

But that’s no easy task. 

Too much transparency about how individual tweets are ranked, for instance, can make it easier for ‘disingenuous people’ to game the system and manipulate an algorithm to get maximum exposure for their cause, Diakopoulos said. 

Spam bots were a huge topic while Twitter and Musk went to battle after the billionaire pulled his offer on the site on July 8.

Musk accused Twitter bosses of refusing to hand over details about the number of spam bots on its site, which he believed were more than human users.

He has not provided a plan on how the Twitter spam bots will be defeated, but the Tesla CEO tweeted in April that he will ‘die trying.’

Musk has also suggested Twitter could move towards a subscription-based model and a shift away from advertising which currently generates 90% of its overall revenue.

Twitter Blue, launched in June 2021, is Twitter’s first subscription service and offers ‘exclusive access to premium features’ on a monthly subscription basis, including access to an Edit button – Musk had also floated the idea of adding one. 

Twitter Blue allows for extra features for a monthly fee of $2.99.

‘Price should probably be ~$2/month, but paid 12 months up front & account doesn’t get checkmark for 60 days (watch for credit card chargebacks) & suspended with no refund if used for scam/spam,’ Musk said in a tweet earlier this month.

On a company level, Musk has floated the idea of closing down the San Francisco headquarters in order to save money and that board members may also not receive a salary, shaving off another $3 million in expenses.

Plans also emerged last week that Musk had plans to layoff 75 percent of the Twitter staff, leaving a skeleton crew of just over 2,000 employees, which experts say would make it difficult for the social media company to tamp down on what it deems to be ‘misinformation.’

But it seems he is backtracking, as news emerged last night that he will not lay off that many, but plans on culling three quarters instead.