Will Twitter change in the future after Elon Musk buys it?

Tesla chief Executive Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has bought Twitter for $44bn (£35bn), saying he is committed to creating a free social platform. The acquisition has twitter users weighing in.

No one is entirely sure what the billionaire plans to do with twitter, and CEO Parag Agrawal has said that even he can’t be sure where twitter is headed.

But past tweets from the world’s richest man, as well as his personal style and expectations for twitter, offer clues.

Content deregulation
Musk has long been a consistent critic of Twitter’s content-management policies, and many speculated that his acquisition would change twitter’s content-management rules to allow the reinstatement of suspended accounts, such as those of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

At the time the takeover was approved by Twitter’s board, Musk said free speech was a “cornerstone” of a functioning democracy, and that Twitter was a “digital forum where matters vital to the future of humanity can be debated.”

Musk has previously described himself as an “absolute free-speech liberal,” though his own definition of the term is unclear.

In the past, he has blocked people on Twitter who criticize him or his company.

Jeffrey Howard, an assistant professor at University College London, said that if Musk does relax Twitter’s content-management rules, he may find that things are not what he thinks at all.

He said twitter “could easily be used as a weapon for malicious purposes, inciting hatred and violence” if used by criminals, bots or well-intentioned individuals.

“I think Musk was naive about the challenges of content management, and he’s going to learn the lesson that you can’t have a laissez-faire approach to content management.”

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has met with mixed reactions in the United States

The UK government and the European Commission have already reminded Musk of his responsibility to protect twitter users’ rights, and it is unclear what content management changes musk will make at a time when governments around the world are increasingly legislating on online abuse.

The news of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has caused disagreement in the United States.

Those on the right who feel they have been unfairly treated by social media platforms welcomed the deal, while those on the left criticised it, with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren saying it “harms our democracy”.

Peter Vidlicka, a media expert and co-founder of Newspage, a public relations website, said musk’s acquisition of Twitter would be welcome in the coming months, given the current social and cultural climate.

2. No ads?
Musk became Twitter’s largest shareholder in early April when he sent now-deleted tweets saying he wanted to remove ads from Twitter Blue, its paid service.

At the time, he wrote: “If Twitter survives on advertising revenue, corporations have more power to dictate corporate policy.”

While Musk is concerned about advertisers influencing Twitter’s policies, 90% of Twitter’s revenue now comes from advertising.

Twitter said it generated $1.57 billion in revenue and $1.41 billion in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 22% from a year earlier.

Musk said Twitter Blue, a premium shoe-ordering service, could be improved to become an alternative revenue stream, and said he would lower the price of the service.

Twitter Blue, which will launch in 2021 in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, offers premium features such as the ability to undo tweets.

But Rachel Foster-Jones, an analyst at GlobalData, said Mr Musk might need to “balance his dream of an ad-free space with the harsh reality of Twitter’s core business model”.

“If Musk is to wean himself off advertising revenue, he needs to think hard about how to reinvent Twitter Blue, Twitter’s premium shoe-ordering service.”

3. Ensure that there are no bots or fake accounts
Mr Musk has spoken of “taking down spambots”, a vision that is likely to appeal to Twitter users.

Automated spamming and misleading content from fake accounts has long been a problem for Twitter.

Network security company “the ExtraHop” sales engineer Morse (Jamie Moles) said that although delete twitter program robot is not easy, but if the musk is successful, “the method of eliminating bots is on the twitter platform, perhaps can be used to improve the detecting spam E-mail and other malicious invasion of new technology.”

But Robin Mansell, professor of new media and the Internet at the London School of Economics, says that whether using salaries or algorithms to verify that a user is a real person, “it always goes wrong”.

“There is no guarantee that nothing will go wrong, and once Musk gets to work, he will find that management has to abide by many government restrictions.”

4. Editing function after publication
Before making his bid for Twitter, Musk posted a message asking his followers if they would like to see a tweet edit button.

Twitter later confirmed that it was working on a feature that would allow users to modify their tweets after they have been posted.

Twitter users have long demanded an editing feature, but opinions differ on how to use it.

On the positive side, the ability to edit a tweet after it has been posted allows users to correct spelling or content errors without losing the number of comments, retweets and likes that the post already has.

But Jay Sullivan, Head of Consumer products at Twitter, warned last month that the editing feature could compromise the platform’s transparency if abused.

Without any restrictions or controls, he said, open tweet editing could be abused to alter public conversations.