What Elon Musk Is About to Do With Twitter
It's about to happen and the big questions to answer are not the ones you think.
The Wall Street Journal's sources say Elon Musk sent an official borrowing notice to banks on Tuesday and now banks have started transferring the money needed to back Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. The New York Stock Exchange posted a notice that Twitter shares will be suspended from trading on Friday, a normal procedure during an acquisition. So folks. It's happening. By the time you read this Musk may officially own Twitter. Just in time to avoid the court resuming the trial over whether he should be forced to buy Twitter or not.
Musk is now embracing the role too. He changed his Twitter bio to read "Chief Twit" and his location to "Twitter headquarters." He also posted a picture of himself walking into Twitter's offices carrying a sink with the text "Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!" Some suspected it was a reference to "kitchen sinking" when a company throws out everything and starts from scratch. Other noted it appeared to be a bathroom sink.
So what will happen next? Forget everything Musk has said over the past six months. He certainly has. What matters is what he says and does now that he's actually in charge. Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue in 2021 so unsurprisingly he started there.
Musk posted a letter to Twitter advertisers Thursday repeating that he sees Twitter as a "digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He added “That said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies to play video games, ranging from all ages to mature."
I think that section points the way to where Musk wants to go with Twitter. Make it a platform that can be customized so that everybody who likes it where it is can keep it there but there can be more wide-ranging "views" of it if you want them. Like lenses. Most people will take the classic view that keeps out the people currently deplatformed. But you can set a customized level and see those posts if you want or set amore restrictive level maybe even a family-friendly level. Whether that can be done well in practice is big question. It hasn't really been tried at a large scale. What happens to embeds on other sites? Can your settings prevent you from seeing those too? Does it matter if your view is restrictive if a post is plastered all over every blog? And how do you make sure the customization delivers on what they promise? What happens when posts slip through?
These are questions not arguments against trying it. But they are questions that will need to be answered.