The Story Behind the Twitter Takeover and Predictions for Its Future

The latest bit of news from the world of social media is the rather unexpected takeover of Twitter. Understandably, Twitter is one of the leading social platforms and it would take a metric shed-load of cash to prise shares from the current ownership, raising the question: who would be adventurous (and wealthy) enough to take over such an established platform? Of course, this comes down to multi-billionaire, business mogul and… Twitter influencer(?) Elon Musk to whom the multiple billions required to fund the purchase of majority global shares seems to be little more than pocket change.

Slowly purchasing Twitter stocks across early 2022, as of April 1^st Musk owned 9.13% of the company making him the largest shareholder. He has publicly declared that he plans to carry on purchasing stocks with the intention of -one day- owning 100%. The future of the platform seems to very much rest in his hands.

Why the Sudden Interest?

While it’s not much of a surprise for those that regularly use the platform, those who don’t might not be aware quite just how much Musk loves Twitter. From sharing wonderfully random memes about Fromsoftware’s newest gaming release Elden Ring, iconic quotes from Lord of The Rings, and general meme-y randomness (which he tends to do quite frequently) Musk seems either unaware or uninterested in the fact that most other people with followings of 86 million tend to be rather mindful about what they post. For many of his followers, having a global personality who openly challenges Putin to single combat for possession of Ukraine is rather refreshing if not slightly strange.

Having established himself across various tech businesses and start-ups Musk undoubtedly has the necessary experience to improve on the overall Twitter experience having even publicly commented on the platform lacking an edit button and other basic features. While refining the platform does seem to be one of his long-term goals, he seems more interested in changing the very dynamic of Twitter to encourage free speech for its users.

Musk himself is someone who has suffered the repercussions of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time with his Twitter post of ‘Tesla stock price too high’ knocking $14 billion off the value of Tesla.

The Battle for Free Speech

A key point in Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover bid seems to be the focus on free speech, having held a poll in late March asking ‘Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?’ Overall, over 70% of the 2,035,924 voters stated that this was not the case. Musk himself is someone who has suffered the repercussions of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time with his Twitter post of ‘Tesla stock price too high’ knocking $14 billion off the value of Tesla.

Due to its sheer size, Twitter is very difficult to properly moderate and while people are getting banned, you’re only ever really a few clicks from finding something pretty dubious. To compensate for this fact Twitter tends to ban high-profile accounts such as that of Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene in order to make it appear as if the job is being done properly. What level of free speech Elon Musk intends to implement is unclear as of yet but it is certainly likely that we will be seeing some of these banned accounts making a return in the future.

Changes for The Future  

While he hasn’t specified exactly what changes he plans to make going into the future, by piecing together some of his tweets as well as public statements we can make a series of predictions as to the changes he might make once he officially becomes the owner of Twitter.

The Edit Button  

Carrying on with the theme of Twitter polls holding major power, Musk created a poll in early April asking if users wanted to see an Edit button, 4,406,764 votes later with 73.6 percent in favour, it looks like an edit button will be making an appearance at some point down the line. In what is either a cheeky dig from a man with an off-key sense of humour or a meticulously-timed bit of irony, Musk has in fact misspelt both the yes and no options in the voting section to say ‘yse’ and ‘on’.

Reversal of Bans

As mentioned in the ‘battle for free speech’ section, numerous high-profile people have been banned from the platform, If Elon Musk truly plans to implement free speech we can expect to see most – if not all – of these people making a return to Twitter. If we take this further, bans themselves wouldn’t really match the whole free speech ideology and we might even see the option to ban someone be removed entirely or altered to only be valid for harassment or spam accounts.

User Verification

Coming from another of his tweets, Musk has stated that he’s committed to ‘defeating the spambots. A great idea since Twitter is absolutely packed with them and there seems to be no strategy for getting rid of them from the current leadership. It wouldn’t be a surprise if we saw some additional verification procedures be implemented in order to prove that users are in fact real people. Any developments in this field are bound to become widespread across the other social platforms since both Instagram and Snapchat have their fair share of struggles with spambots.

Advertisements

Ahead of their deletion, Elon Musk put out several Tweets discussing his desire to remove advertising from Twitter altogether. His reasoning for this was that corporations had additional power to dictate policy when heavily reliant on ads, he’s certainly not wrong but with roughly 90% of Twitter’s income coming directly from advertising, the profits from the platform would certainly nosedive.

Content Rules

If Musk wishes to fully support free speech on Twitter, he will have to alter content rules. While they are horrendously implemented, the rules are there and actively look to discourage people from posting about high-tension topics. Whether he removes these rules entirely under the premise of completely free speech or alters them to allow for more opinionated content is very much up in the air at the moment, but we are certainly likely to see at least some changes in Twitter’s content rules.

Twitter Going Forward

The next few months spell a crucial time for Twitter, the changes implemented over this time will no doubt greatly alter the platform as well as the general landscape for other social media services. The funding and resources that Elon Musk has at his disposal will certainly allow him to create something truly special. The path will likely be rife with resistance from those opposing his ideologies and the platform may suffer at his hands before it sees any semblance of success, but as the man himself once said ’Twitter’s next board meeting is gonna be lit’.

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