Since being appointed to Twitter’s board on Tuesday, Musk has posted a stream of open-ended questions about the site’s present and future, proposing new features, highlighting areas of concern and making jokes. Typically for the Tesla billionaire, it was not always clear who was who. Musk’s long-term concern with Twitter was his policies of moderation. In late March – after gaining a large stake in the company, but before revealing it publicly – it published a poll asking users if Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech. “As Twitter operates as the city’s de facto public square, failure to uphold the principles of freedom of speech fundamentally undermines democracy,” he added. “What needs to be done?” In 2021, Musk said: “Many people will be extremely dissatisfied with the high technology of the West Coast as a de facto arbiter of freedom of speech” and just last month declared that he is “absolute in freedom of speech”. Musk personally started some controversy over moderation on Twitter, such as in March 2020, when he wrote on Twitter that children were “essentially immune” to Covid, leading to calls on the social network to remove his tweet for violating the then new rules. on misinformation about Covid. Twitter eventually denied the allegations, saying it did not violate the rules “when considering the overall context and conclusion of the tweet”. However, since his appointment to the board, Musk has also proposed smaller changes to the social network. In a tweet, he suggested adding an edit button to allow users to rewrite their posts after posting, sparking a debate about whether such a feature would help or hurt the global discussion. Musk expressed concern about the fact that many of the accounts with the most followers on Twitter “rarely tweet and publish very little content”, asking: “Is Twitter dying? For example, Taylor Swift has not published anything for 3 months. And Justin Bieber published it only once this year. “ In another set of tweets, he criticized the service offered by Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription package, saying it should be accompanied by an “identity check” and no ads – as “companies’ power to dictate policy is greatly enhanced. if Twitter relies on advertising money to survive. “ Other proposals seem less likely to materialize. Musk asked his followers if Twitter should turn its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter “since no one shows up anyway” (91% of his fans voted yes). He also asked them if they should “delete w on twitter?” This question, which was posted around midnight local time, had two options: “yes” and “of course”. More than a million people have been involved with the joke, with “yes” leading to the vote. Drawing the line between a joke on Twitter and a serious proposal can be difficult with the former PayPal CEO, who previously built and sold flamethrowers, liquidated billions of dollars in Tesla stock, and launched a car into space. after suggesting that you do it on social media.
