Elon Musk, who has finally clinched a deal to buy Twitter Inc for $44 billion cash, hailed free speech in his first tweet post the billionaire’s move. It is a seminal moment for the 16-year-old company, which emerged as one of the world’s most influential public squares and now faces a string of challenges.
Calling Twitter the digital square town, the Tesla CEO wrote, “ Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” and Twitter is the place where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated, he added.
The SpaceX founder also hoped that his worst critics also remain on Twitter, “because that is what free speech means,” he said.
Elon Musk promised to make the microblogging site ‘better than ever’ by enhancing the new product with new features. Musk said he will make Twitter algorithm open source to “increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans”.
He has criticized Twitter’s moderation for giving too much power on the service to corporations that advertise.
Musk himself has described user-friendly tweaks to the service, such as an edit button and defeating “spam bots” that send overwhelming amounts of unwanted tweets.
He concluded by saying, “I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it”.
Musk’s move continues a tradition of billionaires’ buying control of influential media platforms, including Jeff Bezos’ 2013 acquisition of the Washington Post.
Musk, who is worth $268 billion according to Forbes, has said he is not primarily concerned with the economics of Twitter.
“Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don’t care about the economics at all,” he said in a recent public talk.
