What will Elon Musk’s Twitter appear like?

After months of controversy, Elon Musk is now on the head of some of the influential social networks on the planet, whose “tremendous potential” he has promised to unleash.

What modifications can we count on for the platform from the multi-billionaire chief govt of Tesla and founding father of SpaceX?

New boss

One of Musk’s first choices was to sack Twitter chief govt Parag Agrawal, chief monetary officer Ned Segal and head of authorized affairs Vijaya Gadde, in line with a number of US media retailers.

The billionaire entrepreneur must discover replacements for them.

“Musk is in the unenviable position of convincing seasoned executives to work for him at a platform that he has publicly disparaged,” mentioned Jasmine Enberg, an analyst for Insider Intelligence.

According to Bloomberg, Musk will assume the position of CEO of Twitter, at the very least initially.

He’ll should take care of involved workers. Musk desires to chop the workforce by 75 % (or about 5,500 workers), in line with the Washington Post.

“The mood at Twitter is tense, with employees worried about layoffs,” mentioned Enberg. “Product and even engineering teams could face a shakeup.”

Freedom of speech

A self-described “free speech absolutist,” Musk mentioned on Thursday that he desires to show Twitter right into a platform that’s “warm and welcoming to all” and never a “free-for-all hellscape.”

He has criticized what he sees as aggressive content material moderation, which he contends ends in the censorship of proper and far-right voices.

“Experts we’ve spoken with have suggested around 600 people at Twitter itself and thousands more with third-party affiliations have worked on platform content moderation,” mentioned Scott Kessler of Third Bridge.

“Musk has publicly advocated for these actions to be driven by algorithms instead of people,” he added.

The Tesla boss additional hinted that former US president Donald Trump, who was suspended from the platform after the assault on Capitol Hill in early 2021, could be allowed to return.

Trump wrote on Friday on his personal social community Truth Social that Twitter is “in good hands.”

One of Musk’s different pet peeves is the problem of pretend accounts. He threatened to stroll away from the deal over the inauthentic or “bot” accounts however has not revealed what he’ll do to battle them.

‘Unpalatable to advertisers’

Another problem for Elon Musk is to enhance the monetary well being of Twitter, which faces sluggish development, even recording a web loss within the second quarter.

In April, Musk talked about choices to generate extra income: boosting paid subscriptions, monetizing the dissemination of widespread tweets or paying content creators.

In a letter printed Thursday, the entrepreneur referred to as on Twitter advertisers to work collectively to “build something extraordinary,” stressing the significance of welcoming a large range of opinions on the platform.

“Mr. Musk has indicated in his latest publicity stunt that he wants to throw the kitchen sink at Twitter to attract new users,” famous Susannah Streeter, senior funding and market analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“But he is going to face a huge challenge of maintaining and building revenue, given that the controversial opinions he appears to want to give more of a free rein to in this ‘global town hall’ are often unpalatable to advertisers,” she mentioned.

Some civic teams are additionally calling on major brands to make use of their affect to forestall Musk from offering a platform for essentially the most radical speech.

“Considering that ads reportedly account for 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue, it is clear that the power to hold Musk accountable, if he rolls back the platform’s protections against harassment, abuse and disinformation, lies in the hands of Twitter’s top advertisers,” Media Matters for America, a nonprofit watchdog group, argued.

© 2022 AFP