Changes to Come as Elon Musk’s $44 billion (£34.5 billion) Takeover Offer has been Accepted by Twitter

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (26 April 2022)

The world had been holding its breath ever since Elon Musk proposed to buy Twitter for $44 billion on April 14, 2022. Two weeks later, the social media company announced its acceptance of the bid.

This has created a controversy worldwide, with some supporting the acquisition and others standing strongly against it. What exactly is Musk planning to do as the new owner of a social network used by more than 200 million people every day? Here are a few things:

• Reduce censorship: Elon Musk has been known to criticize what he calls excessive moderation of legal (albeit offensive) content on Twitter. In a TED conference interview, he even said, “If it’s a grey area, let the tweet exist.” Some have celebrated this potential loosening of restrictions, while others have lamented at the possibility of harassment and misinformation it could perpetuate.
• Edit Button: This new feature is set to allow users to edit their tweets in a manner that will allow their editing history to be kept (in case they try and hide harassing comments).
• Transparency: Musk proposed that the twitter algorithm, which determines what people see and how tweet go viral, be open to the public. However, critics claim doing so will do little as the algorithm is too complex to be understood by the public.
• Spam bots: Bots that scam people with cryptocurrency hustles might just get obliterated with this transfer of ownership, as Musk tweeted last week, “If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
• Subscription: Elon Musk has stated that the platform should move to a (cheap) subscription based one, where people could be unbothered by advertisement. Twitter Blue, a premium service for $2.99 per month introduced last year, is already a step in that direction.

All in all, the potential changes that Musk can introduced are many and possibly unpredictable. As CEO Parag Agrawal said to a Twitter Employee, “Once the deal closes, we don’t know which direction the platform will go.”