Self-made billionaire and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk officially purchased Twitter on Monday after weeks of back and forth negotiation with the company.
After the sale became official, Musk put out his first-ever statement as the company’s owner.
Fittingly enough, Musk did so in a tweet.
In the statement, Musk confirmed his plan for the platform involved creating a “digital town square” where free speech remains as unrestricted as possible.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said.
Musk also announced he would be making Twitter’s algorithms “open source.”
Many believe that Twitter’s algorithms have been aimed at censoring certain political opinions while allowing other political opinions to run rampant. With an “open source” algorithm, there will finally be some transparency when it comes to the censorship of certain posts.
That is, unless Musk removes most of the current censorship programs altogether, which many believe is likely.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” Musk said.
“Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Aron Solomon, the chief legal analyst for Esquire Digital, cautioned fans of Musk not to celebrate ahead.
There is still a long road ahead until any serious changes are made at Twitter, in Solomon’s view.
“Where Twitter goes from here following Musk’s acquisition is honestly anybody’s guess,” Solomon told The Western Journal on Monday.
“What is certain,” he said, “is that Musk and any other people who helped facilitate his bid are banking on the fact that Elon Musk at the helm of Twitter is going to cause not only a spike in the price of the shares, but allow Twitter to grow and scale as it has yet to prove that it can do in its history.
“While many people were and are concerned that Twitter may become a completely open playing field with no filters on speech, the forum for free-speech angle may have simply been a distraction for Musk to acquire control of what he sees to be a company that can dramatically increase in value.
“It would be very surprising if Elon Musk did anything, especially in the short term, to jeopardize the value of Twitter. Twitter will absolutely change and continue to evolve as a platform, but anyone who is expecting these changes to happen overnight is going to be sorely disappointed.”
Author: Michael Austin
Source: Western Journal: Breaking: Musk Releases First Statement After Twitter Takeover, Reveals Future of the Company