4 Changes Elon Musk Could Push at Twitter | #datingscams | #lovescams | #facebookscams

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants the world to know change is coming to Twitter.

On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that Musk will be joining the company’s board of directors. The announcement came a day after Musk disclosed he had accumulated a 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder.

“Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!,” Musk tweeted.

Musk’s seat on Twitter’s board has fueled speculation about what his new role could mean for the social media site’s future. Like other Twitter users, Musk hasn’t been shy about sharing thoughts for what needs to be fixed on the site, tweeting his frank remarks to his 80 million followers. (Musk has more social media clout, as measured by followers, than Agrawal and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey combined.) Those tweets provide insight into his love-hate relationship with Twitter. 

Dorsey, a well-known tech icon, has expressed admiration for how Musk uses Twitter, noting that the mogul shares “his thinking openly” on the site. Musk’s candor has even landed him in hot water. In 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Musk for allegedly violating securities law after he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. The SEC and Musk reached a settlement that required some of his tweets to be preapproved though his lawyers are trying to end that agreement. 

Musk’s time on Twitter’s board is set to expire in 2024 and he’s agreed not to own more than 14.9% of the company’s stock as long as he’s serving on the board, according to a SEC filing. 

Here are four changes Musk could push for at Twitter:

Tweak content moderation

What is and isn’t allowed on Twitter is a subject Musk has been tweeting about even before he disclosed his stake in the company. At the end of March, Musk tweeted a poll inquiring whether users believed Twitter was protecting free speech. He said the poll results would be “very important.” 

“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy,” Musk tweeted. “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” 

About 70% of 2 million respondents responded No. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?,” he said in a follow-up tweet, adding another question about whether a new platform was needed.

Musk isn’t the first person to question whether Twitter is censoring some voices. Conservatives criticized the company for banning former US President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots, though Dorsey has defended the call. Some Twitter users have been calling on Musk to bring back Trump to the platform, which Twitter barred the politician from because of the risk of inciting violence.

The First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies, such as Twitter, which can create their own rules about what is allowed. In 2020, Agrawal, then Twitter’s CTO, told MIT Technology Review the company’s role is “not to be bound by the First Amendment” but should be to “serve a healthy public conversation.”

How much influence Musk or the board can have on content moderation is an open question. Twitter says its policy decisions aren’t determined by either the board or shareholders, and it has no plans to reverse any existing policies. Still, board members play an important advisory and feedback role across all its services, the company says.

For what it’s worth, Musk’s tweets haven’t been free of controversy. Musk was accused of violating Twitter’s rules against harmful coronavirus misinformation in 2020 when he falsely tweeted that “kids are essentially immune” from COVID-19. In reality, children can catch the virus. Twitter told Axios the tweet didn’t violate its rules because it wasn’t “definitive.”

Combat cryptocurrency scams

Cryptocurrency scams have been a thorn on Twitter’s side and they’re a problem that has personally impacted Musk.

Scammers have impersonated Musk using fake accounts on various social media sites in an effort to get people to give away cryptocurrency. In 2020, Musk’s was also among high-profile Twitter accounts that were hacked to push a bitcoin scam. 

In January, Musk complained that Twitter was spending time on products such as profile pictures that showcase nonfungible tokens, assets verified on a blockchain, rather than fighting crypto spam bots. 

“Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?,” he tweeted.

He made a similar complaint this week, tweeting that these bots are the “single most annoying problem” on Twitter.

Release an edit button

Twitter users have long asked for a way to edit their tweets for typos and other problems but the highly-requested feature hasn’t been at the top of the company’s priorities. Twitter did include a way to undo tweets as part of its Twitter Blue $3 per month subscription plan. 

On Monday, Musk brought up the idea of an edit button again, tweeting another poll. “Do you want an edit button,” he tweeted, misspelling the words yes and no. More than 4 million votes were cast with almost three quarters supporting the idea. 

Musk hasn’t offered his own view of whether he thinks an edit button is needed. On Tuesday, Twitter tweeted that it’s been working on an edit feature since last year. “no, we didn’t get the idea from a poll,” Twitter’s Communications team tweeted with a winky face emoji. The company said it will start testing the tool to learn what works and is possible.

Twitter has expressed concerns before that an edit tool could lead to issues such as people sharing tweets that are then altered to change their meaning. In 2020, Dorsey even told Wired that Twitter would probably never add an edit button. 

“We started as an SMS text messaging service. So, as you all know, when you send a text, you can’t really take it back,” Dorsey said in the interview. “We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling in the early days.”

It seems like Twitter is putting the feature higher on its priority list. On Monday, Agrawal used familiar language to respond to Musk’s edit button poll. 

“The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully,” Agrawal tweeted.

Open up Twitter’s algorithm

Social media users have complained that algorithms control their lives, enticing them to spend more time on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms. Some Twitter users prefer to see tweets in chronological order. In March, Twitter rolled back a change that would show the algorithmic feed by default after user complaints. 

Musk has suggested Twitter could make the algorithm open source. Musk didn’t specify what that would entail but open source software is freely available and can be altered. He posed the idea in a March 24 poll. About 83% of 1 million respondents said yes.

Dorsey appeared to endorse the results, tweeting, “The choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone.”