Elon Musk can at times be inscrutable, and his politics are elusive, which has made it somewhat difficult to determine exactly what the billionaire would do if he successfully acquired Twitter. But over the past weeks and months, as he neared Monday’s deal with the company, Mr. Musk has given more hints about what he would change about Twitter — in interviews, regulatory filings and, of course, on his Twitter account.
Here are the main areas Mr. Musk could seek to address:
Free speech and content moderators. Mr. Musk has frequently expressed concern that Twitter’s content moderators go too far and intervene too much on the platform, which he sees as the internet’s “de facto town square.”
He brought up those concerns once again in the release announcing the agreement: “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,” Mr. Musk said.
“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” he added. “Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
In a tweet on Monday, ahead of the announcement of his agreement with Twitter, Mr. Musk said he hoped even his “worst critics” continued to use the platform “because that is what free speech means.”
The Trump question. Mr. Musk has not commented publicly on how he would handle the former President Donald Trump’s banned Twitter account. But his free speech comments have stoked speculation that Twitter under his ownership might reinstate Mr. Trump, who was barred from the platform last year. After the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Twitter said Mr. Trump had violated its policies by inciting violence among his supporters. Facebook also banned Mr. Trump for the same reason.
The former president, who was known for tweets that criticized opponents and sometimes announced policy changes, is also trying to get his own social media site off the ground. His start-up, Truth Social, has struggled to attract users, and the problem could get worse now that Mr. Musk has suggested changing content moderation rules on Twitter. Mr. Trump said in a recent interview that he probably wouldn’t rejoin Twitter.
The algorithm. At a TED conference this month, he elaborated on his plans to make the company’s algorithm an open-source model, which would allow users to see the code showing how certain posts came up in their timelines.
He said the open-source method would be better than “having tweets sort of be mysteriously promoted and demoted with no insight into what’s going on.”
How Elon Musk Bought Twitter
A blockbuster deal. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, capped what seemed an improbable attempt by the famously mercurial billionaire to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion. Here’s how the deal unfolded:
Mr. Musk has also pointed to the politicization of the platform before, and recently tweeted that any social media platform’s policies “are good if the most extreme 10 percent on left and right are equally unhappy.”
Who uses the platform and how. Before Mr. Musk offered to buy Twitter this month, he expressed concern about the relevance of the platform.
When an account posted a list of the 10 most followed Twitter accounts, including former President Barack Obama and the pop stars Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, Mr. Musk responded and wrote: “Most of these ‘top’ accounts tweet rarely and post very little content. Is Twitter dying?”
More recently, the Tesla chief executive promised in a tweet Thursday that he would “defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
