It’s been a week since Elon Musk entered Twitter HQ with a kitchen sink, signaling his official takeover of the company. After giving some time to “sync in” the news of his $44 billion (around Rs 3.6 lakh crore) purchase, Twitter users are now wondering what he will do with the platform.
what is musk what am i going to do with Twitter, After months of walking away from its commitment to buy the platform, and just before entering a lengthy, potentially embarrassing and costly court battle to enforce its original agreement, Twitter is now privately owned.
If we go through some early reactionary media pundits, we see that Musk has paid too much for a platform that has not yet fulfilled its commercial potential for investors nor its social potential for users. Is.
This probably explains some of his first moves since taking office, such as planning to charge users US$8 (about Rs 700) for BlueTick, and threatening to fire half of Twitter’s staff. To give.
He has already fired former CEO Parag Agarwal, chief financial officer Ned Sehgal, legal chief Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Will Twitter turn into bin fire (more)?
Musk’s intentions after buying the platform were probably best indicated with his first tweet: “The bird is free”.
Prior to the purchase, one of his often-tweeted criticisms of Twitter was that it had too many limits on “free speech”, and that moderation was reintroduced to unlock Twitter’s potential as a “real public town square”. will need to start over.
There’s no doubt that Musk is pretty good at demonstrative social media statements, but we don’t see any real change in content moderation yet – let alone Musk’s utopian vision of a digital town square.
The “main tweet” suggested a future appointment of “a content moderation council with widely varied perspectives”, which would be charged with making decisions about moderation and account restoration.
This is not a new idea.
meta Such an oversight board has been set up since 2018 consisting of former political leaders, human rights activists, academics and journalists. The board oversees material decisions and has been known to oppose the decisions of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, particularly his “uncertain” Facebook The suspension of former US President Donald Trump following the US Capitol building riots.
It is not clear whether a council will convene to discuss Musk’s suggestion to “reversing the permanent ban” on Twitter imposed on Trump, or whether Musk will allow the board to override its decisions.
Nonetheless, Musk’s suggestion of a moderation board is a step back from his earlier self-described “free speech absolutist” views on content moderation.
Many are concerned that his approach to moderation may encourage more hate speech on Twitter.
In the past week, coordinated troll accounts have tried to test the limits of Musk-run Twitter by flooding the platform with racial slurs. According to the US-based National Contagion Research Institute, the use of the n-word increased by more than 500 percent on October 28. However, Joel Roth, Twitter’s head of security and integrity, said that many of the offensive tweets had come from a small number of accounts.
Another study by researchers at Montclair State University found a huge increase in hate words in the lead-up to Musk’s takeover.
Both Roth and Musk have confirmed, “Twitter’s policies have not changed”. The rules on “hateful conduct” remain the same.
Musk remains a loose cannon perhaps more related to the troll reactions Musk’s decision to tweet and then delete a conspiracy theory about US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi. We could dismiss this as Musk’s love of sh-posting, but if the right to post misinformation and personal attacks is the speech he wants to protect, it’s worth questioning what kind of speech he is. Visualizes a public class.
Musk takes a technological approach to the social issues that arise from the use of our online communication tools. This implies that free access to technology eliminates the “free speech” of its cultural and social context, and makes it readily and readily available to all.
Often this doesn’t happen. That’s why we need content moderation and protection for the vulnerable and marginalized.
The second question is whether we want billionaires to have a direct impact on our public classes. If so, how do we ensure transparency, and that the interests of users are being upheld? In a less bombastic report of acquisitions, Musk this week directed Twitter to unearth more than US$1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, which will reportedly be through cuts in cloud services and server space. These cuts could put Twitter at risk of going down during high-traffic periods, such as around election time.
This may be where Musk’s digital town square vision fails. If Twitter is to look like such a place, the infrastructure that supports it must capture the most critical moments.
Where to go if you’re sick of Twitter?
While there is no sign of a mass Twitter exodus just yet, many users are coming elsewhere. Shortly after Musk took to Twitter, #TwitterMigration started trending. Since this week, micro-blogging platform Mastodon has reportedly garnered tens of thousands of followers.
Mastodon is made up of independent, user-managed servers. Each server is owned, operated and operated by its community and can also be made private. The downside is that servers cost money to run and if a server is no longer running, all content may be lost.
Twitter defectors have also turned to sites like Reddit, Tumblr, CounterSocial, LinkedIn and Discord.
Of course, many will be waiting to see what Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey comes up with. While Dorsey has retained a stake in Twitter, he has launched a decentralized social media network, BlueSky Social, which is now in beta testing.
Bluesky aims to provide an open social network protocol. This means that it will allow multiple social media networks to interact with each other through an open standard.
If this experiment is successful, it will be much more than a competitor to Twitter. This will mean that users can easily switch services and move their content to other providers.
It will be a completely new user-centric model for social networking. And it could force traditional platforms to rethink their current data harvesting and targeted advertising practices. It might just be worth waiting for a platform takeover.