Industrialist Elon Musk has big plans for Twitter now that he is the owner of the social media juggernaut. From a subscription service to possibly reviving the video app Vine, Musk wants the platform to reach its “extraordinary potential” following his $44 billion takeover.
While change is coming to San Francisco-based Twitter, how will the company be different now that Musk is in charge of the social network? Here are six sweeping changes that have been proposed by Elon Musk.
Content Moderation Council
The self-described “Chief Twit” confirmed in a tweet on Oct. 28 that Twitter will be establishing a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” He confirmed that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements” will happen before the council convenes.
He later clarified with a quote tweet that “we have not yet made any changes” to the company’s content moderation policies.
“Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on the platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks,” Musk explained. “Twitter’s content moderation council will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.”
The details remain unclear for now. Meanwhile, there are many questions, such as what are the guiding principles of the council, how many people will serve on the council, how they will be appointed, and how it will be different from the current content moderation program at Twitter?
Musk has stated before that he is open to restoring accounts of individuals who have been given lifetime bans, including former President Donald Trump.
$8 Monthly Fee
The biggest change could involve an $8-per-month subscription service that would allow subscribers to obtain the much-desired blue checkmark.
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bull—,” Musk wrote in a tweet. “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
In a Twitter thread on Nov. 1, Musk revealed that users would receive “priority in replies, mentions & search,” which he says is “essential to defeat spam/scam.” Subscribers would also be given the option to post long audio and video and enjoy a “paywall bypass” for publishers willing to partner with Twitter. Paid users would also be exposed to “half as many ads.”
“This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” he noted in a tweet.
“Essentially, this raises the cost of crime on Twitter by several orders of magnitude,” Musk added in a separate tweet.
The proposal has caused quite a stir on the social media platform.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), for example, lambasted the idea, writing in a tweet that “a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a $8/mo subscription plan.”
Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that “free speech” is actually a $8/mo subscription plan
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 2, 2022
Musk replied, “Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8.”
The new service also garnered the attention of best-selling novelist Stephen King, who warned that he would be “gone like Enron” if the program were implemented.
Musk told King that “we need to pay the bills somehow.”
“Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” he tweeted.
Workforce
The New York Times reported on Oct. 30 that the new Twitter owner ordered job cuts across the company. According to the newspaper, layoffs would occur before Nov. 1, when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation.
Musk denied the report, responding in a tweet that “this is false.”
This comes soon after The Washington Post reported that Musk had plans to terminate 75 percent of the Twitter workforce, which also was denied by the billionaire CEO. However, a separate Bloomberg News report noted that Musk would slash Twitter’s payroll by 50 percent—3,700 jobs—as early as Friday to help cut costs. The report, which cited anonymous sources close to the situation, also suggested that the company’s work-from-anywhere policy would be rescinded, as most remaining staff would be required to work from the office.
Musk has yet to confirm or deny the Bloomberg story.
But while it is unclear whether Musk has intentions to hand out pink slips to large numbers of personnel, one of his first acts consisted of firing several executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
The ‘Everything App’
Another idea that Musk has floated around is turning Twitter into something akin to a Swiss Army knife. It would transform into an all-in-one tool to do anything, comparable to China’s WeChat. That app has more than one billion monthly users, as it allows the participants to social network, send money, reserve a restaurant table, book ride shares and airplane tickets, and execute e-commerce transactions.
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” Musk wrote in a tweet.
“You basically live on WeChat in China,” Musk told Twitter employees in June.
Tech experts agree that it would be a challenging ecosystem to develop, mainly because of the logistical issues requiring enormous in-house infrastructure and broad partnerships with other companies. Privacy concerns would be another hurdle, as a super app would allow the company to know everything about its users.
Open-Source Algorithm
Elon Musk has repeatedly expressed his goal to open-source Twitter’s algorithm. This would foster greater transparency and trust in the website, as opening up the algorithm allows users to learn how Twitter promotes or demotes content. An open-source algorithm would essentially show how platform engineers maintain the social media outlet and let users make suggestions.
In March, Musk published a poll that found 82 percent of respondents agreed that the Twitter algorithm should be open source.
‘Bring Back Vine?’
Could Twitter directly compete with TikTok by bringing back the video app Vine?
In 2016, Twitter discontinued the looping-video app after purchasing it in 2012. Reportedly, Musk has instructed Twitter engineers to possibly reboot the service by the year’s end.
Speculation was further fueled by Musk, who polled his audience with “Bring back Vine?” The survey garnered nearly five million responses, and 70 percent thought it should be resurrected.
MrBeast, a popular YouTube star, stated that it would be “hilarious” if Musk re-launched Vine and competed with Tik Tok. Musk replied, “What could we do to make it better than TikTok?”
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Andrew Moran has been writing about business, economics, and finance for more than a decade. He is the author of “The War on Cash.”
