Elon Musk – South Africa born billionaire, dude who’s building the internet in space, meme lord, and promoter of Ponzi schemes like Dogecoin – has finally done what he’s been talking about for a few weeks. A hostile takeover of Twitter.
Musk has struck a deal to buy the micro-blogging site for $44 billion, and he’s now planning to change things up.
There’s a lot of speculation around what Musk might do next. But what we know for sure is that whatever he does will affect a lot of people. Twitter has about 200 million users across the world – though it’s still far behind Zuckerberg’s Meta, with a ridiculous 3.6 billion users across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
But Twitter’s importance can’t be casually dismissed. It was designed to be a place for “breaking news”, where regular people become broadcasters by giving short bursts of information in real-time. The more people talk about a subject, the more likely it will “trend” and get the attention of mainstream news. Our TV news folks are obsessed with Twitter too; they hold entire debates on primetime based on what folks say on Twitter.
So, even if Twitter has fewer users, it’s still the place to be for influential politicians and newsmakers (even with occasional pushes for alternatives like Koo).
But there’s a problem.
Unlike Meta, which sells ads to users across its giant network of platforms, Twitter has not been very profitable. It went public in 2013 and has lost over $2 billion ever since. In September last year, Twitter settled a $800 million lawsuit causing a massive loss to the company. The lawsuit alleged Twitter was “misleading engagement numbers to investors”.
Soon after, Twitter founder-CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down and handed over the company’s reins to Parag Agrawal, who was its chief technology officer at the time. In India, WhatsApp lit up like NASA’s annual fake photo of India on Diwali, with forwards like “Proud moment for India. India has the highest number of CEOs in the world in all top companies. IN IN IN”.
Now, the drama round the Twitter takeover has been playing out for the past two weeks. From Musk buying a majority stake in Twitter, to being offered a board seat, then rejecting said board seat, and then the Twitter management trying to “poison pill” the entire deal – a lot has happened. (PS: Watch my colleague Shivangi’s Hindi explainer on everything that went down.)
Fast forward to this week and Agrawal will be working with the new owner going forward. (He’ll also apparently get $42 million if Musk sacks him.)
So, let’s indulge in some speculation on what might happen next, especially since Musk has dropped plenty of hints on what he intends to change. Here are five things that might change on Elon Musk’s Twitter.
RIP Bot armies
Elon has said super emphatically that he will get rid of bot armies on Twitter or die trying.
If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
If you’ve been a Twitter user for a while, you might have noticed marketing companies spamming the website with copypasta tweets to make something trend. Even our TV news channels indulge in this behaviour and couch it as “marketing”.
Times Now Navbharat is launching a new show by using good ol' copy-pasta tricks.
— meghnad (@Memeghnad) August 3, 2021
New channel, same old boring tactics. pic.twitter.com/tRRScGcg8C
As I write this, the Jindal group has taken to Twitter to announce its plans to enter India’s electric vehicles market. So, it’s asked some marketing company to spam Twitter with the same sentence. The result? #JindalWorldwideGoesEV is trending.
Political parties use this copypasta trick too, towards diabolical ends. People like Kapil Mishra have formed “Hindu Ecosystem” Telegram groups to coordinate this spamming. The groups are handed documents with links that automatically enter the text of the tweets as drafts, so all you have to do is sign in from many, many accounts and click “tweet”. Done, spam complete.
Even crypto bros use this technique to pump up the prices of their coins. Just like – oh, the irony – Musk did with Dogecoin.
So, eradicating spam bots is a good thing for Twitter – something that will hopefully improve the quality of discourse and finally #MakeTrendingTopicsGreatAgain.
An open source algorithm
Elon Musk has compared Twitter to a “digital town square” that needs to be regulated accordingly. Towards that end, he says he’s planning to open source the entire Twitter algorithm.
If this actually happens, it will be huge. Think about it this way: If you go on Twitter right now and have your timeline set to “home” instead of “latest”, Twitter lets an algorithm decide which tweets are important for you to see, and which aren’t. “Latest” is when tweets appear chronologically, more or less bypassing the algorithm.
But we don’t know whether that’s happening.
Right now, a few lines of code overseen by folks like Parag are deciding what you should see on Twitter. But you, the user, don’t know how that decision is being made. The algorithm wants you to see and engage with things you like so that you spend more time on the hellsite and consume more ads.
Meta’s entire business model is based on this, and so is Twitter’s.
Open sourcing the code will let people who understand the code decipher just how the algorithm makes its decisions. They can also suggest changes to it. During this TED interview a couple of weeks ago, Musk said he would hang over control of the algorithm to a community of moderators. So, the public at large would be in charge of how this “town square” of the internet functions.
Essentially, I imagine this would be like Wikipedia. There would be a subscription or donation model that would help sustain the company, and a team of volunteer coders to enhance the algorithm and make it more user-friendly, but without the motivation of profit.
I know, I know, it’s a utopian world of speculation but hey, a man can dream, right?
Authenticate all humans
After his Twitter takeover, Musk’s statement used the phrase “authenticating all humans”. This ties in with the spam bot thing but it’s unclear what he really means. Billionaires tend to just say things and expect us plebs to obsess over them trying to find meaning...and Elon does this a lot.
What “authenticating all humans” might mean is changing the blue tick verification system. Maybe, just maybe, Twitter will now give out more verified blue ticks to people who prove they’re human. How will they do it and what criteria will they use?
Who knows? But I sincerely hope this doesn’t mean all anonymous handles will disappear. Because anonymous users aren’t just spammers – there are also users using the platform as whistle-blowers or to expose corruption or just post funny memes.
The edit button
For years, a section of users on Twitter have been demanding an edit button to make changes to tweets after they are posted. Musk held a poll earlier this month about it, and 73 percent voted in favour of it.
Do you want an edit button?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
CEO Parag Agrawal ominously said the consequences of this poll would be important.
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. https://t.co/UDJIvznALB
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
So, it seems like an edit button is coming soon. But there are concerns.
Suppose I tweet something like “I love Sonu Sood” and I get 1,000 retweets. Then I use the edit button and sneakily change it to “I love Kangana Ranaut”. Boom, information manipulated to appear popular, even when it isn’t. Payment for “brand marketing services” from Kangana confirmed.
That’s a real problem. In his TED interview, Elon spoke about it and said perhaps a timer would be attached to each tweet so it can only be modified for a duration of, say, five minutes. Additionally, each tweet will carry an edit log to let people see what edits were made.
It sounds good in theory, but I feel screenshot Twitter will find ways around it. How hard is it to screenshot a tweet, erase the “edited” notification, and spread it on WhatsApp? Not very hard at all.
And finally, absolute total free speech
This is the big one. Elon Musk taking over Twitter has polarised people into two camps based on what Musk stands for. Elon is a believer in absolute free speech and very little moderation. He did another poll on this.
Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?
In reality, he hasn’t been happy ever since the United States Securities and Exchange Commission made him delete a series of tweets. He took it as an act of confrontation and an attempt to meddle in his personal company affairs. So, what did he do? He bought Twitter – just because he can. Musk wants himself and others to be able to say whatever they want to say in this “town square” without consequences.
At the TED event, Musk speculated on minimal moderation on Twitter, limited to stuff like sharing child porn and violent content. He insisted that the community at large should decide on what should and should not be on the website. Plus, he said there should be public records spelling out solid reasons on why accounts are suspended or tweets removed.
This could be a game-changer. For one, it might mean the return of Donald Trump and Kangana Ranaut to the platform to spew insightful garbage again. It also means arbitrary suspensions based on government requests might be put to a stop. Or at least a record would exist, where anyone can see why a government asked Twitter to remove content.
The free speech debate is a tricky one. Right now, what should and should not go on a public platform is largely controlled by the platform itself. What would be ideal is to have a system where community moderation happens. But then, we don’t live in an ideal world and 4chan is a thing in the real world.
So, we’re done with the five major changes you can expect but there’s other stuff too, especially financial aspects and management. How will Twitter earn money if there’s no algorithm to push ads? How will it survive if it doesn’t earn money? Will Parag Agrawal, the pride of WhatsApp University, survive this overhaul? Will Elon turn Twitter HQ into a dharamshala? Will Modiji lose 60 percent of his followers in a bot purge? Will my blue tick vanish tomorrow? Are you removing my blue tick, Elon? ARE YOU?!
One thing is worth underlining though. Elon Musk is the richest man on the planet and he literally just bought a website that affects conversations across the world. Billionaires use their endless resources to buy the media in order to control these conversations and tilt them in their favour. Buying a media house is rarely about earning money but using it as a publicity arm for themselves and their companies. It is also about putting pressure on governments when these billionaires want, and supporting/opposing those who work in their favour or against.
Elon buying Twitter stinks of centralised media control by one influential and extremely rich man with many business interests across the world. That is something we should all be wary of.
Only time will tell what is coming next. I’m personally equal amounts excited and worried to see how the platform will change. One thing I’m looking forward to is getting rid of these Justice for SSR bots and Arnab stans from the hellsite. Kapil Mishra’s Hindu Ecosystem losing relevance would also be nice.
Fingers crossed.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
