TechSoftwareAppsWhat does Elon Musk mean for the future of Twitter?One of Twitter’s most notorious trolls now owns the whole thing. Should you worry?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
TechSoftwareAppsWhat does Elon Musk mean for the future of Twitter?One of Twitter’s most notorious trolls now owns the whole thing. Should you worry?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
One of Twitter’s most notorious trolls now owns the whole thing. Should you worry?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Wikipedia / The Royal Society)
(Image credit: Wikipedia / The Royal Society)
Musk hasn’t wasted any time in making changes. This morning, Bloomberg reported that he intends to reverse the lifetime bans on Twitter users kicked off the service – bans typically implemented after months of ongoing abuse of other Twitter users. Musk is expected to announce more plans later today.
So what does this mean for Twitter? Could Musk’s involvement make it as successful as SpaceX, or is the new boss going to destroy it?
Twitter and Musk: the signs aren’t good
Musk has made it very clear that he intends to sack lots of staff and change lots of policies, particularly over free speech. But he’s already backtracked on some of his belligerence in a post to advertisers, who he’s promised that he won’t turn Twitter into a “free-for-all hellscape”.
For those of us who already see Twitter as a free-for-all hellscape, that isn’t particularly reassuring: Musk has made it very clear that he wants people to be able to say pretty much anything with impunity, and that he believes that people currently banned for abusing others should be unbanned.
That’s in direct conflict with his promise to advertisers that “Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world”. Far-right forums are already full of Musk fans salivating at the prospect of posting anti-semitic, racist, misogynist and anti-LGBT+ tweets with impunity; no respectable brands are going to want their content next to that.
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