“Elon Musk finally owns Twitter. Here’s what’s next.”

Immediately after much more than 6 months of a single of the most chaotic, large-profile enterprise negotiations in the latest memory, it is last but not least genuine: Elon Musk, the richest man or woman in the globe, is in demand of Twitter.

Musk has reportedly fired CEO Parag Agrawal and two other prime executives, CFO Ned Segal and head of authorized coverage, belief, and safety Vijaya Gadde, in accordance to reports from CNBC the Washington Write-up, and the New York Moments. The Washington Publish and Wall Street Journal have claimed that the offer closed Thursday night time, even though there is no formal confirmation from Twitter or Musk at time of publication.

The documented acquisition implies Musk, troll commander in chief, will keep away from a lengthy legal struggle that would drive him to testify in court and expose extra most likely uncomfortable private texts with his buddies about the deal as aspect of the legal discovery approach.

And Twitter will not have to hold out in limbo any extended as an orphaned tech company pleading for somebody to get ownership. It also won’t have to deal with Musk’s public shitposting directed at the company’s leadership. (Musk tweeting a poop emoji at Agrawal may well go down as just one of the most juvenile government insults of all time.) In the days top up to the offer closing, Musk modified his tone to be a more welcoming troll — on Wednesday, he frequented Twitter HQ and made the rounds with workforce, which include a stunt in which he tweeted a online video of himself carrying a sink into the business office, captioned “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!” and modified his Twitter bio to read “Chief Twit.”

But if you feel the Musk-Twitter saga is in excess of, you are sorely mistaken. The actual drama is yet to come.

Till comparatively a short while ago, Musk’s primary business enterprise passions had been in developing electric autos, rockets, and underground tunnels. Now, he will have to determine out a new, very different organization obstacle: how to effectively operate a social media platform that’s utilized by virtually 400 million people today — which include extremely influential entire world leaders, journalists, and other general public figures — and deal with the political speech moderation problems that come with that. Musk also needs to determine out a much better enterprise design for the company. Twitter has never ever designed approximately as substantially funds as its social media rivals like Facebook and YouTube, and together with other significant tech providers, it has also found a main drop in its inventory value in the earlier 12 months. According to a the latest report in Reuters, the service’s most lively and beneficial users have been leaving in droves since the pandemic.

So significantly, Musk has thrown out a whole lot of concepts, normally in the form of tweets, about how he plans to switch Twitter all over. Below are some of the most substantial kinds.

Make Twitter a “free speech” system. Regardless of what that suggests.

Musk’s most constant messaging about why he wants to obtain Twitter is that he needs it to be an open up electronic city sq. of concepts, without having intervention. He has stated that he will make it possible for anybody to say nearly anything they want on the platform, as extensive as it is lawful.

“I imagine it is necessary to have absolutely free speech and to be in a position to talk freely,” claimed Musk at a Twitter personnel conference in June that Vox obtained a recording of.

But it’s not apparent just how Musk options to execute on his free of charge speech promise, or what he even indicates by it.

The the latest proliferation of “free speech”-themed platforms like Parler, Truth Social, and Gettr have proven that if you let anyone say whichever they want on a social media application, there is a very good chance that app could turn out to be a detest-crammed, harmful place — which is why even these fairly far more lax platforms have some basic content moderation guidelines.

There’s a whole lot of properly legal things you can say that is disagreeable to look at: racial slurs, graphic violent content material, bullying, spam (additional on that later on). That sort of information is commonly bad for business mainly because most end users — and advertisers — do not want to be all around it.

Musk appreciates this. Which is why he has stated, paradoxically, that he will use algorithms to boost and downrank material, arguing for “freedom of speech” but not “freedom of access.”

“I assume persons should really be authorized to say really outrageous matters that are in the bounds of the legislation, but then that doesn’t get amplified, it doesn’t get, you know, a ton of get to,” reported Musk at the June Twitter team conference.

But Musk did not describe how he will decide what variety of content material will get get to and what will not, and how it will be any different from what Twitter at this time does. Twitter has long struggled with hazardous written content (as has just about every other main social media platform) — like an advertiser boycott in 2020 — and in modern a long time has expanded its procedures in opposition to despise speech, harassment, and violent written content.

On Thursday, Musk seemed to consider to deal with issues about his fingers-off approach to content moderation by tweeting a community memo to advertisers. He wrote that Twitter “cannot grew to become a cost-free-for-all hellscape, in which just about anything can be explained with no consequences!” and included that he wants Twitter to be a put “where you can select your ideal practical experience according to your choices, just as you can decide on, for instance, to see motion pictures or participate in online video online games ranging from all ages to mature.”

It’s unclear, however, how this opt for-your-very own-experience system functions with Musk’s overarching vision for a “common electronic city square,” wherever persons are debating a large selection of beliefs all in the identical place. The balance concerning letting totally free speech and earning a social media platform a welcoming place is a tough a single, and Musk has a lot of particulars below he will have to have to figure out.

Carry back Trump

Musk has explained he would reinstate previous President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned for his tweets about the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“I imagine that was a miscalculation mainly because it alienated a big aspect of the nation and did not in the long run end result in Donald Trump not getting a voice,” Musk told the Economical Situations in May well. “Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t conclusion Trump’s voice. It will amplify it among the the proper, and that is why it’s morally wrong and flat-out stupid.”

Musk’s reviews about bringing again Trump, paired with his free speech mantra, has manufactured him well-known with conservatives who have extensive felt censored by Twitter and other social media companies, despite the actuality that there hasn’t been tangible proof of systematic anti-conservative bias and conservative influencers keep on to have substantial followings on platforms like Twitter.

When numerous conservatives would cheer Trump’s return to Twitter, it would simultaneously prompt significant resistance from persons, quite a few of them liberal, who argue that his tweets pose a danger to a peaceful democracy. We’ll see how Elon is well prepared to tackle that blowback if he does reinstate the former president.

Get rid of bots

Musk has promised to resolve Twitter’s “bots” issue — meaning the prevalence of accounts that write-up spam or inauthentic content like crypto get-loaded-speedy-schemes and phishing cons.

Bots are a significant identified challenge on Twitter, although the business has maintained that they symbolize a lot less than 5 percent of all accounts. Musk has reported he thinks that range is significantly increased, about 20 per cent or far more, and applied that as his legal foundation for in the beginning backing out of the deal.

Outdoors research has proven that whilst the prevalence of bots on Twitter may possibly essentially be below 5 per cent, the attain of these bots in conversations all round can be outsized, as high as 20 percent.

Unlike reinstating Trump, getting rid of bots is probably also a person of Elon’s least controversial strategies mainly because it is challenging to locate individuals who appreciate bots (or at minimum the destructive/spammy ones).

“I suggest, frankly a top priority I would have is getting rid of the spam and rip-off bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter,” Musk claimed at a TED meeting in April. “I feel these influence … they make the products significantly worse. If I experienced a dogecoin for each and every crypto scam I saw, I would have a hundred billion dogecoin.”

Ironically, even nevertheless Musk said one particular of the causes he was shopping for Twitter was to get rid of bots, he made the existence of bots the foundation for his case to try to get out of the Twitter offer, arguing that the corporation did not disclose the entire extent of the concern.

Like it or not, bots are now squarely Elon’s dilemma to solve.

Make Twitter a “superapp” identified as X

Musk had said that he needs to fulfill Twitter’s probable by producing it a great deal more than a social media application: turning it into a “superapp.” The first superapp is China’s WeChat, which people today use to do every little thing from shelling out their payments to ordering takeout to messaging their friends.

“You basically stay on WeChat in China for the reason that it is so beneficial and so beneficial to your every day lifetime. And I consider if we could achieve that, or even shut to that with Twitter, it would be an immense accomplishment,” reported Musk talking at an all-staff members Q&A with Twitter workers in June that Recode acquired a recording of.

This is by far one particular of Musk’s most formidable strategies and the closest point he has to a authentic business technique. Now, 90 per cent of Twitter’s profits is built as a result of promotion. Musk reported he would want to make Twitter much less marketing-dependent and make more money by subscriptions (which Twitter presently does), and most likely, producing money through these superapp transactions.

Musk will have levels of competition: Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Uber have also been pursuing the superapp thought.

It could also be a large amount more durable to develop a correct superapp in the US than in China, where there isn’t as considerably antitrust scrutiny stopping main communication platforms from creating cross-business monopolies.

If Musk is to reach any of these goals, he will will need sensible people today at Twitter to support him. With an already demoralized personnel and his noted system to slice 75 percent of the worker base, that is likely to be difficult.

In conversations with numerous latest and previous Twitter staff, employees described a climate of chaos and uncertainty. Some workers circulated a petition on Tuesday protesting Musk’s strategies to reduce 75 percent of Twitter’s workforce, and “to not be addressed as mere pawns in a video game played by billionaires.”

A person existing worker, who requested not to be named for anxiety of repercussions for speaking with the push, said that absolutely everyone they know at the firm is possibly “leaving or arranging to go away.”

Quite a few sources Recode spoke to observed it implausible that Musk could properly keep Twitter working with the sorts of drastic staff members reductions he’s reportedly prepared.

“It’s not only functions that will be strike. It takes many people today and shifting sections to fulfill simple regulatory and authorized compliance in many pieces of the world. How does [Musk] prepare to continue to do that?” claimed Sarah T. Roberts, a previous researcher at Twitter who still left the business lately and is now a professor of information and facts scientific studies at UCLA.

One Twitter engineer, Manu Cornet, has been submitting cartoons on his web site that reflect the recent temper at Twitter.

In one particular sketch, Cornet drew passengers sitting down on a Twitter-branded plane, crouched and bracing for effects.

If there is a person factor we know by now in pursuing the Elon-Twitter offer, it’s that what Musk suggests he’ll do can be incredibly distinctive from what he in fact ends up undertaking. But in the subsequent couple months, Twitter staff and Twitter users really should be ready for turbulent periods.