On May 2, local time, elon Musk, the world's richest man, and her mother, supermodel Maye Musk, snatched the limelight at the 2022 Metropolitan Museum of Art Charity Dinner in New York, his first public appearance since he announced he took over Twitter and turned it into a private company.
Last week, billionaire Musk and Twitter reached an agreement to buy Twitter for about $44 billion. His proposed price of $54.2 per share was a 38 percent premium to the company's share price in April. After the acquisition, Musk claimed the social media platform "needs to be transformed." Judging from his previous self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist", many speculate that he will make a big fuss about speech control in the future.
Many also want to know exactly what steps Musk will take to reinvent Twitter. For now, Twitter has only 7.15 percent of the global social media market, far less than Facebook, which is the first to account for 75.04 percent of the market, according to StatCounter. Omnicore estimates that 23 percent of U.S. adults will use Twitter in 2021, while 68 percent will use Facebook.
Musk has said he wants to build a platform that is "the greatest fun!" At the gala, when asked about Twitter's future plans, Musk said he hopes to turn Twitter from a "niche" to a "mainstream" and become as "inclusive" a media platform as possible. "My goal is to achieve all of my goals through Twitter, which is to provide a service that is as inclusive as possible with as diverse and wide-ranging content, and ideally, most Americans will use Twitter chat."
He added: "I've also publicly vowed that Twitter has to get rid of bots, phishing and all forms of scam because it obviously weakens the user experience." We don't want people to be scammed out of their belongings on this platform. ”
Some support Musk's move. In addition, many wonder whether former U.S. President Donald Trump and others who have been silenced can return to Twitter under Musk's reforms. According to the New York Post, Musk had previously "strongly" opposed Twitter banning Trump and banning his name.
Discussing content moderation policies at Filippo Menczer, a distinguished professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University, expressed concern about Musk's intentions, "Many people are concerned that this means that the review policy will be weakened." This will go in the wrong direction, as there is growing evidence that misinformation on the web can be harmful to the real world that cannot be underestimated. He cited the example of covid-19 vaccines, where as rumors that vaccines can spread the virus spread on Twitter, people's motivation to get vaccinated dropped significantly, "these studies require us to better regulate our information ecosystem to safeguard the public interest and support public health." Professor Menze said.
There are also blunt criticisms that the so-called "freedom of speech" actually bothers the public. Ahmed Banafa, a professor of engineering and technology, claimed: "It's free speech for you, but hate speech for others." "So no matter how many platforms have said we're going to be free speech platforms before, they're actually going to censor content to a greater or lesser extent."
(Editor: Kim Ri-wei)