Elon Musk Is Buying Twitter. Here's What Could Change

Speaker 1: After plenty of speculation and plot twist Twitter's board of directors has accepted Tesla, chief Elon Musk's bid to buy the social media giant for 44 billion. The two sides reportedly met on April 24th to discuss Musk's proposal. The tech mogul will pay shareholders $54 and 20 cents per share. Twitter was initially expected to reject mucus offer, but the company reportedly warmed to the idea [00:00:30] after Musk revealed his financing plan for the bid, which included backing for Morgan Stanley. Speaker 2: The reality of this is that having watched a lot of acquisitions over the years and seeing C try to fight it and then suddenly reverse their feelings on it. Usually it means that they tried to find someone else and they couldn't right. They either couldn't get the value that they wanted, or it just became abundantly clear that there was no way to truly stop this. And that seems to be what is going on. At least in this case with [00:01:00] Twitter Speaker 1: Musk for first made the unsolicited offer to buy Twitter earlier this month, he said, if it was rejected, he'd consider his position as the company's single largest shareholder, which could have affected the company stock price. Musk's acquisition of Twitter is the latest in a timeline of escalating events between the billionaire and the social media site. Musk's original offer came day after he refused to join Twitter's board of directors after acquiring a 9.2% stake in the company in March with news of the acquisition [00:01:30] users quickly took to Twitter to share mixed feelings about the richest man in the world, owning the highly influential social media platform. Despite pushback from some experts say Twitter's board was likely focus on what could be best for the future of the social media platform, as well as the shareholders, Speaker 2: The board's job is not to pick the best person to buy Twitter. Their job is to pick the best deal. It's all about the dollar signs at the end. Speaker 1: Musk says he's not looking to make money from Twitter. [00:02:00] That is he doesn't view the acquisition as a financial estimate. Instead, he sees it as a service for public. Good. Speaker 2: I think what is important is that Elon Musk seems very clearly upset by the way, Twitter operates, and he sees an opportunity to change that. And for him, the politics of doing that are worth more. It seems than a profit. And if he happens to make a profit all the better for him, Speaker 1: Elon Musk is one of Twitter's most prolific users. And one of its [00:02:30] biggest critics since acquiring a stake in the company, Musk has been tweeting about changes. He'd like to see on the platform, including more transparent content moderation, eliminating ads on Twitter, subscription service, and creating an edit button, which Twitter is already working on. Musk says he wants to increase the public's trust of the platform by making it a place of inclusivity and true freedom of speech. But the first amendment doesn't apply to private companies like Twitter, which can create their own rules about what's allowed. Speaker 3: [00:03:00] Twitter has become kind of the defacto town square, really important that people have the, both the, uh, the reality and the perception, uh, that they're able to speak freely within the bounds of the lull. Speaker 1: As a platform, Twitter has helped drive social movements like the Arab spring, the me too movements, and even black lives matter. It's also been used as a tool for misinformation and harassment. So the question is, what does this mean for Twitter users? Mosca spoken openly about what he hopes [00:03:30] to change at Twitter and has even pulled his followers about the addition of features like an edit button. One of the most requested features from Twitter users. Twitter has been working on an edit feature since 2021, but has expressed concerns that the tool could lead to issues such as people sharing tweets that are then altered to change their meaning. Speaker 2: The concern that a lot of people have is that you could put out something, a lot of people retweet it or like it or whatever. And then you change it completely. Right? Imagine I put out a tweet that says the sky is blue and [00:04:00] everyone says, yeah, good job. That's a great tweet. And then I wait a day and then I switch it to say, the sky is gray or the sky is purple. And suddenly everyone liked that other one, right? There are ways to solve this, right? There have been Facebook, for example, showed that you could have a history of the message. That's what they do when you edit it, that they actually is a transparent thing. It's right there. You can find out what was changed, but Twitter may have a different opinion about this. They very clearly do, and they've resisted it for a very long time. Speaker 1: [00:04:30] Mosque said his version of an edit button would include time restrictions and with zero out, any retweets eliminating scams, bots and bot armies on Twitter would also be a top priority for Musk. Something that has affected him. Personally, cryptocurrency scammers have impersonated Musk using fake accounts on various social media sites to trick people into giving away cryptocurrency in 2020 Musk's account was also among many high profile Twitter accounts that were hacked to push a Bitcoin scam, including Barack [00:05:00] Obama, bill gates, Kanye west, and more Musk has said that bots bring down the site's product value and make it less enjoyable for users. Speaker 2: Part of the problem is that the, you know, as long as there have been people there seem to have always been scams of some sort. And the truth of it is that those will persist regardless what he may be able to do. Right? If he says all of the engineers at Twitter on day one, Hey, <laugh> stop everything you've been doing. I don't care about anything else. Don't investigate new, [00:05:30] uh, shades of blue. We don't care anymore. Keep the Twitter birds wings the same size. I want you to focus only on stopping scambos. He could cut down on a lot of what's going on, but it's a very tough thing to do. And even some of the best minds in the tech industry have struggled to fix it. Speaker 1: MOS also believes Twitter's coding structure should be transparent. Social media users have complained that algorithms control their lives, encouraging them to spend more time on their platforms [00:06:00] and using their data to send them targeted ads. Speaker 2: One of the things Elon Musk has talked about is possibly open sourcing Twitter's algorithm, right? So in, in English, that means making available to code that makes Twitter choose what goes in your timeline. When you're reading it, Speaker 1: Musk said, if he acquired Twitter, he would post its open source data on GitHub, a popular form for coders. So people can access the company's data, identify flaws and offer solutions. However, [00:06:30] making Twitter's algorithm, public risk, sharing the information with bad actors who would abuse it. Speaker 2: Look, if these companies wrote down in black and white, here are the rules. We have everyone who wants to act in bad. Faith will try to find ways to step right up to the line and tiptoe over it, but never go far enough. And that is part of why they're very hesitant to put the stuff out there. It's not because they want us to all be confused. Although, uh, that [00:07:00] is a really frustrating result of it. A lot of it is because the people who wanna cause the most harm on, on the internet, that's another tool for them to be able to cause harm Speaker 1: Musk added that users should know whether tweets were being promoted or deemphasized manually or algorithmically. He cautioned against permanent bands from Twitter advocating for temporary suspensions. Instead Musk's acquisition of Twitter is just one in a long line of billionaires, increasingly investing in media organizations, mark Zuckerberg, [00:07:30] founder and CEO of meta formally Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for 19 bill million, which came under scrutiny from both lawmakers and social media users, Jeff Bezos, founder, and former CEO of Amazon purchased the Washington post in 2013, without any prior business experience in the media industry though, Twitter's board of directors accepted Musk's offer the acquisition isn't final until the deal is put to a shareholder, something [00:08:00] expected to close this year. It's unclear how much Musk's acquisition will alter Twitter, its policies, or even its stock price. What is clear is that change is coming to Twitter. Speaker 2: There are a million things that could happen, but it's not gonna be the same Twitter tomorrow as we had yesterday. And that's, what's most of important.