Billionaire Elon Musk‘s acquisition of Twitter on Monday could usher in a series of significant adjustments to the platform.
Musk has publicly discussed noteworthy changes he wants to see on the platform, including a focus on free speech with less content moderation, the implementation of an edit button, longer-form tweets, an end to spambots, and making Twitter’s algorithms more transparent.
Musk expressly tied his initial purchase of 9.2% of Twitter earlier this month to his ambition of making the platform more free speech oriented, saying Twitter’s content moderators intervene too much on the platform and that the company should not censor content beyond what is required by the laws of the countries it operates in.
At the end of March, Musk created a poll on Twitter asking users if they believe Twitter adheres to free speech principles, which he said are essential to a functioning democracy. Approximately 70% of the more than 2 million people who responded to the poll answered “no.”
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In early April, Musk created another poll suggesting an edit button on the platform that would allow people to tweak their tweets for typos or other problems. Approximately 74% of more than 4.4 million respondents voted in favor of such a change.
Twitter said in April that it has been working on an edit feature since last year and will soon begin testing a tool to learn what kind of edit features work and are possible.
Musk also wants Twitter to allow for longer-form tweets by extending its current 280-character limit on posts.
The Telsa CEO said earlier this month that spambots are the “single most annoying problem” on Twitter, adding that if he is successfully able to take over the platform, then “we will defeat the spam bots or die trying” and “authenticate all real humans.”
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Musk has also pushed for Twitter to make its algorithm open source, meaning it would be freely available and transparent so users would know, for example, how the platform determines whether a tweet should be demoted or promoted on the site.
