If Elon Musk is certainly in a position to purchase Twitter, the platform may look quite a bit totally different. In his first public, non-tweeted feedback because the saga started, Musk addressed why he desires to purchase the corporate, and adjustments he would wish to result in.

“Twitter has become kind of the de-facto town square,” he stated. “It’s just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.”

In phrases of particular adjustments, Musk stated Twitter ought to open-source its algorithms and decrease the interventions it takes in policing content material. “Any changes to people’s tweets — if they’re emphasized or de-emphasized — that action should be made apparent,” he stated. “So anyone can see that that action has been taken so there’s no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.”

He added that the underlying code behind the algorithm needs to be accessible on GitHub, in order that customers may examine it themselves.

Musk additionally spoke about his philosophy on content material moderation, specifically that there needs to be little or no of it. “I think we would want to err on the side of, if in doubt, let the speech exist,” he stated. “I’m not saying that I have all the answers here.” He repeated a number of occasions that his choice can be to permit all speech that’s authorized, and that he dislikes measures like everlasting bans. “I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and be very cautious with permanent bans,” he stated. “You know, timeouts I think are better than sort of permanent bans.”

Those feedback will not be prone to be well-received amongst Twitter staff, a few of whom have been reportedly by the prospect of him becoming a member of the board.

Musk’s look at TED comes simply hours after the Tesla CEO made a provide to purchase Twitter. That provide was the fruits of a chaotic few days for Musk and Twitter, throughout which he revealed that he had turn into Twitter’s largest shareholder, was provided a seat on the corporate’s board of administrators, declined to affix and was subsequently sued by Twitter shareholders over his delay in reporting his funding to the SEC.

Whether Musk will really achieve taking up the corporate is unclear. Twitter’s board has up to now solely stated that it’ll “review” the provide. “I’m not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it,” he stated. When requested if he had a “plan B,” if Twitter’s board have been to say no his provide, he stated that he did however declined to elaborate. 

As for his personal Twitter feed, Musk confirmed what many could have lengthy suspected. “I’m tweeting more or less stream of consciousness,” he stated. “It’s not like, ‘let me think about some grand plan about my Twitter’ or whatever. I’m like, literally, on the toilet like, ‘oh, this is funny,’ and then tweet that out, you know?”