Now that Elon Musk bought Twitter what changes can we expect in Twitter?

Step 1: Take it private

Step 2: Focus on the product’s core purpose and make it great

Immediate priorities

  • Putting the algorithm that prioritises the news feed on open-source enables people to scrutinise and be better ambassadors for the way news is presented to people (smart, brilliant). While just posting the code to open source will not tell you very much, it extends an olive branch towards transparency and dispels conspiracy theories by reducing suspicions of corporate agendas behind news positioning (e.g. work agendas, political angles) and more. This idea is both feasible and advisable.
  • Improving the value of the news signal/feed by eliminating polluters with an agenda (bots and spam, over-censorship to the benefit also of a woke, political or other extreme agendas). To defeat the spambots, Twitter will need to build its own bot to detect and ban spamming sources. While this is not impossible, it is prone to also ban a bunch of human “false positives”. Calibration of the anti-spam-bot will be needed, but everyone should be prepared that there is no perfect anti-spam technology. Based on modern AI capabilities, this approach is feasible and advisable.
  • Enabling people to edit and put in longer tweets. These are top feature requests around the core value of the product and should be considered feasible and advisable.
  • Authenticating humans. Validating that people posting comments are people (not bots). This helps people know that posts and comments are coming from a person to promote discourse. It is understood that Twitter has long weighed this idea internally, wondering whether making people confirm their email or phone number could help reduce harassment and spam. Now that the company will be private, this idea is feasible and advisable.

Free speech

  • Contending with the realities of hundreds of millions of people’s worst instincts as they express themselves online.
  • Companies do not want their ads running against posts that misalign with their values, incite violent threats, promote hate speech, and perceived/actual misinformation aimed to tip elections or undermine public health.
  • The term ‘legal’ alone already offers some interesting challenges as one may need to question the legality of content shared on a geographic/per-country basis.

Enable people to pay in the currency/coin of choice

Step 3: Align operations to required operational parameters

  • First three months
  • Next three months
  • Next 12 months.

Step 4: Shrink to Grow

Step 5: Grow

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Exploring the world of business technology to work out what what’s really happening, what actually matters, and what it means. | www.andremuscat.com

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Andre Muscat

Exploring the world of business technology to work out what what’s really happening, what actually matters, and what it means. | www.andremuscat.com