It’s been per week seeing that Elon Musk strode into the Twitter headquarters with a kitchen sink, signaling his professional takeover of the company.

Having had a while to permit the information of his US$ forty-four billion (approximately A$70 billion) purchase “sink in”, Twitter customers are questioning what he’ll do with the platform.

-What’s Musk going to do with Twitter?

After months of attempting to stroll far from his dedication to shopping for the platform, and simply earlier than coming into what turned into seeking to be a long, probably embarrassing, and steeply-priced courtroom docket war to put into effect his authentic agreement, Twitter is now privately owned.

If we go through a number of the early reactionary media punditry, we see Musk has paid a long way an excessive amount for a platform that has now no longer fulfilled its enterprise capability to investors, nor its social capability to customers.

This likely explains a number of his first actions seeing that taking over, consisting of making plans to rate customers US$8 (adjusted via way of means of the country) for a blue tick, and dangerous to hearthplace 1/2 of Twitter’s staff.

He has already fired preceding CEO Parag Agrawal, leader monetary officer Ned Segal, head of criminal Vijaya Gadde and popular suggest Sean Edgett.

-Will Twitter flip into (extra of) a bin hearthplace?

Musk’s intentions have been possibly pleasant signaled together along with his first tweet after he offered the platform: “the hen is freed”.

Before the purchase, one in every one of his oft-tweeted criticisms of Twitter turned into that there have been too many limits on “unfastened speech”, and moderation could want to be reframed to liberate Twitter’s capability as a “de facto public metropolis rectangular”.

There’s no question Musk is pretty desirable at performative social media statements, however, we’re but to peer any real adjustments made to content material moderation – not to mention Musk’s utopian imagination and prescient of a virtual metropolis rectangular.

The “leader twit” has recommended the destiny appointment of “a content material moderation council with extensively various viewpoints” that could be charged with making selections approximately moderation and account reinstatements.

This isn’t a brand-new idea. Meta has convened such an oversight board seeing that 2018, made of former political leaders, human rights activists, lecturers, and journalists. The board oversees content material selections and has been acknowledged to oppose CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s selections, mainly his “indefinite” Facebook suspension of former US president Donald Trump after the United States Capitol constructing riots.

It’s uncertain whether or not a council could convene to talk about Musk’s idea to “opposite the everlasting ban” Twitter imposed on Trump, or if Musk could permit a board to override his selections.

Nonetheless, Musk’s idea of a moderation board is a step return from his formerly self-described “unfastened speech absolutist” perspectives on content material moderation.

Many had been worried his method of moderation can also additionally gasoline extra hate speech on Twitter.

In the week, coordinated troll bills have attempted to check the bounds of a Musk-run Twitter via way of means of flooding the platform with racial slurs. According to the United States-primarily based National Contagion Research Institute, using the N-phrase skyrocketed via way of means of extra than 500% on October 28. However, the pinnacle of protection and integrity at Twitter, Yoel Roth, stated some of the offending tweets got here from a small variety of bills.

Another take looks at via way of means of Montclair State University researchers located a large spike in hateful phrases withinside the lead as much as Musk’s acquisition.

Both Roth and Musk have confirmed, “Twitter’s rules haven’t changed”. Rules on “hateful conduct” continue to be the same.

-Musk stays a free cannon:

Perhaps extra regarding than troll reactions is Musk’s choice to tweet after which delete a conspiracy idea approximately US residence speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi. We ought to brush aside this as Musk’s love of sh-posting, however, if the proper to publish disinformation and private assaults are the type of speech he desires to protect, it’s well worth thinking about what type of public rectangular he envisions.

Musk takes a technocratic method to the social troubles that emerge from our use of online communique tools. It implies unfastened get right of entry to the era absolves “unfastened speech” of its cultural and social context, and makes it without problems and simply to be had by everyone.

This is frequently now no longer the case. That’s why we want content material moderation and protections for the susceptible and marginalized.

The different query is whether or not we need billionaires to have an instantaneous impact on our public squares. If so, how can we make certain transparency, and that customers’ hobbies are being upheld?

In much less bombastic reportage of the takeover, Musk this week directed Twitter to locate extra than US$1 billion in annual infrastructure price savings, to allegedly arise thru cuts to cloud offerings and server space. These cuts ought to place Twitter susceptible to taking place throughout high-visitor periods, consisting of round election times.

This is probably wherein Musk’s virtual metropolis rectangular imaginative and prescient fails. If Twitter is to resemble this type of space, the infrastructure that helps it has to keep up with the maximum critical moments.

-Where to move if you’re unwell off Twitter?

While there’s to date no indication of a mass Twitter exodus, some of the customers are flocking elsewhere. Shortly after Musk obtained Twitter, #TwitterMigration commenced trending. In the week seeing that, micro-running a blog platform Mastodon has reportedly received tens of hundreds of followers.

Mastodon is made of independent, user-controlled servers. Each server is owned, operated, and moderated via way of means of its network and also can be made private. The disadvantage is servers price cash to run and if a server is not running, all of the content material can be lost.

Twitter defectors have additionally moved to web websites consisting of Reddit, Tumblr, CounterSocial, LinkedIn, and Discord.

Of course, many can be ready to peer what Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey comes up with. While Dorsey keeps a stake in Twitter, he has released a decentralized social media community, Bluesky Social, that’s now in beta testing.

Bluesky’s ambitions are to offer an open social community protocol. This method permits a couple of social media networks to interact with each other thru an open standard.

If this test is successful, it might be extra than a competitor for Twitter. It could imply customers ought to without problems transfer offerings and take their content material with them to different providers.

It could be a completely new user-centered version of social networking. And it’d pressure conventional systems to reconsider their contemporary facts harvesting and focused marketing and marketing practices. That would possibly simply be a platform takeover well worth being ready for.