Elon Musk defended his takeover bid for Twitter on Thursday, saying during an onstage interview at a TED conference that he views the takeover as nothing less than a turning point for civilization.
Musk said the proposed deal isn’t about the economics of Twitter’s business, but about ensuring Twitter remains a trusted platform for democracy — describing his vision in characteristically broad terms.
“This is not a way to make money,” Musk told TED chief Chris Anderson. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is both extremely credible and widely inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO criticized what he saw as a lack of free speech on Twitter and said that Twitter should open up its algorithm to increase transparency in the company’s content moderation decisions. This would reflect a major shift in the way Twitter operates.
“The code should be on Github so people can look at it and say ‘I see a problem here’, ‘I don’t agree with this’, they can highlight problems, suggest changes,” Musk said.
Asked how he would change Twitter’s content moderation, Musk explained that his test of whether a platform adheres to free speech principles is simple: “Can someone you don’t like say something you don’t like? , so we have freedom of speech.”
Musk pondered that if a tweet was particularly controversial, maybe the company shouldn’t promote that tweet, but added: “I think we want to be very reluctant to delete things and be very cautious about permanent bans; timeouts are better.”
Musk acknowledged that even if he bought the company, there would still be mistakes.
“I think everyone will still blame me for everything,” he said. “If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong, it’s my fault, 100%. I think there will be some mistakes.”
Asked if he had an alternative plan if his bid to buy Twitter failed, Musk said he had “a number of” ideas. But he declined to elaborate, saying that would have to wait “for another time.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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