Elon Musk Explains His Offer To Take Over Twitter At TED Conference

Tech mogul Elon Musk took to the stage at a conference on Thursday and began outlining a vision for Twitter if he were to succeed in buying the company, while also hurling insults at government regulators and its rivals. billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

Musk’s appearance at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, was his first public appearance since he proposed takeover of more than 40 billion dollars for San Francisco-based Twitter a few hours earlier.

Musk, CEO of automaker Tesla and the richest person in the world according to Bloomberg and Forbes, have criticized Twitter for having rules that he says are too restrictive on online speech.

“We wanted to have the perception and reality that speech was as free as possible,” Musk said in an on-stage interview conducted by Chris Anderson, who led the conference.

“A good indicator of whether there is freedom of speech is: Is it okay for someone you don’t like to say something you don’t like? And if that’s the case, then we have freedom of speech. argument,” he said.

He said Twitter has become so important to the functioning of democracy that there is a “civilization risk” if people lose trust in it.

“Having a public platform that is as widely trusted and universal as possible is crucial to the future of civilization,” he said.

Musk provided some details on how he would rewrite the rules and gave no specific example of a speech he thinks Twitter has unfairly restricted, but he did outline the scope of his speech. look at a Twitter that would generally be less censored. “If in doubt, let the speech, let it be,” he said.

He sometimes contradicts himself, saying that Twitter should be “in line” with each country’s laws regarding speech – which could open the door for more hate speech on the service. in the US – while also saying the company “needs human judgment” to evaluate. potentially violent words.

He also said he could be wrong.

“I don’t know if I have all the answers here,” he said. “But I think we want to grudgingly remove things and be very cautious with permanent bans. I think a timeout is better than a kind of permanent ban.”

The most famous Twitter ban is that of former President Donald Trump in early 2021, following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters. By then, Trump’s critics asked Twitter for years to ban Trump, but the social media service resisted, even rewritten part of its rule book in 2018 so basically world leaders like Trump can break some rules without losing their accounts.

Twitter used to have an almost tyrannical view of online speech. In 2011, then-CEO was Dick Costolo call the company “the free speech wing of the free speech party”, but in recent years, following requests from users and advertisers, Twitter has modified terms of service to prevent targeted harassment, hateful images, and other abusive behavior.

Musk said another top priority he has for Twitter is eliminating spam and phishing schemes, an area where the company has devoted resources but was unable to extinguish problem completely.

He also said he would favor an edit button to change tweets after a person submits them, at least for a short period of time. “I am open to ideas,” he said.

Regarding the possibility of a Twitter takeover, Musk said he has enough assets to buy the company.

Anderson, the interviewer, pressed Musk on whether the world’s richest person controlling a “hugely important town square” like Twitter was really a good idea.

Musk responded by noting that Zuckerberg has majority control over three of the most widely used apps in the world and that Zuckerberg could pass that ownership to his heirs.

“You’ve got Mark Zuckerberg owning Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and with a questionable ownership structure there’s going to be the 14th Mark Zuckerberg still controlling those entities,” Musk said.

He added that he would open Twitter’s “black box algorithm” to the public to examine in an attempt to build public trust in the platform.

Musk and Zuckerberg have a longstanding public feud, including a debate 2017 about the possibility that AI-powered robots could one day kill their human creators.

Musk’s SEC Battle

Wearing a black suit and white shirt, Musk answered questions on a variety of topics including his unhappy childhood, his experience with Asperger’s syndrome, his decisions at Tesla and his legal battles. UK with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In 2018, Musk and Tesla agreed to pay 40 million dollars in a settlement of an SEC investigation into claims Musk made about the automaker on Twitter. He tweeted that he had “guaranteed funding” to take the electric-car maker private, a claim he said he remained unchanged.

“I’ve been told by the banks that if I don’t agree to a settlement with the SEC, the banks will stop providing working capital and Tesla will go bankrupt immediately,” Musk said Thursday.

“It’s like putting a gun to your child’s head,” he said. “So I’m legally forced to give in to the SEC – those bastards.”

Twitter declined to comment on Musk’s conference remarks. The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ben Goggin contributed reporting to this section.

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