This appeared in the FPJ on the 5th of November. And, this column like many others, appears dated in a fortnight – as the hellsite goes through multiple shocks to its system.

$44 billion. The price to buy the blue bird, that was the town square of the world.  Twitter has been bought, but will it be saved?

Earlier this year, in April, Elon Musk made an unsolicited offer for Twitter. And after months of uncertainty, the deal is finally done and Elon Musk now owns Twitter. And he plans to not just make it private, but also loosen up some of the content moderation that restricted hate speech.

Twitter’s former CEO Parag Agarwal outraged a number of people across political divisions with his statements on freedom of speech, when he stated,  that Twitter would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.” Many on both the right and the liberal ends of the spectrum believed that a technology company cannot make this choice without either due process or transparency. And Twitter was opaque about both.

For Musk, Twitter was the world’s town square. And he found twitter’s moderation policies to be anti-free speech, and therefore anti-democracy. He tweeted, in March, a few weeks before his offer to buy Twitter “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?”. He had run a poll to find out if Twitter adheres to this principle, on Twitter. Over 2 million people participated, and over 70% of them voted a strong no. and, he tweeted after the sale was complete “The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”

Today, most of the old management is gone. Fired by Musk within the first 24 hours of taking charge. There is a sword of Damocles that hangs over the 7500 employees who are employed by Twitter across the world. Engineers have been brought in from his other company, Tesla, to breathe some life into Twitter. But, on the face of it, Twitter has less of an engineering problem and more of an engagement problem. Its target audience rarely engages.

Most high-profile celebrity users on Twitter, those with large follower bases, rarely use the platform. If and when they do, it is to make broadcast announcements, and not to interact with those who tweet to them.  The second major issue is with the nature of the content on the platform. If you spend time and curate your feeds you will find a wealth of information, from science funding to museums; from classical music to mental health. Twitter has some content for every interest type. However, it is best known for political debate, dissent, and abuse. Beyond that, you have hate groups, conspiracy theorists, fake news purveyors, and anonymous trolls, all of whom vitiate the atmosphere and make Twitter an unpleasant experience. And it is this that makes Twitter unattractive for brands and advertisers. People wishing others dead or threatening to rape women – are there enough numbers to scare away advertisers.

Finally, no one really knows how many real users Twitter has, because of the number of fake accounts and spambots. Twitter claims that fewer than 5% of the accounts it is fake or spambots. Musk himself put that figure at almost double that. For advertisers, and investors, this lack of accuracy in terms of daily or monthly real active users, is a big thing.

This is the mess Musk inherits. IF he lets free speech reign; the fear is he will unleash hate speech. And on free speech, Twitter would need to clarify a few things- Would lies be free speech? Would threatening rape or murder be free speech? Would the call to overthrow a government be Free speech? Would calls for secession be free speech? while each of them depends on the law of the land where Twitter operates, in a world without borders, and with VPN’s, it is difficult to say where electronic jurisdiction begins or ends.   

And, even if he solves all this – he has a bigger problem. And, that is not just a Twitter problem, it is a societal problem. People have simply stopped engaging with the other side.  And, without engagement, at a larger level, beyond echo chambers – a social network won’t be able to grow. There was a time we spoke to each other. Debated vigorously. And, then laughed and moved on. Now it has become all too personal. Too bitter. As Musk points out to the advertisers, in his post-takeover note, the traditional media has vitiated the atmosphere by chasing eyeballs and clicks. And, says that in doing so they have killed dialogue.  

One of the things he has spoken about is longer content pieces – which may allow for more nuanced conversations. Arguing in 140, or even 280 characters, or 15-second videos, is always going to be reductionist. Twitter Spaces which allows long form, and nuanced voice conversations is gaining popularity. Also, many mainstream media platforms that are now making money, are focusing on high-quality content to deliver value to the advertiser.  It seems like Musk is looking at Twitter, not so much as a tech platform that monetizes eyeballs, but as a content platform that monetizes attention and engagement. And do that, he is going to get us talking. And, that is going to be interesting.