Yes, Chances Are Elon Musk Will Make Twitter Way Worse, But He Could Make It Better

To date, Elon Musk has shown very little inclination to actually understand Twitter and why it has been such a useful platform to many. His understanding of free speech and content moderation hasn't just been generally lacking, but ridiculous. And that's not even getting into his apparently purposely obtuse misunderstanding of spam/mDAU issues.

And, so, I tend to think the general consensus that Musk is going to be bad for Twitter as a useful place for people to spend their time, share news, converse, etc. is likely correct. There are reasonable concerns about his supposed (though not confirmed) plans to gut the staff, and many Twitter employees have already made it clear that they're looking for new jobs. Charlie Warzel, over at the Atlantic, has a compelling and reasonable piece about the kinds of mistakes Musk could make that would kill the site. Dave Karpf predicts a death spiral that starts out slow, but then accelerates extremely quickly.

Both of those predictions resonate and seem like they could very well play out. If I were into making odds, I'd say that there's a... 60% chance that the futures Warzel and Karpf describe are pretty accurate. And, indeed, the decision on Day 0 to fire all of Twitter's top execs does not bode well.

But, rather than bemoan those possibilities, I'm going to try to take the optimistic point of view. How might Elon actually help Twitter be better? Back in April I put together a post suggesting ways that Elon could be good for Twitter, and I think it still holds up. The problem, of course, was most of my suggestions were for him to not do all the confused things he said he wanted to do, and instead to basically do more of the good things that Twitter had been experimenting with of late (thoughtful approaches to trust & safety, exploring protocols with Bluesky, testing out additional features that make the site more useful) and do those in a manner outside of the ridiculously short-term focus of the board and its commitment to keeping Wall Street happy.

In the past couple of days, as the deal rushed towards closure, Musk has given a few indications that maybe he is beginning to understand all of this, even if (as is typical of Muskian communications) he makes very simplified pronouncements devoid of important details and nuance.

Most notably, he put out a Dear Twitter Advertisers" letter that... is not that bad, actually?

Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS

- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022

The letter reads:

I wanted to reach out personally to share my motivation in acquiring Twitter. There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has been wrong.

The reason I acquired Twitter is because 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. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.

In the relentless pursuit of clicks, much of traditional media has fueled and catered to those polarized extremes, as they believe that is what brings in the money, but, in doing so, the opportunity for dialogue is lost.

That is why I bought Twitter. I didn't do it because it would be easy. I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love. And I do so with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility.

That said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature.

I also very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you; it can show you a service or a product or medical treatment that you never knew existed, but is right fo ryou. For this to be true, it is essential to show Twitter users advertising that is as relevant as possible to their needs. Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!

Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise. To everyone who has partnered with us, I thank you. Let us build something extraordinary together.

So... this is incredibly simplistic, and somewhat contradictory. There are elements that do not align with reality (e.g. studies on echo chambers" have pointed out that sites like Twitter are not echo chambers, especially compared to local communities, and that part of the reason people often lash out on social media is because it's the first time they actually have to confront alternative viewpoints). Also, the idea that as long as everyone can set their own preferences," the problems of hate go away, is simplistic and again underplays the complexity and nuances.

But there are some interesting tidbits. While I saw a lot of people reading the advertising part to mean he's going to suck up more data on everyone to make ads more relevant" (which is a legitimate concern), I am surprised and encouraged by his use of the line that highly relevant ads are content. Because that's a line that I've been saying for many, many years now. And, in some ways, Twitter has shown that to be true, what with brands having accounts on Twitter that are often fascinating straight-up Twitter accounts. They're content, but they're advertising. I mean, just think about the Steak-umm's Twitter account.

So while there are legitimate concerns about how he's going to make relevant" ads, there are at least some interesting ideas buried in there.

Also... I will take it as a positive that he is at least acknowledging that a free-for-all hellscape" can be a negative. And it's possible that his somewhat clumsy suggestions regarding choosing your own experience are actually a nod towards opening up the API to more third party developers to craft new and different tools, services, and algorithms, so that it's not just Twitter making all the decisions.

Those could be really good and useful things, though the details matter quite a bit. Little tiny design choices could have a massive impact on what works and what doesn't.

It has felt, at times over the past decade or so, that Twitter perhaps understood this all too well, and it caused the company to be too hesitant to experiment and roll out new offerings, as the company overthought every feature to a degree that maybe held it back. That is... less likely to happen under let's just roll shit out and call it full self driving'" Elon Musk.

I tend to think there's a happier medium between Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroy Jenkinsing any new features and being so hamstrung that new features almost never roll out, or roll out in such a timid fashion that little happens. It feels like Musk will shift from one extreme to the other, but maybe he'll be able to settle into a more happy and innovative middle.

At the very least, one hopes that his interest in enabling more choices and preferences for users will mean a more active third-party developer ecosystem, enabling those third parties to build in some of their own features, such that Twitter could learn from what other people are doing.

Reporter Casey Newton also revealed a leaked internal summary from a VP about Musk's meeting at Twitter on Wednesday, which also was somewhat encouraging.

Here's a message that was posted a few hours ago to Twitter's Slack from a VP in the revenue organization: high-level overview of Elon's visit to Twitter HQ this week + his priorities pic.twitter.com/G5wkYZW63z

- Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) October 27, 2022

The key bits include the discussion he had with the legal team (who, um, he just fired):

Discussed ideas around the future of Twitter and having it on your own terms. Content moderation, working with foreign governments. Standards of speech around the world. Section 230- he was very knowledgeable about this and its importance to Twitter.

Some of the other thoughts were... not necessarily bad? Figuring out how to get more subscription revenue is something that Twitter has been working on for a while, but again often seemed timid in rolling out, and much of that was driven by awkward Wall Street demands rather than making the site actually better. If Elon can perfect a setup where subscriptions make sense, it could be interesting. I already think that the company has rolled out some interesting features recently around super follows" and circles" that could lead to better overall business models for the site that align with how users use it, rather than more antagonistic business models.

Separately, as Casey Newton reported in his article on the closing, the fact is that morale at Twitter has been quite low for a while. It seems pretty clear that the Musk takeover has driven it even lower over the past few months, in part due to the uncertainty, as well as many of his statements that suggested little to no understanding of what makes Twitter work (indeed, many of his instinctual responses seemed likely to destroy Twitter rather than help it).

But still, morale was already low, and the company had a decade of difficulty shipping product, and that showed. While that had actually changed quite a bit over the last couple years, with a real shift in the company rolling out new products and features, it's possible that a shakeup could be good if done well (a huuuuuuuuuge if" of course, especially given how Musk has handled everything so far).

The fact is that Twitter's board has been a mess for a long time, and there were a bunch of different competing pressures on the company. Musk taking over and taking the company private could allow the company to focus on actually improving things. But much of that requires Musk to understand a bunch of really nuanced things - which doesn't always seem to be his strong suit.

If he can learn these things, and not speed-run all of the same mistakes everyone else makes when they first start running a social media website (and assume that no one's thought of all the various ideas before), there could actually be a path towards an improved site.

Again, I put the odds of all that happening extremely low. But, it would be nice if it did work out that way.