Musk has big plans for Twitter

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Tesla CEO Elon Musk has laid out some bold, if still vague, plans for transforming Twitter into a place of “maximum fun” once he buys the social media platform for $44 billion and takes it private.

Here’s what might happen if Musk follows through on his ideas about free speech, fighting spam and opening up the “black box” of artificial intelligence tools that amplify social media trends.

FREE SPEECH TOWN SQUARE

Musk’s feistiest priority is to make Twitter a “politically neutral” digital town square for the world’s discourse that allows as much free speech as each country’s laws allow. Musk hasn’t ruled out suspending some accounts, but says such bans should be temporary.

OPEN-SOURCED ALGORITHMS

Musk’s longstanding interest in AI is reflected in one of the most specific proposals he outlined in his merger announcement — the promise of “making the algorithms open source to increase trust.” He’s talking about the systems that rank content to decide what shows up on users’ feeds.

‘DEFEATING THE SPAM BOTS’

“Spam bots” that mimic real people have been a personal nuisance to Musk, whose popularity on Twitter has inspired countless impersonator accounts that use his image and name — often to promote cryptocurrency scams that look as if they’re coming from the Tesla CEO.

‘AUTHENTICATE ALL HUMANS’

Musk has repeatedly said he wants Twitter to “authenticate all humans,” an ambiguous proposal that could be related to his desire to rid the website of spam accounts.

Ramping up mundane identity checks — such as two-factor authentication or popups that ask which of six photos shows a school bus — could discourage anyone from trying to amass an army of bogus accounts.

AD-FREE TWITTER?

Musk has floated the idea of an ad-free Twitter, though it wasn’t one of the priorities outlined in the official merger announcement. That may be because cutting off the company’s chief way of making money would be a tall order, even for the world’s richest person.

WHAT ELSE?

Musk has tweeted and voiced so many proposals for Twitter that it can be hard to know which ones he takes seriously. He’s joined the popular call for an “edit button” that would enable people to fix a tweet shortly after posting it. A less serious proposal from Musk suggested converting Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters to a homeless shelter “since no one shows up anyway” — a comment taken more as a dig on Twitter’s pandemic-era workforce than a vision for the building.

Musk didn’t return an emailed request to clarify his plans.