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Elon Musk Gives Hint About Twitter’s Future

Photo of Carmine Sabia Carmine SabiaMay 1, 2022
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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.

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Billionaire Elon Musk has revealed part of his plan for Twitter’s future if his bid to become its new owner is successful as expected.

The revelation came in response to a tweet from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who said that all users should verify their name and identity.

“I hope @elonmusk will insist that all Twitter posters use their real names & not be keyboard cowards hiding behind silly little sophomoric screen names. Be man enough or woman enough (if you even know what that is) to stand by what you say! If you can’t own it don’t say it,” the former governor said.

The tweet caught the attention of Musk who has spoken about authenticating Twitter users in the past.

“Authentication is important, but so is anonymity for many. A balance must be struck,” he said.

Musk got some pretty broad agreement on the idea.

“Yes! Some people with large accounts have to use burners because using a verified account to talk on certain issues is risky in this current climate of oversensitivity,” one user said.

“When I lived in China, they’d just started all the ‘real name online’ nonsense. A few years later, they now have their Social Credit System. If they don’t like your post, your score goes down, and that could affect your ability to travel or even buy property. No thank you,” another argued.

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“Maybe you could let everyone who wants to get authenticated, give those people higher algorithm placement, special privs, ONLY allow those people to be part of determining trending topics, etc. That’d reward authentication & punish botnets while still allowing anonymity,” author John Hawkins suggested.

“There can be 3 tiers. Blue tick: accounts of public interest Yellow tick Authenticated: Public identity verified Authenticated-anonymous: Authenticated on the back end, anonymous in the front Then a choice to allow full anon. Restrict posting for less than 1 yr old accts,” author Sankrant Sanu advised.

“Anonymity is necessary for a lot of people to be able to exercise free speech. Therefore a platform that does not guarantee anonymity for the speakers cannot truly be a free speech one,” another Twitter user said.

It came a day after New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a comment that he believed was directed to him and he smoked her with one sentence.

“Tired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening bc some billionaire with an ego problem unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it because Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel took him to dinner and made him feel special,” she said.

With a war between Russia and Ukraine, inflation hitting records and people struggling to make ends meet this is an interesting thing to be stressed about.

But Musk had the perfect response to her.

“Stop hitting on me, I’m really shy,” he said with a blushing emoji.

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Rep. Ocasio-Cortez initially responded to his tweet with “I was talking about Zuckerberg but ok,” but then she deleted the tweet.

Before those tweets were other by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez that appeared to be swipes at Musk on Friday.

“Billionaires be like ‘the extreme far left is taking over’ when the ‘extreme far left’ in the US is ‘medicine shouldn’t bankrupt you,’ ‘ wages should cover rent,’ & ‘maybe it’s bad that Wall St companies profit off mass surveillance, manufactured housing crises, and caging people,’” she said.

“The number of billionaires in the US couldn’t even fill an apartment building, but the number of people they negatively impact is only growing. All the US billionaire votes combined couldn’t even come in 2nd for an NY city council election. That’s why they stay pressed,” she said.

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Those tweets were likely a response to tweets Musk made that shredded the far left.

“The far left hates everyone, themselves included!” he tweeted. He later followed that with another tweet giving a tepid condemnation of the “far-right.”

“But I’m no fan of the far right either. Let’s have less hate and more love,” he said.

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Photo of Carmine Sabia Carmine SabiaMay 1, 2022