Elon Musk’s Signal texts confirm his intentions to turn Twitter into an open source, democratic platform for free speech.
Elon Musk’s Signal text exchanges, which were made public in advance of the trial, reveal his goal to turn Twitter into an open source, democratically beneficial platform for free speech. Elon Musk had conversations with a few people in an effort to determine the value of the company before making the $44 billion offer to purchase Twitter. His Signal text communications with a number of well-known figures in business and technology have just been made public. Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider, texted Elon Musk at one point, pleading with him to buy Twitter and promising to “manage” the firm on his behalf.
“Why don’t you buy Twitter?” Döpfner says. “We run it for you. And establish a true platform of free speech. Would be a real contribution to democracy.”
Since Musk works to promote freedom of speech in the broadest sense, it is obvious that these remarks are exactly what got him. People who raise crucial problems are frequently silenced on platforms like Twitter in a time where speech is restricted by the dominant parties. Many Twitter users who backed Musk noticed that their tweets were being deleted.
These tweets earned a small number of likes and responses despite interaction statistics that were high (often in the thousands). Additionally, it was observed that some tweets, particularly those that were critical of Twitter, were displayed to a group of Twitter users entirely unrelated to the concerns or problems they were discussing and who were not followers of the account that sent them.
It should not be surprising that Döpfner is interested in improving Twitter because he also supports free expression. He and Musk exchanged texts on April 6, which suggests that they spoke to go through all the specifics. Döpfner also sent Musk a lengthy message in which she listed the problems with Twitter today and advocated for future changes to make the service “censorship-FREE” and “censorship resistant.” He asserted that the network must be “run on decentralised infrastructure,” with Twitter serving as “one of many clients to post and consume content,” in order to do this.
Musk and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had another text conversation that showed Musk was sincerely dedicated to making Twitter a high-quality and open platform. Dorsey reportedly proposed that Twitter employ an open source protocol, similar to that used by the Signal messaging platform. Without the current visible behind-the-scenes games, this would help to assure the transparency of its job. Musk promised Dorsey that, if possible, he would work toward it.
