Elon Musk filled in a few more details of his vision for a free speech-first Twitter Thursday after he offered to buy out the company and take it private.
Driving the news: In an onstage interview at the TED conference, Musk said he believes Twitter should follow the laws of the countries it operates in and otherwise not regulate users' speech.
He also said he wanted to publish Twitter's ranking algorithm for the public to examine: "It should be on GitHub." What he's saying: Interviewer Chris Anderson said Musk had told him last week that "I do not want to own Twitter, it's a recipe for misery, everyone will blame me for everything," and asked what had changed.
"People will still blame me for everything... I think there will be quite a few errors, yes," Musk replied, but now, he said, he feels that the changes he aims to bring to Twitter are worth it: "It's important to the function of democracy, it's important to the function of the United States as a free country, and many other countries, to help freedom in the world." Other highlights:
Musk's definition of free speech: "Is someone you don't like allowed to say something you don't like? If that is the case, then we have free speech. It's damn annoying, but that is the sign of a healthy, functioning free speech situation." On hard content moderation calls: "If it's a gray area I would say let the tweet exist. In a case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy, you don't necessarily promote that tweet. I'm not saying I have all the answers here, but I do think we want to be very reluctant to delete things, and just be very cautious with permanent bans — timeouts, I think, are better."
Musk said he is not sure his bid to acquire Twitter will succeed, but that he has a "plan B" if it doesn't.
He wants the company to hold onto as many current shareholders as it can legally once it goes private.
He wants Twitter to have an "edit" button and believes the problems critics raise can be resolved. "I think you only have the edit capability for a short period of time, and zero out all retweets and favorites" after an edit
The bottom line: Musk said, "This isn't a way to make money. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don't care about the economics at all."
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