In a tweet posted Thursday morning, Elon Musk dismissed speculation as to why he would buy Twitter and his thoughts on advertising, writing: “The reason I took over Twitter is because it’s important to the future of civilization to have a to have a common digital city square, where a wide range of beliefs can be discussed in a healthy way, without resorting to violence.”
In June comments to Twitter employees, Musk described his views as believing that people should “be able to say pretty outrageous things within the law,” but that they shouldn’t necessarily be reinforced. Now his message to advertisers is that “Twitter clearly cannot become a free hellscape where everything is allowed.”
He also blamed “far-right and far-left echo chambers” for hatred and division in society, as well as the media he says are targeting them.
Without repeating last week’s Tesla call on overpaying, Musk now claims of his pending purchase: “I didn’t do it because it was going to be easy. I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to trying to help the humanity I love.” That love message was also apparently spread during Musk’s visit to Twitter HQ yesterday, as Bloomberg reports he told the workers that he actually has no intention of firing 75 percent of the people who work there.
The WSJ An article noted that ads brought in 89 percent of Twitter’s $5 billion in revenue last year. While Musk has publicly ditched ideas about reshaping the service to focus on becoming a WeChat-style everything app and has reportedly privately discussed ideas about moving away from advertisers as its main source of revenue, it would take time. to implement all changes in that direction.
