After greater than six months of one of the vital chaotic, high-profile enterprise negotiations in current reminiscence, it’s lastly actual: Elon Musk, the richest individual on this planet, is accountable for Twitter.

Musk has reportedly fired CEO Parag Agrawal and two different high executives, CFO Ned Segal and head of authorized coverage, belief, and security Vijaya Gadde, in accordance with reviews from CNBC the Washington Publish, and the New York Instances. The Washington Publish and Wall Road Journal have reported that the deal closed Thursday evening, though there isn’t any official affirmation from Twitter or Musk at time of publication.

The reported acquisition means Musk, troll commander in chief, will keep away from a prolonged authorized battle that may power him to testify in courtroom and reveal extra doubtlessly embarrassing personal texts along with his pals in regards to the deal as a part of the authorized discovery course of.

And Twitter gained’t have to attend in limbo any longer as an orphaned tech firm pleading for somebody to take possession. It additionally gained’t need to take care of Musk’s public shitposting directed on the firm’s management. (Musk tweeting a poop emoji at Agrawal could go down as one of the vital juvenile govt insults of all time.) Within the days main as much as the deal closing, Musk modified his tone to be a extra pleasant troll — on Wednesday, he visited Twitter HQ and made the rounds with staff, together with a stunt through which he tweeted a video of himself carrying a sink into the workplace, captioned “Getting into Twitter HQ — let that sink in!” and altered his Twitter bio to learn “Chief Twit.”

However for those who assume the Musk-Twitter saga is over, you’re sorely mistaken. The actual drama is but to return.

Till comparatively lately, Musk’s major enterprise pursuits had been in constructing electrical vehicles, rockets, and underground tunnels. Now, he should work out a brand new, very completely different enterprise problem: the right way to successfully run a social media platform that’s utilized by practically 400 million individuals — together with extremely influential world leaders, journalists, and different public figures — and take care of the political speech moderation points that include that. Musk additionally wants to determine a greater enterprise mannequin for the corporate. Twitter has by no means made practically as a lot cash as its social media opponents like Fb and YouTube, and together with different main tech firms, it has additionally seen a significant decline in its inventory worth prior to now 12 months. In line with a current report in Reuters, the service’s most lively and profitable customers have been leaving in droves because the pandemic.

To this point, Musk has thrown out plenty of concepts, typically within the type of tweets, about how he plans to show Twitter round. Listed below are a number of the most important ones.

Make Twitter a “free speech” platform. No matter meaning.

Musk’s most constant messaging about why he needs to purchase Twitter is that he needs it to be an open digital city sq. of concepts, with out intervention. He has mentioned that he’ll enable anybody to say something they need on the platform, so long as it’s authorized.

“I feel it’s important to have free speech and to have the ability to talk freely,” mentioned Musk at a Twitter worker assembly in June that Vox obtained a recording of.

However it’s not clear precisely how Musk plans to execute on his free speech promise, or what he even means by it.

The current proliferation of “free speech”-themed platforms like Parler, Reality Social, and Gettr have proven that for those who let anybody say no matter they need on a social media app, there’s likelihood that app might turn into a hate-filled, poisonous place — which is why even these comparatively extra lax platforms have some primary content material moderation insurance policies.

There’s plenty of completely authorized stuff you’ll be able to say that’s disagreeable to take a look at: racial slurs, graphic violent content material, bullying, spam (extra on that later). That kind of content material is mostly dangerous for enterprise as a result of most customers — and advertisers — don’t wish to be round it.

Musk is aware of this. Which is why he has mentioned, paradoxically, that he’ll use algorithms to advertise and downrank content material, arguing for “freedom of speech” however not “freedom of attain.”

“I feel individuals ought to be allowed to say fairly outrageous issues which might be inside the bounds of the legislation, however then that doesn’t get amplified, it doesn’t get, you already know, a ton of attain,” mentioned Musk on the June Twitter workers assembly.

However Musk didn’t clarify how he’ll determine what sort of content material will get attain and what gained’t, and the way it will likely be any completely different from what Twitter presently does. Twitter has lengthy struggled with dangerous content material (as has each different main social media platform) — together with an advertiser boycott in 2020 — and in recent times has expanded its insurance policies in opposition to hate speech, harassment, and violent content material.

On Thursday, Musk appeared to attempt to deal with considerations about his hands-off method to content material moderation by tweeting a public memo to advertisers. He wrote that Twitter “can’t grew to become a free-for-all hellscape, the place something might be mentioned with no penalties!” and added that he needs Twitter to be a spot “the place you’ll be able to select your required expertise in accordance with your preferences, simply as you’ll be able to select, for instance, to see films or play video video games starting from all ages to mature.”

It’s unclear, although, how this choose-your-own-adventure technique works with Musk’s overarching imaginative and prescient for a “frequent digital city sq.,” the place individuals are debating a variety of beliefs all in the identical place. The steadiness between permitting free speech and making a social media platform a welcoming place is a troublesome one, and Musk has plenty of particulars right here he might want to work out.

Carry again Trump

Musk has mentioned he would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned for his tweets in regards to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“I feel that was a mistake as a result of it alienated a big a part of the nation and didn’t in the end lead to Donald Trump not having a voice,” Musk advised the Monetary Instances in Might. “Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t finish Trump’s voice. It’s going to amplify it among the many proper, and that’s the reason it’s morally incorrect and flat-out silly.”

Musk’s feedback about bringing again Trump, paired along with his free speech mantra, has made him in style with conservatives who’ve lengthy felt censored by Twitter and different social media firms, even supposing there hasn’t been tangible proof of systematic anti-conservative bias and conservative influencers proceed to have large followings on platforms like Twitter.

Whereas many conservatives would cheer Trump’s return to Twitter, it will concurrently immediate main resistance from individuals, lots of them liberal, who argue that his tweets pose a risk to a peaceable democracy. We’ll see how Elon is ready to deal with that blowback if he does reinstate the previous president.

Do away with bots

Musk has promised to repair Twitter’s “bots” concern — which means the prevalence of accounts that submit spam or inauthentic content material like crypto get-rich-quick-schemes and phishing scams.

Bots are a significant recognized concern on Twitter, though the corporate has maintained that they signify lower than 5 p.c of all accounts. Musk has mentioned he thinks that quantity is way increased, round 20 p.c or extra, and used that as his authorized foundation for initially backing out of the deal.

Exterior analysis has proven that whereas the prevalence of bots on Twitter would possibly really be underneath 5 p.c, the attain of those bots in conversations total might be outsized, as excessive as 20 p.c.

In contrast to reinstating Trump, eliminating bots might be additionally one in every of Elon’s least controversial plans as a result of it’s arduous to seek out individuals who love bots (or not less than the malicious/spammy ones).

“I imply, frankly a high precedence I might have is eliminating the spam and rip-off bots and the bot armies which might be on Twitter,” Musk mentioned at a TED convention in April. “I feel these affect … they make the product a lot worse. If I had a dogecoin for each crypto rip-off I noticed, I might have 100 billion dogecoin.”

Paradoxically, despite the fact that Musk mentioned one of many causes he was shopping for Twitter was to do away with bots, he made the existence of bots the premise for his case to attempt to get out of the Twitter deal, arguing that the corporate didn’t disclose the total extent of the difficulty.

Prefer it or not, bots are actually squarely Elon’s drawback to unravel.

Make Twitter a “superapp” known as X

Musk had mentioned that he needs to meet Twitter’s potential by making it far more than a social media app: turning it right into a “superapp.” The unique superapp is China’s WeChat, which individuals use to do every thing from paying their payments to ordering takeout to messaging their pals.

“You mainly stay on WeChat in China as a result of it’s so helpful and so useful to your each day life. And I feel if we might obtain that, and even near that with Twitter, it will be an immense success,” mentioned Musk talking at an all-staff Q&A with Twitter staff in June that Recode obtained a recording of.

That is by far one in every of Musk’s most formidable plans and the closest factor he has to an actual enterprise technique. At the moment, 90 p.c of Twitter’s income is made by promoting. Musk mentioned he would wish to make Twitter much less advertising-dependent and make more cash by subscriptions (which Twitter already does), and doubtlessly, earning profits by these superapp transactions.

Musk could have competitors: Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Uber have additionally been pursuing the superapp thought.

It is also quite a bit tougher to construct a real superapp within the US than in China, the place there isn’t as a lot antitrust scrutiny stopping main communication platforms from establishing cross-industry monopolies.

If Musk is to attain any of those objectives, he’ll want good individuals at Twitter to assist him. With an already demoralized workers and his reported plan to chop 75 p.c of the worker base, that’s going to be tough.

In discussions with a number of present and former Twitter staff, workers described a local weather of chaos and uncertainty. Some staff circulated a petition on Tuesday protesting Musk’s plans to chop 75 p.c of Twitter’s workforce, and “to not be handled as mere pawns in a sport performed by billionaires.”

One present worker, who requested to not be named for worry of repercussions for talking with the press, mentioned that everybody they know on the firm is both “leaving or planning to depart.”

Many sources Recode spoke to discovered it implausible that Musk might successfully maintain Twitter working with the sorts of drastic workers reductions he’s reportedly deliberate.

“It’s not solely operations that might be hit. It takes many individuals and transferring components to satisfy primary regulatory and authorized compliance in numerous components of the world. How does [Musk] plan to proceed to try this?” mentioned Sarah T. Roberts, a former researcher at Twitter who left the corporate lately and is now a professor of data research at UCLA.

One Twitter engineer, Manu Cornet, has been posting cartoons on his weblog that replicate the present temper at Twitter.

In a single sketch, Cornet drew passengers sitting on a Twitter-branded airplane, crouched and bracing for influence.

If there’s one factor we all know by now in following the Elon-Twitter deal, it’s that what Musk says he’ll do might be very completely different from what he really finally ends up doing. However within the subsequent few months, Twitter staff and Twitter customers ought to be ready for turbulent occasions.