Top Web Summit speakers tackle Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

High profile speakers at Web Summit 2022, including Peter Mandelson, Mick Mulvaney and Ann Curry, reflected on Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the future of the social networking platform.

Whether you are an active Twitter user or watching from the sidelines, it will not have escaped your attention that Elon Musk’s purchase of the social networking platform on 27 October has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

One of the first things the SpaceX founder and CEO did when he took over (days after carrying a sink into Twitter HQ as a visual pun that begs many interpretations) was lay off about 3,700 people, or 50 percent of the staff on 4 November.

Following this, on 9 November, the new Twitter owner launched a system charging for verified accounts, known as blue tick accounts, meaning anyone could buy verification. This led to a swathe of fake accounts posing as public figures and companies. For example, a day later, an account impersonating Eli Lilly declared “insulin is free now”, causing the US pharmaceutical company to put a stop to advertising on the platform.

Industry leaders, policy makers and technology experts all have an opinion on the future of Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership, and our speakers at Web Summit 2022 were no different. On the eve of the Twitter layoffs – from Meta’s Oversight Board to veteran journalist Ann Curry – advice was doled out and criticisms levelled. Will Elon take heed or notice?

Will Elon “trip himself up” with plans for Twitter?

Peter Mandelson, former European Trade Commissioner and co-founder and chairman of public policy consultancy Global Counsel, spoke about the recent acquisition on the Future Societies stage on 3 November, and didn’t hold back: “Elon Musk, judging by what he’s saying, is intending to march straight into Twitter and destroy trust, the sense of reliability, and the absence of good, acceptable practice”.

“He just seems to be acting in a very cavalier, almost sort of a revolutionary way. If he carries on like that, the regulators are going to catch up with him. There’s no doubt at all,” added Peter.

“People say that he wants it to be a messaging platform, a social media and comment platform, but also a payments platform like WeChat and WeChat Pay. Well, fine, if that’s what he wants to do, but he’s going to have to do it within a framework of law, a framework of regulation, and what people regard as safe and trustworthy, acceptable practice. Otherwise he’s going to trip himself up and come an awful great cropper,” observed Peter.

What does Twitter’s future content moderation look like?

Dex Hunter-Torricke, VP of global communications and public engagement for Meta’s Oversight Board. Image: Eóin Noonan/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

Aside from grappling with the legal ramifications of changes to Twitter, Elon will also need to make clear not only what is meant by freedom of speech but how it is intended to be enforced, said Dex Hunter-Torricke, VP of global communications and public engagement for Oversight Board, the independent Meta watchdog. Dex is also a former SpaceX employee and has experience of Elon’s management style.

“I will say it’s very difficult to make predictions about Elon because he’s so unpredictable [but] I think Elon has started with an important recognition in saying that he wants to build a content moderation council. And that recognition is he cannot solve all of the challenges of online speech on his own,” explained Dex while speaking at Web Summit on 4 November.

“This is an enormously challenging problem. There are hundreds of millions of people using Twitter. It’s a critical part of discourse in our global society,” the Oversight Board VP observed.

“If you move fast, you sometimes break things, and breaking things at the scale of a global online town hall can be absolutely devastating for communities.” – Dex Hunter-Torricke, VP of global communications and public engagement, Meta’s Oversight Board

“We have certainly signalled from the Oversight Board side [that] we will be happy to be part of that conversation and to help inform the approach that Twitter takes.”

Dex warned that moving too fast to implement changes in Twitter could do lasting damage.

“Meta found out at one point in its history, when they were still called Facebook, [that] if you move fast, you sometimes break things, and breaking things at the scale of a global online town hall can be absolutely devastating for communities.”

His advice to Elon? “I think you’ve got to start with the principle: Do no harm.”

Oversight Board board member Alan Rusbridger saw the positives: “It took Mark Zuckerberg about 15 years to realise how uneasy he felt having that control over the speech of two billion people. It took Elon Musk about three days. And he immediately said ‘I needed help with the content’”.

But this raises more questions.

“Is this going to be a global board? Good, because you can’t really have Americans deciding [what constitutes] free speech. What’s the framework by which they’re going to decide? Is it going to be an ad hoc thing? Are they going to have a group of people in the next room and ask them to come up with an answer within 20 minutes?”

Alan finished by musing: “I would have thought it would pay him to give us a ring and say: Just explain to us how you did it to save me having to think through all these things for myself.”

Welcome back, Donald Trump

While speaking at Web Summit on 3 November, Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff (and co-chair of Actum) Mick Mulvaney had some thoughts on the former president’s potential return to the platform. At this stage, Elon, as a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” had pledged to allow the former president back on the social media platform.

On 17 November, Elon polled his followers on whether Donald Trump’s Twitter account should be reinstated. It was decided by a narrow margin that it should. The former US president has yet to take up the offer but if he does, what could this mean for US and indeed global politics?

“If Trump gets back on Twitter, it’s several 100 million people that he can talk to directly again. So it’s absolutely a game changer […] from a campaign perspective.” – Mick Mulvaney, co-chair, Actum and former Chief of Staff in the Trump administration

“Trump uses [Twitter] to cut through all of the media bias,” claimed the former Chief of Staff, adding that Trump’s 2019 State of the Union speech was received more negatively by those who read about it in mainstream media than those who watched it directly.

“We use social media to bypass that filter, to get our message directly to customers. That is one of the things that Donald Trump has been lacking since he got kicked off of Twitter.”

“True Social is a joke. It’s never going anywhere. If Trump gets back on Twitter, it’s several 100 million people that he can talk to directly again. So it’s absolutely a game changer […] from a campaign perspective,” added the former Chief of Staff.

Will Elon’s takeover only worsen Twitter’s misinformation problem?

Ann Curry, journalist, on the Fourth Estate stage during day one of Web Summit 2022. Image: Eóin Noonan/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

Twitter already had problems with bots, misinformation and hate speech before Elon Musk’s takeover. Given the rocky start to monetising verified status on Twitter – that led to individuals buying verified status for accounts that were impersonating others – alongside the laying off of much of the content moderation team, it may be the case that these problems will be accelerated. Journalist Ann Curry isn’t convinced Elon is up to the job.

“Whether he’s qualified for this particular project, I think, is really debatable.” – Ann Curry, journalist

“Twitter has become a source of news, which I think some people love and some people hate. I think that the struggle with Elon is whether he is qualified to take over a social media website that is designed to promote and accelerate misinformation, propaganda, as well as outrage,” explained Ann.

“He’s a smart man, he clearly is amazing in terms of his understanding of technology, and his ability to innovate and dream, but whether he’s qualified for this particular project, I think, is really debatable.”

Charging for verified accounts is “a very bad idea”

James Ball, global editor for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, pooh-poohed Elon’s plans for turning a profit by charging for verified Twitter accounts.

“VC Twitter caught on to a tweet I did costing out this idea of paying for your blue tick. I did the economics of it and if even one in five blue tick people paid to keep it, which would be quite a high conversion, it only raises US$15 million,” explained James.

“What Musk is thinking of doing is a very bad idea for a bunch of reasons.”

“Twitter verification came in because Twitter got sued because someone was damaged by an impersonation of them online, and so they had to introduce something. [Over time] it got confused with a status symbol [and] it has problems but essentially, they will need something resembling verification for free, or they’ll lose a lot of lawsuits again, continued the global editor.

Making a comparison between this decision to charge for elements of Twitter and how oher social media platforms work with content creators, James said: “If you are a YouTuber with a big following, YouTube shares revenue with you, you make money from it, you don’t give money to YouTube. Same on Instagram, big creators are understood to be where the money for the site comes from.”

“Musk is sort of with one hand saying he wants a pot of money to reward creators, but is saying that you have to pay up first, which he’s going to find doesn’t work,” added James.

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Main image of phone showing Elon Musk’s Twitter account with the Twitter logo in the background: FellowNeko/Shutterstock