Elon Musk held an all-staff meeting with Twitter employees on Thursday, his first as he prepares to take control of the company following a deal for its complete purchase.
During the meeting, the content of which was first reported by Bloomberg, Musk said that he would permit a wide range of views on the platform, including content that could be described as “extreme” but was lawful.
Free speech has been Musk’s stated motivation for purchasing the company, which he had previously criticized for its perceived censoriousness in applying content warnings and banning controversial users, including the former President Donald Trump, the Babylon Bee, and the New York Post. “I think it’s essential to have free speech and for people to be able to communicate freely,” Musk said in response to a question on the subject. He had previously described himself, on Twitter, as “free speech absolutist.”
However, Musk distinguished the permissiveness of speech from its amplification, whereby Twitter promotes tweets that gain considerable online traffic. He suggested that Twitter, while permitting speech that offends broad sentiments (using the example of Holocaust denial), may not amplify such content even as it gains popularity.
“There’s freedom of speech and freedom of reach,” he said. “I think people should be allowed to say pretty outrageous things that are in the bounds of the law but that don’t get amplified and don’t get a ton of reach.”
Additionally, Musk stated that remote working at Twitter under his leadership would be totally banned, akin to a policy recently adopted at Tesla, where he is the chief executive. Only “excellent contributors” would be permitted to work from home for cause, with all exemptions being personally approved by him.
Musk also described his business plan for Twitter to grow its user base to 1 billion people and implement a subscription model – with special features (e.g., verification of accounts) for paying users – while still maintaining access to all content for non-paying users.
The meeting was scheduled by Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agarwal, as a way for employees to learn about the future of the company after Musk’s acquisition. In an email to staffers on Monday, Agarwal had asked the company’s employees to submit questions for Musk in advance, which were chosen for the meeting, which was moderated by Leslie Berland, Twitter’s top marketing executive.
Since receiving the board’s unanimous agreement for the purchase, Musk’s acquisition deal with Twitter has been roiled by controversy. Most recently, he accused the company of concealing information about the extent of accounts not run by real users (i.e., ‘bots’) on the platform, and threatened to pull out of the deal if requisite information was not provided.
The ultimatum came after Twitter’s stock price declined considerably in recent weeks, being $37.40 as of the close of markets on Thursday – well below the $54.20 per share offer that Musk made, and the Board accepted, in April.
Even as the equity value of Twitter falls, Musk has faced considerable difficulty trying to gather the requisite funding to purchase the company.
After declines in the price of Tesla stock, where the bulk of his $206.9 billion net worth, is stored, Musk restructured his bid – scrapping ‘margin loans’ against his Tesla equity and gathering contributions from 19 new investors for his $44 billion purchase.
Per his agreement with Twitter, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is expected to be completed by November of this year.