Twitter users could in future choose a version of the social media platform they like by providing ratings on their tweets, Elon Musk, the new owner of the company, said in a tweet on Saturday.
“Being able to select which version of Twitter you want is probably better, much as it would be for a movie maturity rating,” he said.
“The rating of the tweet itself could be self-selected, then modified by user feedback,” he added, according to a Reuters report.
Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter will form a content moderation council “with widely diverse viewpoints.” No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before the council convenes, he added.
Advertisers Cautious: Twitter’s newly minted owner, the self-described “free speech absolutist” Musk, is about to get a crash course on global content moderation.
He also posted a conciliatory note to wary advertisers, assuring them he won’t allow Twitter to devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape”, an Associated Press report stated.
The problem is, not even the world’s richest man can have it both ways. Lightly moderated “free speech” sites such as Gab and Parler serve as cautionary tales of what can happen when the guardrails are lowered.
These small, niche sites are popular with conservatives and libertarians fed up with what they see as censorship of their viewpoints on mainstream platforms like Facebook. They are also full of Nazi imagery, racist slurs and other extreme content, including calls to violence.
Some conservative personalities jumped on Twitter Friday after Musk’s takeover to recirculate long-debunked conspiracy theories in an apparent attempt to see if the site’s policies on misinformation were still being enforced.
Advertisers don’t want to promote their products next to disturbing, racist and hateful posts — and most people don’t want to spend time on chaotic online spaces where they are barraged by racist and sexist trolls.
On Friday, General Motors announced it would be pausing advertising on Twitter while it figures out the direction of the platform under Musk. But Lou Paskalis, former head of media for Bank of America, said Twitter’s most loyal advertisers, many Fortune 100 companies, believe in the platform and probably won’t leave unless “some really untoward things” happen.
But it’s not just ads and jokes that are at stake.