Can we motion for billionaires to be put at the top of the list?
Elon Musk has promised to get rid of one very annoying and problematic group of Twitter users from the platform as he looks to cement his position as the company’s controlling stakeholder.
Taking to Twitter to deliver the news, as he so often does, the world’s richest man stated that should he and his team’s “Twitter bid succeed, [they] will defeat the spam bots or die trying”.
And authenticate all real humans
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
In addition to assuring he will “authenticate all real humans” on the site, the 50-year-old has previously intimated that he hopes to create a digital climate where the “most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy“.
Twitter has suffered from a serious bot problem for many years now, posing serious cultural and political issues, but the company still insists that these automated accounts and functions serve an important purpose in their overall service and have even created resources on how to identify so-called “good bots”.
Nevertheless, in the age of fake news scepticism and concerns around misinformation, many cite them as a key factor in stoking political divides and spreading a toxic online culture across all social media, not just Twitter. It would seem Musk agrees.
While the SpaceX CEO announced that he was attempting to buy Twitter for $41bn and did initially look set to join the board of directors as the largest stakeholder, his investment in the social media giant isn’t that straightforward.
Despite successfully buying a 9.2 per cent stake in the company – which works out as 73,486,938 shares estimated to be worth upwards of $3bn – he did not follow proper SEC procedure when declaring the purchase and is now being hit with a class-action lawsuit by the very individuals whose shares he bought.
Even if he’s found to have been in breach, we’re sure he’ll manage to scrape together enough pennies to afford it.
