Twitter Remains True to Its Original Purpose
As you already know, 2022 was a wild year for Twitter. Its acquisition by Elon Musk began on April 14, 2022, and was concluded several months later, on October 27, 2022. Since then, Twitter slowly but surely became a testing ground, allowing users to try out new features and help Twitter improve its services.
Having sufficient data only a month after Twitter’s acquisition, Twitter Inc. published a manifesto describing the changes in the company’s approach, rules, and innovations the 2.0 version brings.
Twitter Inc. opens the introduction of Twitter 2.0 on its official website by claiming its mission is to serve as the online equivalent of a town square by fostering and preserving public discourse.
Although the company embraces changes left and right, it will remain loyal to this vision. Not only that, but Twitter Inc claims they’re “better positioned to realize our ambitions than ever before.”
With Elon Musk in the saddle, that may very well be true.
Although eccentric, Elon Musk is a visionary. Additionally, he sure has more than enough resources to ensure the original Twitter Inc’s goal prevails.
Twitter also published that their “approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” Based on this statement, it’s safe to conclude that Twitter aims to protect public conversation, but not at the cost of user safety.
So, we can only hope that Twitter will find ways to elevate user safety, as it wasn’t always successful at preventing peer-on-peer and other types of abuse.
However, Twitter Inc published that their “team of experts is constantly adapting to identify and defuse threats, and we are proud of our early results: impressions on violative content are down over the past month, despite the growth in overall usage on the platform.”
The Inevitable Changes are Upon Us, But the Privacy Policy Remains the Same
With many controversies surrounding Twitter since the company’s gotten a new CEO, one would expect Musk to rewrite the entire Twitter policy and start from scratch. However, Musk did just the opposite.
Photo illustration: Freepik
As Twitter Inc’s post says, the company hasn’t changed any of its policies. It further explains that the strategy for enforcing policies will place more emphasis on reducing the reach of offensive content. Twitter will try to exercise “the freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” aiming to prevent cyberbullying and make Twitter once again a safe space for all.
Twitter Trust & Safety team will also continue eradicating any hateful or abusive behavior from the platform. We can also expect the T&S team to handle violations of Twitter rules. As the team joins hands with automated detection, we can expect to see less abuse on the platform.
Musk’s Vision for Twitter 2.0
Attention folks! We have been blessed with yet another series of Tweets from the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk. A few days before the company officially introduced Twitter 2.0 on its website, Musk gave us a glimpse of what to expect in the near future.
Besides sharing his goals, he introduced us to statistics that show Twitter’s progress and improvement regarding daily active users, new user signups, and active user minutes on the platform.
For example, Musk’s statistics show that Twitter’s DAU (daily active users) passes a quarter billion mark. On top of that, stats following a period between October 17, 2021, and November 12, 2022, showcase that hate speech impressions dropped from roughly 10 million to around 2.5 million.
Source: Twitter slides
According to Musk’s slides, Twitter 2.0 should also be known as “The Everything App.” It will elevate advertising and make it entertaining. And if his words are anything to go by, he might even bring back Vine, the millennials’ equivalent of TikTok.
Additionally, if you’re on Twitter, you can expect new features to drop soon. That includes encrypted DMs, long-form tweets, and a relaunch of a verification button.
Additionally, according to a tweet from Twitter CEO Elon Musk, all blue checkmarks will be eliminated “in a few months.”
It’s obvious that Musk wants to dismantle and rebuild Twitter’s verification system. So, it was surprising to learn that Twitter wants to adopt multi-colored checkmarks. According to TechCrunch, the blue checkmark is slowly being replaced with gold checkmarks that will embody companies and organizations. We can also expect to see gray checkmarks for brands, certain public figures, and government bodies.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any other information regarding Musk’s plans for Twitter. However, based on what we know, we already have high hopes for Twitter 2.0.
