Elon Musk is once again the protagonist for a publication on his Twitter profile where he seems to question freedom of expression on the platform, something that Donald Trump already did at the time. The tycoon, who already seems to have turned the page on the fight against Vladimir Putin to put an end to the invasion of Ukraine, has conducted a survey asking his followers if they believe that the social network now run by Parag Agrawal “rigorously adheres to this beginning”.
“Freedom of expression is essential for a functioning democracy. Do you think Twitter strictly adheres to this principle? “, the billionaire mentioned, accompanying the question with a survey. Elon Musk continued to warn his followers that “the consequences of this survey will be important” and therefore vote carefully.
The initial tweet has more than 655 thousand votes as of the writing of this article. The majority of voters, 66.6%, believe that Twitter does not adhere to the basic principles of freedom of expression. The remaining 33.4%, on the other hand, do believe that Twitter is a place where they can freely share their opinions.
Does Elon Musk plan to create a social network?
The survey carried out by Elon Musk has made some users doubt, who wonder if the manager is considering creating a social network as an alternative to Twitter. Musk has not mentioned anything about it. However, hours before conducting the survey on freedom of expression, he also shared one on an important point related to social networks.
Elon Musk specifically asked his followersif they think the Twitter algorithm should be open source. The survey, which counts more than a million votes with 5 hours to go, shows that 82.7% do believe that the platform's algorithm should be Open Source. Only 17.3% of voters think not.
Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, has joined this dispute, mentioning that “the choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone“. In fact, Dorsey has always been in favor of making Twitter a social network where users can choose which content recommendation algorithm to use when browsing the platform.
Elon Musk, for the moment, has not responded to the also founder of Twitter, but he has done so to a mysterious account called @muratpak. This has proposed to the tycoon the creation of a “decentralized alternative” to Twitter. “You mean email?”, The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX mockingly replied, who, let's remember, has been against web3 and the decentralized system promised by some venture capital companies.
