Although Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter hasn’t been finalized yet, the new-to-be owner is keeping busy by kicking around ideas for potential changes to the platform. His latest idea is to charge corporations and governments to tweet.
“Ultimately, the downfall of the Freemasons was giving away their stonecutting services for nothing. Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users,” Musk tweeted.
For now, there’s no commitment to this plan, as is often the case with the world’s richest man, but it does fit in with what we’ve previously heard about Musk’s ideas for the platform. Musk suggested he might charge media companies to quote or embed tweets, per report.
In the case of charging to either a) quote or b) embed tweets, a) would be counter to the first amendment (not a great look if you’re promoting free speech) while b) would introduce all sorts of administrative headaches (tricky if Musk wants to reduce Twitter’s headcount).
No one knows what Musk plans to do with Twitter at this point, but this in itself is informative, as playing things by ear is apparently the modus operandi of the world’s richest man. So let us see where it goes next.