After weeks of speculation, it was announced that Musk's offer to buy the platform for $54.20 per share was accepted by the company.
While Musk's pursuit of Twitter has come to an end, the next chapter of the company's history and its hundreds of millions of users is just beginning.
The deal drew immediate fears that Musk, a self-styled free speech absolutist, could turn back the dial on content moderation, potentially unraveling years of work that curbed the unfettered spread of hate speech and misinformation. Even at a time when employees are unsure about the company's future, experts have warned of the potential privacy implications of taking the company private.
One of Musk's proposed plans for Twitter is the open-sourced of the platform's code to make it publicly available. This change will help to boost trust in the platform, which has faced an onslaught of false news and security incidents, including one that saw hackers hijack high-profile Twitter profiles.
Musk's open source vision for the platform could make it more vulnerable to attackers.
The decision to open source this code likely means that it will be adopted by other social platforms, advertisers, and others who are looking to hone their user targeting. As we have seen with Log4Shell and Spring4Shell, vulnerabilities in widely used open source applications are more valuable. Making its code open source may increase transparency for users, but it may also make them a bigger target for attackers.
Musk's plan to wage war on so-called spam bots, which have been used to spread malicious software and spread political ideologies, could generate new techniques that improve the detection and identification of spam emails.
Professor Eerke Boiten, head of the school of computer science and informatics at De Montfort University in the U.K., warned that open source could lead to malicious actors.
It would also accelerate the arms because of external manipulation of the targeted advertising aspects of Twitter.
Musk's short statement left a lot to imagination. He didn't say what his plans were forauthenticating all humans, or if he planned to introduce a real-name policy. The digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, voiced concerns that real-name policies have on the human rights value of pseudonymous speech, and that Musk may have not considered the ramifications that a lack of anonymity can have on certain groups of people.
The EFF said in a post that anonymity and pseudonymity are essential to protecting users who may have opinions, identities, or interests that do not align with those in power. If those in power are able to discover their true identities, political dissidents may be in grave danger.
Fears that a new owner of the platform would be able to read those messages are not unfounded, according to the EFF.
The most concerning aspect of Musk's takeover would be his use of pseudonymity. The oppressive governments can demand the authenticating information from users if they are known to have it.
Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Tuesday that social media giant,Twitter, has been more forward-leaning than many of its competitors in its effort to tackle false, deceptive and manipulated content.
Musk's takeover bid for Twitter is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.
It’s Elon’s Twitter now, so what’s next?
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