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#Here’s what you can do to make Twitter better

“Here’s what you can do to make Twitter better”

Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter outright. Having just recently bought a $2.64 billion stake in the platform he has now decided to go all in. Yesterday he made an offer to buy the whole thing at $54.20 a share, totaling an amazing $43 billion. In cash. You have to love Elon Musk for making a cash offer for Twitter.

Of course, the people who consider Twitter their personal playpen have spent the past 24 hours going berserk. The radical left and other activists think Twitter is theirs alone. And they have spent the last day suggesting that Musk’s attempt to take over Twitter is the worst human outrage since the Anschluss.

On balance, I would say Musk taking over Twitter will be less serious than Hitler’s annexation of Austria. Certainly, Musk’s own proposals for the platform have been notable for their modesty.

Musk has rightly pointed out that Twitter is effectively the Town Square of our day. It is the main platform on which political and cultural battles are fought out. But the platform is slanted. It is especially wildly slanted against conservatives. Twitter bans people for no good reason, including for stating what we used to call “facts.” It has even sought to mute the paper you are currently reading.

So here are my five suggestions to Elon Musk, should he succeed in buying Twitter.

SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks on as he visits the construction site of Tesla's gigafactory in Gruenheide.
SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk launched a bid to buy Twitter outright at $54.20 per share.
REUTERS/Michele Tantussi
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses as he arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Awards ceremony, in Berlin.
Musk tweeted that San Francisco’s homeless should move into Twitter’s headquarters.
POOL/AFP via Getty Images

First, introduce an “edit” button. To date, this is about the only specific change that Musk himself has suggested he might introduce. And it makes sense. It would allow people to correct mistakes in their Tweets and mop up basic mistakes that they recognize after posting. It might also stop the sort of wise-ass who responds to serious stories by pointing out that someone has misspelled “misspelt,” or the like. In general, it would prevent the phenomenon we might call “Covfefe.”

Which brings me to the second thing Elon Musk should do. Which is to reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account. When the President accidentally Tweeted out “Covfefe” shortly after midnight on May 31, 2017 the world seemed to stop. What did it mean? Was this some code? Was World War III about to break out? Or had he just typed his email password into Twitter? Everyone remembers how Twitter helped make Trump. But it is a signal of just how much Trump made Twitter that even a slip of his thumbs was enough to entertain the world for days on end.

More seriously, Twitter’s ban of the former President is ethically and politically unsustainable. How can it be right that a few kids in Silicon Valley can silence the voice of a former President of the United States? Who are they to decide what you and I can and cannot hear, and who we can or cannot hear from? Twitter’s censorship started by taking out a few flamethrowers on the political right, and no one much bothered to stand up for them. But then the censorship came further and further inland, eventually muzzling America’s oldest newspaper and finally silencing the holder of the highest office in the land.

Former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally Saturday, April 9, 2022.
Twitter permanently banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 for spreading misinformation.
AP/Chris Seward

And whatever you think of Trump, the hypocrisy stinks. Twitter still allows the Taliban to have accounts on Twitter. Numerous Islamist terrorist groups have kept using the platform. The government of Iran still spews out its propaganda on Twitter. And it is only very recently that Twitter seemed to have noticed that the Kremlin has been having a grand old time on their platform. How can the company justify ruling an American President beyond the pale while the Russian President is A-OK? In short, reinstate Trump, and make Twitter great again.

Of course, not everybody wants to hear everything. While a Musk-owned Twitter should certainly open the public square back out — allowing a genuine balance of opinion — there are some things that we ought to be protected from. For instance, I would suggest an opt-out button that allowed me to mute that day’s Trans craziness.

This nuttiness is starting to spoil my life. Almost the first thing I read about each morning is the latest deranging Trans claim. For instance, on Wednesday this week I woke to the following news from Britain: “Ex-soldier exposed her penis and used wheelie bin as sex toy in public.” Putting aside for a moment how you can use any type of bin, wheelie or otherwise, as a sex toy, I had to re-read that headline three times. It seemed rather unladylike behavior.

In this June 8, 2021 file photo. a high fence surrounds buildings on the grounds of the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, N.J.
The unidentified jailbirds became pregnant at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility.
AP/Seth Wenig

And then I spotted the problem. “Her penis”? Really?

Yesterday one of the first stories I read, thanks to Twitter, was that two inmates of an all-women’s prison in New Jersey have become pregnant from other inmates. Again, “What?” I had to read on to learn that the ACLU in its infinite wisdom managed to win a battle to introduce trans prisoners to all-women’s prisons. Though I would suggest that these trans prisoners clearly weren’t that trans.

Anyhow, I am fed up with it. I don’t want female-penises shoved in my face before my morning coffee. I want a button that allows me to opt-out of the most deranging subjects. A shortlist can easily be come up with.

SpaceX founder and chief engineer Elon Musk reacts during a post-launch news conference.
Musk had earlier rejected a seat on Twitter’s board.
REUTERS/Joe Skipper/

This is where I could come in. Because obviously Musk’s fourth act should be to put me on the board of Twitter. I will not ask for any remuneration, at first. Principally I should simply like to carry out savage reprisal attacks on the people who have silenced various of my friends and employers in recent times. Naturally on day one a catalogue of my thought-crimes will be passed among Twitter staff. I would anticipate a mass, staged, staff walk-out. And at that precise moment, while they are out of the building, Elon and I can change the locks. We can then recruit a whole new staff of people who understand America’s principles of free speech.

I have one final suggestion, in case none of this works, and Twitter proves unreformable. Which is that Musk puts everything to do with Twitter into one of his rockets and blasts it as far as possible into outer space. The world would be an instantly saner, more serene place. At $43 billion it could prove the most generous investment ever made in the future of humanity.

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