Tesla CEO Elon Musk has suggested integrating crypto payments into Twitter. “My goal would be to maximize the usefulness of the service,” he told Twitter’s employees in his first all-hands meeting with them.
Twitter’s First All-Hands Meeting With Elon Musk, Integrating Crypto Payments
Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk, who may become the new owner of Twitter Inc., had his first all-hands meeting with Twitter’s employees Thursday.
Musk answered many questions about how he plans to run the social media company if his bid to buy Twitter is successful. However, the $44 billion deal is currently on hold, and Musk has accused Twitter of a material breach of the merger agreement.
During the meeting, Musk mentioned crypto a few times, according to a leaked transcript of the meeting and a leaked video posted by Project Veritas.
Leslie Berland, Twitter’s chief marketing officer, asked Musk: “Can you talk a little bit about Twitter and payments?”
The Tesla boss began by stating that “money is essentially a form of information,” adding that it is “fundamentally digital.” He added:
I think it would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter so that it’s easy to send money back and forth, and fiat currency as well as crypto — essentially, whatever somebody would find useful.
“So my goal would be to maximize the usefulness of the service — the more useful it is, the better. And if one can use it to make convenient payments, that’s an increase in usefulness,” he clarified.
Crypto Scams and Spam Accounts
Berland also asked Musk about some problems he sees with Twitter. The Tesla CEO replied:
There’s definitely an ongoing challenge with Twitter with bot accounts and spam accounts. There’s quite a lot of crypto scams on Twitter.
“It’s gotten better, but there’s still a fair bit of that,” he continued. “There are also people where they’re not necessarily bots, but they might be operating. You know, one person’s operating hundreds of accounts and trying to make them look like individuals, but they’re not.”
Musk previously said that the spam bot is the single most annoying problem on Twitter and he vowed to defeat it “or die trying,” if his bid to buy the social media platform succeeds.
Transparency, Trust, and Free Speech
Musk further explained to Twitter’s employees: “I think it’s extremely important that there be transparency. So that’s why I’m an advocate of having the algorithm be open source so that people can critique it, improve it, identify bugs, potentially, or bias.”
Noting that “transparency obviously increases trust,” the Spacex boss emphasized:
I think that trust is extremely important, and then just the usefulness of the system — getting rid of sort of troll farms and bots and spam is incredibly important.
Regarding free speech, Musk said: “I think it’s essential to have free speech and to be able to communicate freely … It’s free speech within the context of the law. So I’m not talking about suggesting that we just flout the law, because we’ll just get shut down in that case.”
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