Elon Musk suggests Twitter tweaks to Jack Dorsey
The Tesla boss wants to weed out the Twitter bots.
Elon Musk has some ideas for improving Twitter.
Twitter isn't adding an edit button anytime soon, but Jack Dorsey is open to change. The microblogging site's CEO asked Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk -- a constant tweeter and one of its most popular users, with more than 30 million followers -- to suggest some improvements.
Thousands of Twitter employees watched as Dorsey video-called Musk from a company meeting in Houston on Thursday and asked for "some direct feedback," as previously reported by Bloomberg.
What @elonmusk thinks Twitter could be doing better. #OneTeam pic.twitter.com/BvAUee7rmn
— Mary Kate (@_maryjordan) January 16, 2020
After a moment of thought, Musk suggested that it'd be helpful if Twitter could differentiate between real and fake users.
"Is this a real person or is this a bot net or a sort of troll army or something like that?" he told Dorsey.
"Basically, how do you tell if the feedback is real or someone trying to manipulate the system, or probably real, or probably trying to manipulate the system… what do people actually want, what are people actually upset about versus manipulation of the system by various interest groups."
Musk regularly tweets updates about his companies' grand plans and makes strange jokes, but his Twitter use has also gotten him in some hot water -- 2018 saw him calling a British cave diver "pedo guy" (resulting in a defamation case in which he was ultimately found not liable), and hinting that he might take Tesla private, which triggered an SEC lawsuit (which was settled for $20 million).
Twitter declined to comment, while Musk's rep didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
First published at 6:34 a.m. PT.
Updated at 8:16 a.m. PT: Notes that Twitter declined to comment.
