Four Things Elon Musk's Twitter Tweets May Reveal About His Plans

Elon Musk becoming the biggest shareholder in Twitter was a surprise to many earlier this week.

As the dust settles, speculation mounts about what the wealthiest man in the world (worth $274 billion on Forbes' last count) has planned for the platform.

A Twitter spokesperson would not comment on specifics, but said Musk will join CEO Parag Agrawal for an "Ask Me Anything" with employees soon.

Musk's tweets, however, may already offer insight into his thinking; though the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's suggestion "Delete the w in twitter?" might not have been serious.

Here are four of ideas Musk has shown support for and appear more likely to come to fruition...

Subscription Service Shakeup

Musk has already suggested a host of changes to the social media site's existing premium subscription service, Twitter Blue.

In tweets, he suggested subscribers should pay notably less than the current $2.99 a month fees, and should get an authentication checkmark—which he said should appear different to current blue check verification marks.

Musk also said subscribers should not get advertise on the platform and should be able to pay in cryptocurrency dogecoin.

Extra Verification, War on Bots

"We need to validate or should I say "Verify" everyone," one user told Musk this weekend. His reply was uncomplicated: "Yes."

And Musk suspects the arrival of an authentication checkmark rollout could also help tackle fake bot accounts.

"It would massively expand the verified pool & make bot armies too expensive to maintain," Musk said.

Fake News Ratings?

"69.420% of statistics are false," tweeted Musk on Saturday.

Like all social media sites, Twitter has struggled to tackle the scale of questionable claims posted on its platform.

Recent initiatives have included Birdwatch, a community-moderation system enabling volunteers to label tweets they found inaccurate, and a collaboration with international news agencies, Reuters and the Associated Press.

But it would seem Musk is not content.

Early-stage venture capitalist Siddarth Pai told him in a tweet this weekend: "Also must give ratings to news sources based on Fake news as a % of total news Lower the better."

Musk replied: "Fake news purveyors would have hysterics, but a ratings system would improve quality of news greatly."

Edit Button

Talk of an edit button on Twitter has rumbled on almost since the site's inception. But right now, it's never looked more likely.

Twitter has confirmed it is working on such a button just days after Musk launched a poll on April 5, asking users: "Do you want an edit button?"

The result was 73.6 percent in favor, 26.4 percent against.

Twitter Blue subscriber service already has a feature allowing edits within 20-seconds of a tweet being posted.

Update 4/11/22, 10:19 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with response from Twitter.