Third-party sites are free to embed and quote tweets, but Elon Musk may try to change that once he takes over Twitter.
A new report from Reuters sheds light on what types of changes Musk is mulling for the social media platform. One of the proposals includes charging users to embed or quote tweets from verified individuals or groups.
Musk floated the idea to several banks during his talks to secure the $16 billion in loans necessary to buy Twitter. Those talks included discussions about how Musk planned to help Twitter make more money while cutting costs, according to Reuters, citing unnamed sources.
In a now-deleted tweet, Musk said he’d like to reduce Twitter’s dependency on ad revenue to pull in funds. Charging for embedding and quoting tweets could be one way to do that, but it could also infuriate users and media publishers, depending on how it's implemented. And while Twitter could certainly restrict its embedding functionality, there's little to stop a news organization from quoting from a tweet posted to the platform. People could also just screenshot the tweets.
The other big takeaway from the Reuters report is that Musk has already lined up a new CEO to lead Twitter, an indicator that the current CEO Parag Agrawal is on his way out. Bloomberg also notes that Musk plans to clean house at Twitter, which employs over 7,500 people, to cut costs.
Musk has yet to respond to the reporting. But it’s clear he has some controversial ideas to improve Twitter. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is buying the social media platform, citing a need to scale back the content moderation on Twitter and focus on promoting free speech.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” Musk said in announcing his takeover of Twitter.
Musk has since tweeted he'd like to add end-to-end encryption for Twitter direct messages, and ensure the platform is focused on "maximum fun," all the while trolling his critics on the "far-left."