Elon Musk on Monday walked the red carpet in a black tuxedo at the annual Met Gala.
New Delhi:
In his first public appearance after a controversial hostile takeover of social media giant Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk on Monday walked the red carpet in a black tuxedo at the annual Met Gala in New York with his mother as his date. The billionaire tech tycoon revealed his plans for Twitter and admitted that he’s not completely immune to some of the negative comments said about him by his detractors both in the media and on the internet.
“Well, it does get to me sometimes, I mean, I’m not like, you know – I do have feelings,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not an android.”
But he also says he tries to “take these things with a grain of salt,” especially when it comes to online trolls.
Mr Musk suggested that his intentions are often maligned as something other than working toward the greater good.
“They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I think it’s mostly paved with bad intentions. But every now and again, there’s a good intention in there and hopefully, my good intentions do not pave the road to hell,” he said.
He also reiterated there will be a new sheriff in town protecting the platform from bots, trolls, and scams.
“That’s obviously diminishing the user experience. And we don’t want people getting tricked out of their money and that kind of thing. So, I’m definitely on the warpath, so if somebody is operating a bot and troll army, then I’m definitely their enemy,” Mr Musk said.
On how he plans to improve the user experience and his vision of what the social media site would look like in the future, he said he wants it to be “as broadly inclusive as possible”.
“The goal that I have should that, you know, everything come to fruition with Twitter is to have a service that is broadly, as broadly inclusive as possible, where ideally, most of America is on it and talking,” he said.
He had on Tuesday said Twitter will always be free for casual users but may charge a slight fee for commercial and government users, as he tries to boost the social media platform’s reach from “niche” to most Americans.
“Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users,” Mr Musk said in a tweet.
Earlier this week at the annual Met Gala in New York on Monday, Musk also said he would make Twitter transparent about how tweets are promoted or demoted and wanted its software to be publicly available for critique.
