Elon Musk explains his Twitter bid in TED interview

Just a day after offering to buy Twitter for $41 billion, Tesla CEO and richest guy in the world Elon Musk took the TED stage, together with TED head Chris Anderson, and used some of his time there to explain why, exactly, he wants to own Twitter.

“I think it’s very important that there will be an inclusive arena for free speech,” Musk said. “Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. It’s really important that people have the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely, within the bounds of the law.”

He then outlined a few of the practical moves he thinks Twitter should make for that to happen. These include open-sourcing its algorithm, and make apparent any actions that emphasize or de-emphasize people’s tweets, “so there’s no behind the scenes manipulation either algorithmically or manually.”

On the topic of actually owning Twitter, Musk said it would be “miserable,” with everyone “blaming him for everything.”

“But it’s important to the function of democracy (…) to help freedom in the world. I think civilizational risk is decreased the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform.”

Musk also said the move is not about making money or maximizing his ownership of Twitter.

When asked about the problem of policing problematic content such as hate speech on the platform, Musk skipped the specifics, and again re-iterated the importance of opening up Twitter’s algorithms to the public. He did say that Twitter should err on the site of caution when it comes to banning content.

“If in doubt, let the speech exist,” he said. “I don’t have all the answers here,” he added.

As for other changes that may be coming to Twitter, should Musk succeed to take the company over, Musk said he’d try to get rid of cryptocurrency-related scams, and the long-awaited edit button would also be a priority.

You can check out the whole thing (plus an excerpt from an upcoming 80-minute interview with Musk) below.