Skip to main content

Curious about Twitter’s future? So is the U.K. parliament

We’re all wondering what lies ahead for Twitter now that it is going to be owned by Elon Musk. Though the Tesla CEO has tweeted hints of what’s to come for the social media platform after his acquisition, the U.K. Parliament has decided to get the details via a more straightforward approach: Inviting Musk to testify before them.

On Wednesday, the U.K. Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS) tweeted out a copy of a letter it sent to Musk, inviting him to speak about his plans for his newly acquired social media platform.

We've invited @ElonMusk to discuss the future of @Twitter in Parliament.

Chair @JulianKnight15: "Appearing before the Committee will give Mr Musk an ideal opportunity to set out his proposals in more depth and we would look forward to welcoming him.”

🔎: https://t.co/HpYduMAcZY pic.twitter.com/UTU2wu1jnV

— Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (@CommonsDCMS) May 4, 2022

Member of Parliament and Chair of the DCMS Committee Julian Knight wrote the letter and, in it, referenced a number of proposed changes for Twitter Musk has mentioned before: Authentication for all users, addressing bots and spam accounts, and addressing the issue of freedom of speech. The letter also appeared to describe the committee’s own stance on these issues as it mentioned legislation and two reports conducted on them:

  • On the matter of authentication: The letter mentioned Musk’s “intention to roll out verification for all users” aligned with its own “proposed legislation” which it hoped would “restore the U.K. public’s trust in digital platforms”
  • Regarding bots and spam accounts: The letter also references a 2020 report about misinformation and the COVID-19 pandemic which “called for greater transparency of bots and automated and spam accounts.”
  • About free speech: The letter also mentioned a “need to tackle pernicious, pervasive online child sexual exploitation and abuse” while balancing that need with “civil liberties like freedom of expression.”

The issue of free speech on the bird app is by far the most important one Musk must address now that he has bought Twitter, especially since free speech laws vary among countries outside of the U.S. And in a separate statement, Knight seemed to highlight that issue as well:

“At a time when social media companies face the prospect of tighter regulations around the world, we’re keen to learn more about how Mr. Musk will balance his clear commitment to free speech with new obligations to protect Twitter’s users from online harms.

“Appearing before the committee will give Mr. Musk an ideal opportunity to set out his proposals for Twitter in more depth and we would look forward to welcoming him.”

If Musk accepts the DCMS Committee’s invitation to discuss his plans further, we might finally get a clear answer to a question that global users of the bird app no doubt have: How will he adapt (if at all) his vision of free speech on Twitter to the laws of other countries?

At this time, Musk has not yet tweeted a response to the invite.

Editors' Recommendations

Anita George
Anita has been a technology reporter since 2013 and currently writes for the Computing section at Digital Trends. She began…
Twitter begins rollout of new gray check marks only to abruptly remove them
Elon Musk.

In the middle of writing an article about Twitter's initial rollout of a new gray check mark verification badge, we noticed something odd: Twitter accounts that had the new gray check marks only minutes earlier were suddenly without them again. So what happened?

Elon Musk apparently happened. Mere hours after his newly purchased social media platform began its rollout of a new gray check mark in an effort to help clarify which high-profile accounts were actually verified, the new gray check marks began disappearing from various accounts, evidently at Musk's behest. Just take a look at this tweet conversation between web video producer Marques Brownlee and Musk:

Read more
Some blue check Twitter users were unable to edit their names
Twitter app on the OnePlus 10T.

Twitter's recent blue check verification drama took an even sillier turn yesterday. Amid all the recent commotion regarding Twitter Blue subscriptions, paying for blue checks, and impersonation versus parody, some Twitter users temporarily lost their ability to edit their screen names.

On Monday evening, some verified Twitter users began reporting that they couldn't change their screen names. It's unclear to us at this time if the issue these users were experiencing was a bug or a new feature of a platform that was recently purchased by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Read more
Mastodon surpasses 1 million monthly active users as Twitter backlash worsens
Series of four mobile screenshots showing Mastodon's sign-up process.

Mastodon, an alternative to Twitter that's been getting a lot of attention lately, just surpassed 1 million monthly active users this week, all while Twitter struggles to deal with the  backlash caused by recently announced changes to its platform.

On Monday, Eugen Rochko, founder and CEO of Mastodon, announced via a Mastodon post that the social media platform now has "1,028,362 monthly active users across the network today." This news comes after a particularly tumultuous week (and weekend) for Twitter after Elon Musk took over the popular microblogging platform just last month.

Read more