Elon Musk lays out plan for Twitter to be ‘politically neutral’

Over the past few days, Elon Musk has outlined a number of changes he would like on the social media platform to implement going forward under his new ownership.

Chief among them is a desire to see the platform become politically neutral.

Some of the actions taken by Twitter and its employees as of late have led people to perceive a left-wing bias at the company, which many believe has negatively impacted the ability of users to speak freely.

The fact that certain people and ideas appeared to be targeted was one of the main motivators for Elon Musk to step in and buy Twitter.

He has repeatedly stated that free speech is "essential to a functioning democracy," and suggested that as the new public town square, Twitter has failed to live up to these ideals.

In order to achieve this goal, Musk argued, Twitter must become more transparent and politically neutral.

"For Twitter to deserve public trust," he tweeted, "it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and far left equally."

In another tweet, Musk said that when all is said and done, both extremes will not be pleased with him, but that his goal is "to maximize area under the curve of total human happiness, which means the ~80% of people in the middle."

Taking a jab at Twitter's perceived left-wing bias, Musk shared a meme featuring the company's top lawyer Vijaya Gadde.

The meme prompted former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo to accuse Musk of making Gadde "the target of harassment and threats."

Gadde, however, is no stranger to controversy surrounding bias at Twitter. As Politico reports, she was criticized when the platform silenced the now infamous Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 election, and after reports surfaced confirming that she was behind the banning of Donald Trump.

In regards to the Hunter Biden laptop story, which resulted in the suspension of the New York Post's Twitter account, Musk said "Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate."

On Monday, it was announced that Twitter had accepted a $44 million buyout deal from Musk, bringing to a close a month of back and forth between the two.