Elon Musk Could Make Twitter A Worse Platform: Bill Gates

New Delhi: After the Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought Twitter for Rs $44 billion, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said that the former could potentially make the company a worse platform.

He was speaking at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit and was asked about Musk's potential impact following his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform last month.

Gates said that though Tesla's chief has a good track record, he could make misinformation on the platform worse.

''He actually could make it worse. That's not his track record. His track record with Tesla and Space X is pretty mind-blowing at putting together a great team of engineers and taking people who work in those fields in a less bold way and really showing them up. I kind of doubt that'll happen this time but we should have an open mind and never underestimate Elon,'' Dailymail quoted him as saying.

However, Gates appreciated Musk's approach toward technology, but he also expressed his concern that affiliation with Twitter as the owner might not turn out to be the way Musk had imagined.

Earlier, Musk had said that the motivation behind buying Twitter and making it private is his wish to restore the social media platform as a safe haven for free speech.

Musk, who calls himself a free speech absolutist, has criticized Twitter's moderation policies.

''You know, what's his goal?' Gates asked. 'When he talks about the openness, how does he feel about something such as "vaccines kill people" or that "Bill Gates is tracking people" is that one of the things he feels should be spread? So, it's not totally clear what he is going to do,'' he added.

''Are his goals for what it ends up being, does it match this idea of less extreme falsehoods spreading so quickly, weird conspiracy theories, does he share that goal or not?" he further said.

Interestingly, apart from hate speech and online extremism, Twitter has struggled to combat misinformation and recently information about coronavirus and its vaccines was a real challenge for the micro-blogging site.

Notably, there are several other such topics where misinformation is rife. For Musk, abetting misinformation will be an uphill task, but Gates believes he instead could end up worsening the problem.

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