Musk Says He Wants to Make Twitter as ‘Broadly Inclusive as Possible’

Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, on May 2, 2022. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he wants to expand Twitter from a “niche” platform to one used by most Americans.

“The goal I have … with Twitter is to have a service that is as broadly inclusive as possible, where ideally most of America is on it and talking,” he told reporters on the red carpet at the annual Met Gala in New York on May 2.

A key metric for success would be whether Twitter can significantly broaden its audience reach, he said.

Twitter’s most recent earnings report shows that it has about 40 million daily active users in the United States.

Musk, who is buying Twitter for $44 billion and taking it private, also talked about his plans to increase transparency on how tweets are promoted or demoted. He said that he would like to rid the platform of bots and scams and make Twitter software available for public review.

“We don’t want people getting tricked and tricked out of their money,” he said. “I’m on the warpath, so if somebody is operating a bot and troll on me, then I’m definitely their enemy.”

CEO, and chief engineer at SpaceX Elon Musk and his mother, supermodel Maye Musk, arrive for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on May 2, 2022. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

A potential exodus of employees also didn’t appear to bother Musk.

“It’s a free country,” he said. “Certainly if anyone doesn’t feel comfortable with that, they will on their own accord go somewhere else. That’s fine.”

Musk’s planned Twitter takeover has spurred mixed reactions from people across the political spectrum.

Democratic lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), without mentioning Musk by name, recently wrote on Twitter that she was “[t]ired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening bc [sic] some billionaire with an ego problem unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it.”

Some Senate Democrats also indicated they were considering having Musk testify in Congress about his purchase of Twitter and his stated intention to relax content moderation.

Federal Communication Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Communications and Technology Subcommittee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Dec. 05, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Brendan Carr, a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission and Republican, greeted the news with more optimism.

While people should not bet their sole hopes on a “benevolent billionaire” to follow through with his commitment, he is “very hopeful” the deal would result in more free speech on Twitter, he recently told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.

“At the end of the day, we want more speech, not less,” he said.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.