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By Canadian Press

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover should be ‘wake-up call’ for users: experts

Oct 28, 2022 | 12:47 PM

TORONTO – Business and tech observers say Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover should serve as wake-up call to users about how much time and trust they put in social media platforms.

Courtney Radsch, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, says many Twitter users have built up networks and posted lots of material they can’t easily transfer to other platforms.

She says they should be thinking about how much they rely on a single platform and how important data portability is, given how a new leader can quickly be installed and make radical changes to a social network.

Musk marked his purchase of Twitter when it became official earlier this week by firing chief executive Parag Agrawal, but his future plans remain unclear.

He has mused about making algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating spam bots and depending more on subscriptions than advertising for revenue.

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Daniel Tsai, a technology lecturer at the University of Toronto, suspects Musk might not act on all of the ideas because some will be unappealing for advertisers, who will drop the platform.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2022.

The Canadian Press