Maritime Twitter users are taking a wait-and-see approach to the news of the world's richest man buying the social media platform. Elon Musk has been a fan of the platform for quite some time - using it to send short messages to his millions of followers. This week, it had been announced that he is buying it for about USD $40 billion, and it prompted a flurry of reaction. "I was surprised Twitter was 'buyable,'" said Katy Jean, a Freelance Writer from her apartment in Dartmouth. "I mean, $44 billion can buy pretty much anything you want, but I didn't think you could just buy Twitter," she said. Jean made national headlines in 2018 with a campaign to save a local piece of history. She shares an apartment with her five year old son, Vincent, who lives with autism. She often tweets about him, but frequently wades into politics and social issues. During the height of the pandemic, she would live tweet federal and provincial news conferences. Along the way, she's picked-up a sizable following, which has led to other opportunities. "I'm currently working with Saltwire. I'm working with an online Poker Report dot.com as a writer, and both of those things are from Twitter," says Jean. With the announcement, Musk pledged for more free speech, fewer bots, and better algorithms however, a tweet shared Tuesday seems to have him already backtracking. "I think he's going to find it's far more complicated than what he originally thought," said Giles Crouch, digital anthropologist, adding Musk may not have considered all the laws, regulations, and red tape that comes with the individual countries. Still, some of the ramifications are things never seen before. "It's sort of the Silicon Valley elite that decides they want to promote the fourth amendment and the ideas of free speech, and whether or not he can actually affect any kind of change," said Crouch. "I thought that would be interesting to see how that would have an outcome." Back in Dartmouth, Katy Jean admits to be mildly concerned about the future of her favourite platform, but hopeful it won't devolve into a haven for hate speech. "There is the benefit that Elon Musk is a Twitter user, so I'm hoping that kind of buys us a little bit of usability," said Jean. "With the platform, there's always been questionable things anyway, so I'm not sure if he can make it better or worse." She's also tweeted Musk directly, urging him to introduce an edit button and other features. Unlike some high profile users who vowed to abandon Musk's Twitter, Jean says she intends to stay. "I know a lot of people have actually jumped ship, and I don't even think the papers are actually signed or the ink is dry yet, but I'm staying," she said. "I'm not too concerned about it."
