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Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, considering big changes

A UT expert on media engagement says Musk could face some challenges with his plans heading into the upcoming midterm elections.

AUSTIN, Texas — Thursday night saw big news in the tech world: Elon Musk officially took over Twitter. Musk's takeover of the company cost upwards of $44 billion.

On his own Twitter profile, he called himself "Chief Twit."

Musk kept busy tweeting throughout the day Friday with tweets like "the bird is freed" and "let the good times roll."

According to reports, Musk is making big changes and started by ousting the CEO and several top executives. He could also make significant staff cuts, firing as much as 75% of the staff.

Musk tweeted the company will form a "content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints."

Dr. Martin Riedel is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He works with media engagement and deals with research on content moderation and disinformation topics.

He said it will be interesting to see what happens as Musk takes over the social media platform. Riedel said Musk will face some challenges when heading into events like the midterm elections.

“It has big ramifications and sends shock waves through my circles of researchers and civil society folks when we think of trust and safety aspects of this big move. What I mean by that is, you know, trust and safety is this big area of internet governance and platform regulation where platforms define what's expectable speech and what's not expectable speech and the ways of which that is enforced,” said Riedel.

Musk is the owner of several companies headquartered here in Central Texas, including Telsa in Austin and The Boring Company in Pflugerville.

Twitter is currently headquartered in San Francisco and it's unknown if it will stay there or move somewhere else, like Austin.

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