Evaluating Elon Musk’s Plan To Fix Twitter

Alex Roetter, who once ran Twitter engineering, evaluates the feasibility of Musk’s proposals.

Barring a messy, last-minute divorce, Elon Musk is on track to own Twitter (and yes, mea culpa). The mercurial, brilliant entrepreneur offloaded around $8.5 billion of Tesla stock this week as he prepared to pay for his $44 billion side project. And soon, he’ll be free to change the service as he pleases.

Musk hasn’t yet presented a comprehensive plan for Twitter — he may never — but he’s proposed several significant changes worth evaluating. Musk’s ideas include lengthening character limits, open sourcing the algorithm, and effectively putting an end to content moderation. A debate is raging about the latter, but all have tradeoffs.

Alex Roetter, Twitter’s former head of engineering, joined Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss Musk’s proposals, examining both their feasibility and advisability. Here’s a look at the most significant potential changes, along with his commentary:

Authenticating all humans

Upon announcing the deal, Musk said he wanted to “authenticate all humans.” Twitter has long weighed this idea internally, wondering whether making people confirm their email or phone number could help reduce…