What is Elon Musk's mission for Twitter? Fake news removal and long tweets

Twitter should become the most accurate source of information in the world. That, at least, is the goal pursued by Elon Musk, who recently bought Twitter and became sole CEO.

"Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission," he tweeted.

He did not say how exactly he was going to accomplish this mission. Perhaps this, as he understands it, will contribute to the new changes that he plans for the social network.

Long tweets                            

Twitter will soon have a feature that allows you to add long texts to your tweets. According to Musk, this feature will put an end to absurd notepad screenshots.

Currently, the limit on the size of tweets is 280 characters. And if users can't fit into that number of characters, they have to attach photos with text to their tweets.

It's not yet known exactly when the ability to attach text to tweets will appear and whether it will be free for everyone - or only available with a paid subscription.

Additional monetization tools

Twitter also plans to introduce additional tools to monetize all forms of content. How this is going to take plan no one knows yet.

More convenient search in Twitter

There are also plans to improve Twitter's search functionality in the not-too-distant future.

"Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in ‘98! That will also get a lot better pronto," Musk added.

Following Musk's latest statements, NBC News reporter Ben Collins noted that Musk appears to be appropriating the accomplishments of Twitter employees - including those he fired after acquiring the company. For example, according to the reporter, Twitter was testing the big text messaging feature even before Musk arrived:

"He's taking credit here for a bunch of work that some employees did before he laid them off," he said.

Indeed, at the start of the year Jane Manchun Wong, who's known for experimental features in apps, discovered evidence Twitter was working on an "Articles" feature for posting longer messages.      

Blocking those who impersonate others

Twitter is also planning to start permanently blocking users who impersonate others, even if they have a blue verification tick.

According to Musk, it is necessary so that people could not mislead other users by paying $8 for a subscription and posting information under a false identity.

It is also planned that after any change of name or description, the user will temporarily lose the blue verification tick until Twitter verifies the updated information.

Twitter used to issue a warning to users before blocking accounts, but now, when the platform launches a mass verification of accounts, there will be no warnings, and all accounts with fake information - unless it is clearly stated that it is a parody - will be permanently blocked.

Some fake accounts have already been blocked.

For example, recently, Twitter administrators blocked the account of American comedian and actress Kathy Griffin, who had over 2 million followers, because she added the name of Elon Musk on her Twitter page instead of her name.

"Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended," Musk tweeted.

Besides, two different users were recently able to register fake Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire accounts, bought verification ticks for them and made posts announcing a new installment of Batman and Spider-Man. They were also blocked.

That said, Musk won't be blocking the account of the person tracking his private jet. The account in question is @ElonJet, which belongs to an American programmer named Jack Sweeney. He tracks Musk's plane with a bot that uses flight data from the ADS-B Exchange.

It turns out that free speech is more important to Musk than his personal safety.