Mr. Musk is in his early days of owning Twitter and is expected to make big changes to the service and business, including laying off some of the company’s 7,500 employees. But for now, he is engaging with many of the same constituents that Mr. Zuckerberg has had to over many years, social media experts and heads of civil society groups said.
Mr. Musk “has discovered what Mark Zuckerberg discovered several years ago: Being the face of controversial big calls isn’t fun,” said Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School. Social media companies “all face the same pressures of users, advertisers and governments, and there’s always this convergence around this common set of norms and processes that you’re forced toward.”
Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment and a Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment.
Elon Musk’s Acquisition of Twitter
A blockbuster deal. In April, Elon Musk made an unsolicited bid worth $44 billion for the social media platform, saying he wanted to turn Twitter into a private company and allow people to speak more freely on the service. Here’s how the monthslong battle that followed played out:
At Tuesday’s meeting with civil rights groups, which Mr. Musk held over a video conferencing service, the discussions centered on next week’s midterm elections and his approach to content moderation, said Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, and Yael Eisenstat, who heads the Center for Technology & Society at the Anti-Defamation League, all of whom attended the call.
During the 45-minute discussion, the group asked Mr. Musk for a multimonth moratorium on changes to Twitter’s policies and enforcement processes related to elections, hate speech and harassment — at least until the midterm election results were finalized and “he has his house in order,” Ms. Eisenstat said.
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