Elon Musk reveals 5 details about how he’ll run Twitter. Maybe.

Musk’s team even asked Elon to be sat at the same table as Sky Ferrerira pic.twitter.com/GKnbApP6Te

— Sugar Pop (@pop_crawe) May 5, 2022

His mother, Maye Musk, denied the rumor on Thursday night, and Elon chimed in the following morning, tweeting “I didn’t ask anyone out or request particular seating.”

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Less than an hour later, Musk added more to the thread. 

This rumor originated from a parody account, but got picked up by real media & twitter trends (sigh)

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2022

It's tempting to read Musk's sigh as a sign of disappointment with the "real media" for getting hoodwinked by a parody account. Maybe he was disappointed with the algorithm that drives Twitter's trending content. (His later tweets about engineering at the site add some weight to that reading.) However, it's dangerous to take Musk's tweets at face value.

Elon Musk says Trump didn't encourage him to buy Twitter

Musk also denied a claim by former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, a resigned from the House of Representatives earlier this year to lead former U.S. President Donald Trump’s social network, Truth Social. On Wednesday, Nunes told Fox Business Network that  “President Trump, basically before Elon Musk bought it, actually said to go and buy it.” One reason Trump “encouraged Elon Musk to buy” the company was to “take on these tech tyrants,” such as Twitter in its previous form.

Musk firmly rejected the claim.

This is false. I’ve had no communication, directly or indirectly, with Trump, who has publicly stated that he will be exclusively on Truth Social.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2022

Musk: my Twitter will take engineering seriously

A few minutes after denying that Trump encouraged him to buy Twitter, Musk offered some concrete — if extremely general — hints about how he'll change the company.

If Twitter acquisition completes, company will be super focused on hardcore software engineering, design, infosec & server hardware https://t.co/m2HseK0TXl

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2022

He was commenting on a story reporting a tweet (yes, this is recursive) from an economist at the job-seeking website Glassdoor who claimed that interest in job openings at Twitter rose by more than 250 percent after Twitter agreed to sell itself to Musk last week. The story is a break from weeks of bad press about how Twitter's current employees feel about the billionaire becoming their new boss. The Washington Post called Musk's takeover a "long-feared reality" for the company's current employees.

In a second tweet, Musk hinted at why he thinks the company is deficient in those areas.

I strongly believe that all managers in a technical area must be technically excellent.

Managers in software must write great software or it’s like being a cavalry captain who can’t ride a horse!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2022

It's not the first time Musk has criticized Twitter's current employees since agreeing to buy the service. Last week, he piled onto to a tweet that the company's current head of legal, policy, and trust "the top censorship advocate at Twitter."

Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022

Elon Musk says getting it right will be hard

The only further detail he offered was in response to a tweet asking for Twitter to restore a previous, slightly different design. The billionaire's reply conveys the meticulous, engineering-first attitude that he's cultivated as part of his image as a figure who brings a rational approach to big problems, like space travel, electric cars, and traffic congestion.

So much to be done on layout. Every single pixel matters. Hard problem.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2022

Twitter wasn't Musk's only topic today. He also tweeted a couple of jokes — including one about cocaine — and shared good news about Tesla and Space X. The latter launched 53 new Starlink satellites into low-earth orbit earlier today. 

Another Starlink mission completed https://t.co/8ZUeQtTegE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2022

Clearly, Musk has a lot on his plate — perhaps enough to offset having more money than anyone else in his Tesla stock and bank account(s). But that doesn't mean he doesn't struggle to get what he wants (at least, on paper). For example, Twitter’s board of directors initially pushed back against Musk’s attempt to buy the service, turning it from a publicly traded company into a private venture.

As the conversation continued, it became clear to members of the board that they were in no position to deny Musk’s offer. And, if we take Musk's word that Twitter is the "de facto town square" and look at what the people want, 59 percent of American citizens support the deal, according to a poll published earlier this week. Most of them cite “free speech” as the main reason for their support. Whether that makes sense in a modern democracy, or whether that's still what society is, remains to be seen.