Elon Musk Says He Wants Twitter To Be More Like TikTok; 1 Billion Users

Elon Musk participated in an all-hands meeting of Twitter employees Thursday (June 16) for the first time since bidding to buyout the social media company last month.

Musk, appearing virtually from his phone, laid out several plans should his acquisition go through, which included allowing users to say "pretty outrageous things" through a lens of "free speech," his intention to keep users "entertained" like TikTok, his goal of expanding to 1 billion users and the website focusing on a larger "creator economy" moving forward, the New York Times reports.

Musk said advertising would continue to be an important revenue stream, as well as the possibility for subscription, amid doubts from attendees of Twitter's Newfront presentation last month, who were left uncertain about ads on the website after attending the event.

Earlier this month, Musk threatened to walk away from his $44 billion buyout of Twitter, accusing the company of providing false information regarding its spam bot accounts, the Associated Press reported.

Musk's attorneys threatened the social media company in a letter dated June 6 -- which Twitter included in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission -- and state that Musk had repeatedly asked for information since May 9, about a month after his initial buyout offer, to evaluate how many accounts were fake.

The attorneys accused Twitter had offered to only provide details of its testing methods, which they claimed was “tantamount to refusing Mr. Musk’s data requests.”

Last month, Musk revealed his deal to takeover Twitter was "temporarily on hold" while sharing a Reuters article on the social media platform estimating that spam and fake accounts comprise less than 5% of its users.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted on May 13.

Twitter accepted Musk's $44 billion buyout as part of a deal that is expected to close in 2022, the company confirmed in a news release obtained by CNN on April 25.

The entrepreneur has been vocal about his goal to clean up the social media platform's "spam bots," which mimic real people and appears to have questioned whether Twitter was underreporting such accounts, however, it's unclear what specifically led to the delay in the deal as the company didn't immediately respond to requests for comment made by the Associated Press following Musk's tweet on Friday.