The passage discusses the recent death of Kane Tanaka, the world's oldest person, and the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, the world's richest person. Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion and has expressed his intentions to make changes to the platform, including adding an edit button, increasing the character limit for tweets, and making the algorithm open source. Some people, including Twitter's founder Jack Dorsey, believe that Musk's purchase could be beneficial, while others are concerned about the potential risks of having a single person control the platform. The passage also touches on the idea that Twitter could be seen as a form of "global consciousness" and that Musk's changes could have a significant impact on public discourse.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. Kane Tanaka was the oldest person in the world, but she died last week after living for 119 years and 107 days.
2. Elon Musk is the richest person in the world.
3. Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion.
4. Elon Musk was the largest shareholder of Twitter before buying the entire company.
5. Twitter tried to resist the buyout, but Elon Musk made an offer that was "very hard to refuse."
6. Twitter is not as profitable as Facebook or YouTube.
7. Elon Musk is an active user of Twitter and has many ideas and suggestions for the platform.
8. Twitter has 4.5 million users who participated in a survey about adding an edit button.
9. 73.6% of the users who participated in the survey voted in support of the edit button feature.
10. Twitter has been working on an edit button feature for about a year.
11. Elon Musk wants to increase the character limit for tweets.
12. Twitter had a 140 character limit when it first started, but it was doubled to 280 characters in 2017.
13. Elon Musk announced that only real people will be able to log into Twitter after the purchase.
14. Elon Musk wants to make the Twitter algorithm open source.
15. Twitter's current algorithm is biased, according to Elon Musk.
16. Elon Musk is worried about the bias in the Twitter algorithm having a major effect on public discourse.
17. There may be changes to Twitter's content moderation policies after the purchase.
18. Elon Musk believes Twitter should comply with the laws of the countries in which it operates.
19. Twitter banned former President Trump's tweets on the grounds that they did not comply with the platform rules.
20. Elon Musk went from the 34th richest person in the world to the richest person in the world during the same presidency.
21. Elon Musk did not use Twitter often until 2018, but his tweets have increased in proportion to the value of his companies and personal wealth.
22. The former richest person, Jeff Bezos, bought a newspaper called The Washington Post years ago.
23. Elon Musk says that his strong heuristics depend on a supremely reliable and broadly inclusive public platform, which is extremely important for the future of civilization.
24. Kane Tanaka, the world's oldest person, lived for 119 years and died the same week Elon Musk bought Twitter.