Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is optimistic about the platform’s future as a medium for free speech and announced his plans to encourage user participation on Twitter.

Moving forward, Twitter will show a view count for every tweet, just as it does on videos.

Musk made his remarks in a series of tweets, stating, “I meet so many people who read twitter every day, but almost never tweet. If I may beg your indulgence, please add your voice to the public dialogue!”

I meet so many people who read twitter every day, but almost never tweet.

If I may beg your indulgence, please add your voice to the public dialogue!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2022

In response to a user who said no one read the tweets he posted, Musk replied, “Have you clicked on your tweet analytics (little bar graph)?”

“Those who read tweets outnumber those who reply/retweet/like tweets by over 1000%,” he said.

“Twitter will start showing view count for all tweets, just as view count is shown for all videos. The system is far more alive than it would seem,” Musk announced as part of his plan to increase user participation.

“View count will show how many people actually see tweets, just as is done for videos,” he said. “You will sometimes have a video view count of 1M with only 20k likes!”

In a separate tweet, Musk stated that the current system of ‘likes’ isn’t working as intended, and comes with negative ramifications for some users:

The problem is that likes are public, subjecting people to criticism, and ‘like’ is often the wrong description, as you often just think something is interesting or notable, but not likable.

We need to add these critical distinctions.