Elon Musk Takes a Page Out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Media Playbook

Elon Musk has positioned himself as an unconventional businessman. When he agreed to buy Twitter this year, he declared he would make the social media service a place for unfettered free speech, reversing many of its rules and allowing banned users like former President Donald J. Trump to return.

But since closing his $44 billion buyout of Twitter last week, Mr. Musk has followed a surprisingly conventional social media playbook.

The world’s richest man met with more than six civil rights groups — including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Anti-Defamation League — on Tuesday to assure them that he would not make changes to Twitter’s content rules before the results of next week’s midterm elections are certified. He also met with advertising executives to discuss their concerns about their brands appearing alongside toxic online content. Last week, Mr. Musk said he would form a council to advise Twitter on what kinds of content to remove from the platform and would not immediately reinstate banned accounts.

If these decisions and outreach seem familiar, that’s because they are. Other leaders of social media companies have taken similar steps. After Facebook was criticized for being misused in the 2016 presidential election, Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s chief executive, also met with civil rights groups to calm them and worked to mollify irate advertisers. He later said he would establish an independent board to advise his company on content decisions.