Twitter's Elon Musk Era Begins — With Christopher Mims

Christopher Mims is a tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Elon Musk's ascent to Twitter's board this week and purchase of 9.2% of the company's shares. Join us for a deep conversation about what Elon might be up to, how much power he'll have, how Twitter employees are responding, and where this likey leads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn presents.

• 1:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Elon Musk has a, now has a 9% stake in Twitter and he's also joined the board as of yesterday. And this is a pretty big story, a major story, something that Twitter's been buzzing about. And I think you're going to hear a lot about as we start moving forward into the Elon era of Twitter. Can't believe I actually just said that. Well, our guest today to discuss it is none other than Chris Mims. He's a technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal and also the author of Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door: Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy. It's a great book. You should go pick it up. Chris, welcome to the show.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk about this topic.

• 2:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is going to be a fun one. There's so much to talk about. What was your reaction when you heard that Elon was first buying into Twitter and then joining the board?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  I was baffled, but that's because Twitter's algorithm has not been showing me Elon's tweets lately, despite my keen interest in them. So hopefully that's one of the things he will improve first.

• 2:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now we know.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it'll be like when the U2 album showed up in everybody's iTunes catalog. Like Elon's tweets will just automatically appear at the top of your algorithmic feed every time you log in. It's I'm sure the first change he's gonna make.

• 2:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Though I mean, the second reaction was that I actually went and looked at some of his older tweets. And I feel like those are just incredibly revealing about kind of what his interests are. And like, you know, I now have a comprehensive theory of you like Elon's worldview on this that I'm ready to to vomit out for your listeners. I would love to hear yours, though. So so we I think to get between the two of us, we can get a pretty comprehensive model of what's going on here. What was your reaction, Alex?

• 3:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, it was I was I don't want to say I predicted this because I didn't, but I was it made total sense to me. And it was something that I first thought, well, why didn't this happen earlier? I think Elon loves to mess with internet culture. I think he has some strong ideas about what Twitter should be, and Twitter is the source of internet culture. And so for him to use part of his wealth to buy into Twitter and try to shape internet culture in the platform that he's most active, in the place that he's used to manipulate markets and drive Tesla's stack. You know, it makes a lot of sense that he would want to get in on that. I do think that there's some merit to what he's talking about with the content moderation stuff,

• 3:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  where he wants to have less content moderation and more quote unquote free speech. We can get into that. I'm sure we will. But to me, that was it. And I think you you pointed out a little bit yesterday, how Elon likes to get involved in things he really cares about. And his companies to date have been about changing the world, like PayPal, for instance, was about attacking the global financial system. Tesla is all about introducing electronic cars and pushing pushing electric vehicles forward, not only, you know, with his company, but getting other companies to be involved. SpaceX is about being a multiplanetary species and, you know, of course, making money from the government and military contracts on the way. And as you pointed out, the boring company was because he was mad about traffic.

• 4:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  So this just does seem to fit the pattern. But enough of of my perspective. You know, I'm curious what what you've gleaned, given your research.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he writers, actually, of all outlets, he did a great roundup of his most relevant tweets. I mean, it's pretty clear. I mean, he has said things like, I can't believe the new CEO, I'm not quoting here, but paraphrasing. Can't believe the new CEO of Twitter is, you know, prioritizing like NFT avatars. You know, when everything that you tweet about crypto is full of bots. He has said things like, shouldn't we all, should Twitter's algorithm be open source? And I think that, you know, we cannot ignore the fact that like, you know, he has more than a passing connection with Twitter's former CEO, Jack, and Jack recently tweeted, you know, I feel like

• 5:35Speaker 02

  the internet has really centralized control, you know, of communication, and I feel partly responsible for that. So I think if you look at the sum of kind of that chatter and what Elon has been tweeting, there's this feeling that, you know, look, they're both anti Web three. They think that's mostly a sham, but they also. It's almost like Marxism, right? Like they agree with the Web three critique of the current internet, so-called Web two, which is that it's too centralized. A few companies have too much power over speech and flows of money and advertising and everything else. But I think that they're, you know, look, they're older guys. They're a bit reactionary at this point. It happens to all of us.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  And they don't see Web three as a future. And I think that there have been models of what Twitter could be in the past. Like, what if everybody could just build their own Twitter client and curate their feed any way that they want? And that's entirely compatible with his so-called free speech absolutism. People asked him to block Russian news sites on the Starlinks that were like going to Ukraine or elsewhere. And he's like, nope, sorry, I'm a free speech absolutist. I mean, look, these are all old ideas, right? Like this is all like Web 1.0 notions. And I think that he wants to move us back toward that world. And he thinks that Twitter is kind of mismanaged. He doesn't have faith in the new CEO. He thinks Web three is a waste of time, and yet Twitter is focusing on Web three.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I have a very personal connection to this story in that I wrote a story based on conversations I had with Jack's communications people. Uh, about, you know, Jack Dorsey and kind of the rise of Web 3, and he got real mad. And, you know, he tweeted like, oh, the journal just, uh, you know, needs a face to put on this kind of stuff. But it was the first moment at which it became apparent that he was this Bitcoin maximalist, but very anti Web 3, thinks it's just another tool of capitalist oppressors, i.e. venture capitalists. And there was this huge schism and it led to this very public Twitter

• 7:42Speaker 02

  fight between him and I think Marc Andreessen or other VCs. And now Elon has chosen a side, and he is in the, um, if not the Bitcoin maxi corner, the anti Web 3 corner. And that definitely informs how he wants to, I think, change Twitter. Although I think eventually when he reinstates Trump or whatever, that's going to be the headline.

• 8:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So yeah, we'll get to the Trump thing, uh, in, in a bit, but there's a lot to unpack with, with what you just said. So, um, I, I think I want to get a little bit definitional here and talk a little bit about what it would mean for Jack to support Web 3 versus Bitcoin, because it, it does require a little bit of nuance. And then how does Twitter's distributed product fit into that? So, you know, I find it interesting that, that Elon, uh, for, I'll start with this. I find it interesting that Elon is coming in and pushing for more free speech. And if you're right, then he's going to push for a more distributed Twitter, um, when Twitter is actually on the way to creating a distributed Twitter where, you know, there isn't one Twitter, but multiple Twitters. And you could join the Twitter that, you know, blocks certain users or doesn't block certain users and basically choose your own adventure, uh, which is what is something that they're, that they are

• 8:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  actively working on. So that's a product, um, in development. So if, if Elon is unhappy with the direction of Twitter and wants to move more towards that, isn't that kind of weird? Because they are doing that. Is it that they're moving too slow? And then, you know, a follow up to that is, you know, Web 3 is all about building distributed programs, uh, you know, on the blockchain, uh, that, that sound a lot like that distributed version of Twitter. Um, so how does that differ from Web 3?

• 9:18Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the main issue that that a lot of technologists have with Web 3 is that, well, I mean, it's multi-layered.

• 9:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Chris, can you define Web 3 also?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, what is Web 3? I mean, as far as I can tell, it's anything where you pour some blockchain sauce on it. But to be more charitable, you know, Web 3 is really a youth movement. We can't ignore that. It's a lot of very young developers and excitable, frankly, teenagers in some case on various discords who are like, hey, we can use the blockchain, you know, maybe it's Ethereum, maybe it's not, to create new kinds of companies, you know, which they call DAOs. Like, we can use it to, you know, value art or create new categories of investable assets, and those are NFTs.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  You know, we can use it to kind of turn money into software, and that's Ethereum, and do smart contracts and all this other stuff. So Web 3, though, the idea is like, let's completely rebuild the existing internet using the blockchain, which automatically is a distributed infrastructure in some ways. And it's a very kind of utopian vision of what that could look like. It is being pushed really heavily by certain VCs, particularly Andreessen Horowitz and now its alumni. And so Jack has said one of his specific objections, because he's kind of anti-venture capitalist in general, is this is getting pushed by VCs. They just want to control whatever comes next.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  It's not actually going to be decentralized or democratized.

• 10:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Fair argument.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  And there's also a lot of objections, which I think are pretty fair, that like, just from a technical perspective, a lot of its claims just don't work.

• 11:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So then take us back to the Twitter situation here. So how does that apply in this argument?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, in some ways, it's just kind of an ideological battle that puts Musk and Jack on the same side of history, as it were, where they're like, you know, Twitter's nods toward Web 3 are kind of a waste of time.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  And what we really need is to is to truly figure out, you know, for Jack, you know, distributed means of ownership and communication for Elon, you know, maybe that, but as much about free speech.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  And that's kind of where their interests intersect. I mean, I think part of this is Elon, you know, like so many before him, anybody who uses Twitter for or is as addicted to it as he clearly is, develops some very particular ideas about how the service could be improved. And so Twitter has always been slow to roll out changes. They have told me, you know, that is because they they really they're really test driven. They they'll run big tests of various new ideas, see how it affects user behavior and performance. But, you know, frankly, that is not, that's not how you create the next, you know, Tesla or whatever, like, like, like Elon is a very different person, like he he's he gets an

• 12:30Speaker 02

  idea about what people might want. He's often right, and he just kind of manifests it. That's a completely different way to run a company, and I think he probably perceives maybe rightly that if he joins the board and influences their direction, you know, it could be, you know, a better and more interesting place. In terms of his like, personal involvement, I mean, the guy has a very short attention span, right? Like, let's not forget that he was like personally designing a rescue system for those boys trapped in a cave. So, you know, this is the next shiny object for Elon.

• 13:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so I I want to go back to the fact that Twitter has been building something like this. So can you just share your thoughts about what it means? You know, do you think that he's going to actually just, you know, for Elon, if he's actually focused on speech, do you think it's that he's going to be pushing forward this idea that, you know, Twitter should be distributed? That's something that's on the roadmap? Which, again, I I wonder why he needs to join Twitter if that's something that's join the board and invest in it, if that's something that the company is actively working on? Or do you think it's him actually going to the main Twitter, twitter.com, and actually causing changes in the way that they moderate content? Or is there something else that I'm overlooking that like he might want to do in terms of the product that just hasn't happened yet?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  I mean, it's hard to speculate. He did run a Twitter poll saying, you know, do you think that Twitter,

• 13:56Speaker 02

  you know, respects or protects free speech? It's hard not to, I, I think we have, we can't ignore the subtext here of Elon's shitposting, and there just is no other word for it. You know, without spending 15 minutes describing the various memes that he has posted, a lot of them are him expressing this kind of resentment of what I think he perceives as, you know, what in another era we might call like the political correctness of Twitter or something. I mean, who knows how much of this is linked to like upheaval in his personal life? I know as business reporters, you're not supposed to talk about that. It's unprofessional or something, but I just, you can't get It's part of the story.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  It's part of the story. You cannot ignore the fact that like, it seems like him and Grimes just broke up and he's resentful of whatever is coming out of that. And she and him have had public conflict on Twitter over some of his shitposting about pronouns and stuff. And so I think that there is a part of Elon who, you know, and this is just based on what I know about his personality, if he feels slighted, he's very, you know, he can be very vindictive. And so I think that like a lot of people on the internet these days, he, he might feel kind of

• 15:20Speaker 02

  like a punching bag and like, you know, hey, I'm the good guy. I'm trying to save the earth. I'm trying to make us a multi-planetary species and here Bernie Sanders is yelling at me. I, I think we cannot ignore the fact that there is just some resentment happening here. Where he's like, mm, I want to empower more of the kind of people who show up in my comments and you know, send nasty notes to journalists who I don't like and, and get deplatformed for their views and, and for other things that get, you know, tagged as hate speech. You know, I, I cannot help but think that there's a little part of Elon that's like, I'd, I'd love to kind of stick it to the man and the man here is like the progressives on Twitter who are beating up on him every day.

• 16:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I find it so strange that, you know, he's kind of been this person that, I mean, maybe you can help me figure out what's going on here because I find it strange that he has stood up for, you know, these values of being able to say whatever you want online, where he does say whatever he wants online. And there's never been a threat of him getting banned. In fact, Jack Dorsey's held him up as a user that people should, you know, someone who uses Twitter the right way.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, with this here, I can only speculate, right? Like, who knows the mind of Elon here? I don't know. I know that there's just a lot of aggrieved Elon, like, people, you know, in my Twitter mentions where he has a cult of personality and the slightest critique of him really brings them out. He seems to sort of thrive on their attention. He really likes that kind of validation. So it does feel just sort of weirdly personal. But then everything Elon does is weirdly personal, right? Like, he is a, he's a very

• 17:12Speaker 02

  kind of, you know, I mean, he's a deep thinker, but he's also been always been kind of impulsive, clearly. You know, he'll tell you that himself. So, you know, look, it's 1% of his net worth. Can he just throw a couple billion dollars at an act of sort of pure ego? Sure, he does it all the time. I mean, you know, he bought his cousin's failing solar roof tile company. And, and, you know, activist investors are still after him about that and probably would have succeeded in curbing his power if Tesla hadn't been doing so well overall.

• 17:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Chris Pimms is with us here on the Big Technology Podcast. He's a technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal and the author of Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door. Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy. He's mentioned a little bit about this political debate as far as Elon trying to stick it to progressives. I think that's probably the most fascinating part of this whole situation because there are some really interesting contradictions when it comes to doing stuff like that and running a business that is Twitter. And what does that mean when you're the company's biggest independent investor? We'll cover that right after the break. This episode is brought to you by AVPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about.

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• 20:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Chris Mims, technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal. So Chris, I want to ask you about this whole thing about Elon trying to stick it to progressives. Because there's an argument out there that the content moderation that progressives on Twitter want is actually good for business, that when you have less neo-Nazi flame more on the service, it makes it a place where advertisers are more comfortable advertising. And then you can make more money, because no one wants to show, you know, show an ad for Tide in the middle of, you know, a white supremacist flame war. So do you think if Elon actually takes off some of the restraints, the content moderation

• 21:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  restraints, it will help Twitter's business because it matters to some extent now that he's invested so much money in it? Or do you think he just doesn't care about the money that he's invested and he's all about ideology on this one?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  It is really hard to say, because this investment is, I mean, I think I'm going to answer a different question than that, but I think it's an important one. It is strange to how atypical this investment is for Elon, right? Like, I mean, if we just look at what he's done lately, I mean, maybe it's no stranger than his in than his support of OpenAI, which he declared was because he thinks that AI is the biggest threat to humanity of the next century. Or, you know, his investment in or his founding Neuralink, which is literally a brain computer interface company. But this is, he's never put money into a social media company.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  So it's hard to predict what's really gonna play out here. You know, yes, if they take the guardrails off, and I've written about this extensively and researched it pretty deeply, like if they take more of the guardrails off, it could really hurt Twitter's ability to make money. Because yeah, advertisers don't want to be adjacent to hate speech, et cetera. So it's going to be really interesting to see how he navigates that. It's also interesting that, you know, the current CEO of Twitter, Prag Agarwal, you know, tweeted, hey, we added Elon to our board. You know, we've been having conversations with him and it's become clear that he would bring great value to our board.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Wow, I mean, that's quite an endorsement. I don't think that that's because there's a gun being held to his hand, to his head, although maybe there's an element of that. I, I, I, I hesitate to speculate what changes. I, I mean, maybe, maybe Elon just wants an edit button, right? Who knows? I mean, Elon is a product guy, right? You know, he, he does have that knack for like, hey, um, you know, the, the, the, the door handles should be flush with the door and everybody's gonna love that. Like, those little details he is good at. Um, so I, I don't know. I mean, honestly, what do you, what changes do you think he's gonna make, based on your own research and what you've read?

• 23:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's, I, I think it's really hard to say. I mean, the question, what do you do to the product? I, it's hard to say what else you do to the product. I've always felt that Twitter sort of plays an important role in society. It's actually done a pretty good job of bringing new and casual users into the product. Um, and so I've never really felt that there, you know, given that, I've never really felt that there's a magical switch that you can flip to turn Twitter into a two billion user product overnight. It just doesn't seem possible to me, given the format. There are gonna be people who are gonna wanna know the news immediately, and they're gonna be on Twitter, or they're gonna wanna, um, you know, be there for the memes, and those memes register with them, and they'll be on Twitter. But I think that you'll, you will inevitably have most of the population who'd feel more comfortable on an Instagram, something that's more visual and, and not, and less newsy. I mean, I think

• 24:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  it's important to point out that, like, Twitter designed itself under Jack Dorsey to go from the sort of all-purpose celebrity, you know, sports type of thing, to be a news-first product. And that's going to appeal to a big portion of the population, but not an enormous part of the population. And so, you know, I'm curious, maybe Elon tries to pivot it back. Um, but I, but I also wonder, again, whether this is going to be a moment where he does take the restraints off of some of the content moderation. I, I actually have a tweet that I want you to respond to from Mike Solano, who's a venture capitalist. He says, and he's talking about, you know, I, I brought up the argument that, um, that content moderation could be good for business, because it makes Twitter safer for advertisers. Here's what Mike Solano has

• 24:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  to say. "Professional hall monitors who fundamentally misunderstand Elon as motivated by money, trying to persuade him to their side. Have you considered censorship is good for business? Bro, he's the richest man in the world, and he just a shit, shitpost in peace, you lost." Do you think that there's any merit to what he's saying?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Well, I'm having trouble parsing that tweet because I'm having trouble understanding how much of it is ironic. Like, so is he saying that Elon, he doesn't care about whether Twitter does well or not, like, he just, he's just motivated to make it a place that's friendlier to him or something?

• 25:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that's what he's saying, that basically, like, you're basically saying that, like, don't worry about the business. He doesn't care about the business. He cares about, again, like, this whole, like, yeah, shitposting culture, and he wants that to persist. And if that's the case, and maybe he's being ironic, but if that's the case, that that's fascinating, I think you're right, it's a very peculiar investment, because we've never seen someone put billions of dollars into a company who actually, you know, is, whose interests are lying in contradiction to the business's performance.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, Elon has always said that he's, he's, he's a mission-driven person, and I think that there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, I, look, this is the same thesis that Matt, Matt Levine articulated in his, you know, famous newsletter. He's, he's like, Elon, he put it in a funny way. He's like, Elon likes to be annoying on Twitter, and he wants to do something that will allow him to be more annoying on the service. This is fundamentally the calculus for him. I mean, whether you think he's being annoying or not, uh, yeah, I, I mean, actually, I, I think there is a lot of truth to that. You know, he doesn't, he's, this isn't a Carl Icahn coming in and being like, you're

• 26:47Speaker 02

  mismanaged, we can extract money from this business. I, I think that, another thing that Matt observed, which is true, is that, you know, people talk about, you know, Twitter is a place where anybody can share, and that's why it's so democratized and everything. But it's fundamentally, if you look at who has influence there, it is, it is all about elites. Like, where else can you go to see all these famous people and, you know, whatever, blue checks like URI and political reporters and, and politicians, all, you know, battling with each other, embarrassing themselves, et cetera. So,

• 27:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a perfect description of Twitter.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he, he, Twitter actually is, is surprisingly about elites and elitism.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, Musk is a person who wants to influence the world in a way that he thinks will make it better. So, you know, he's, he's, he's done what he can with, with making us multi-planetary and moving us off of fossil fuels. So why not tackle culture next, right? Cause culture precedes politics, as they say. I mean, you know, maybe this is his version of, you know, Peter Thiel moving into politics, but, uh, you know, he, he's, he's going to control the means of, uh, meme production at this point.

• 28:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. I think someone on Twitter put it, um, kind of perfectly. He says, he's securing the raw materials responsible for Tesla's valuation. That was so perfect.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, here, you know, Musk has this in common with Trump and that he really knows how to use this platform for his own ends, whether that's, uh, yeah, whatever that is, wherever that's burnishing his image or, or bumping his stock, the, the stock price or, or communicating directly with investors, you know, without any kind of filter. I mean, look, famously Musk fired his entire, uh, some wing of his communications or PR staff, like you can still, there's still a skeleton crew in there. You can try to get a comment out of them, but he just doesn't have that apparatus that every other at Tesla,

• 29:00Speaker 02

  that every other company has, uh, because he, he's can just knows how to reach people directly, primarily through Twitter.

• 29:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And that is, uh, basically exactly what Trump did through the 2016 campaign and, and it did help him get elected. So now that we're on to Trump, how soon do you think it is before Donald Trump is reinstated to Twitter?

• 29:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cause it has to be a matter of if not, not when, right? Or of when, not if.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  It feels like.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  God, this is such a, I, I, okay, let's not make that metaphor. It, it feels like, it feels like the run up to so many other things that have in recent history that have felt like there's a red line there and you think like, oh, surely that person's not going to cross that red line. But, uh, you know, frankly, I think we've all been disabused of those notions in the past few years. And, um, yeah, I, I, I think that Elon is gonna sort of do the unthinkable for Trump's political opponents anyway, which is still the majority of Americans. And, um, yeah, uh, how, how can he say all he's said about free speech and not, and being a free speech absolutist and not reinstate him? Jeez.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I, I think it, I think the, it all comes down to how long until Elon loses interest, right? I mean, if he were so focused on his last three projects, there would already be a tunnel network under the Rockies. You know, brain machine interfaces would be, uh, the, the version one that doesn't actually penetrate the skull would be on sale. And, um, you know, I don't know what else. The Cybertruck would have already rolled out or something.

• 30:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, where is that truck? I would like to drive that truck.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, hey, the factory's going up in Austin, Texas.

• 30:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Also Elon's new home, so apparently not too long. So, yeah, if, if, if he stays focused on this, and I, and I, and I think maybe he will, because he seems so addicted to Twitter, like it seems to dominate his attention in a way that nothing other than, um, you know, his companies does, uh, yeah, jeez, I don't know, 12 months?

• 31:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, the, the, the challenges that you mentioned, right? They're all a lot more difficult than hitting the unblock button on Trump. So, I mean,

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Good point.

• 31:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  They haven't deleted his account, remember? It's a permanent suspension, uh, so. I would say it probably happens within six months.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 31:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  How much power do you think that Elon is going to have inside the company? Because the way that the company is phrasing it, it seems like he's going to have a ton. Here's a tweet from Jack Dorsey yesterday. He says, "I'm really happy Elon is joining the Twitter board. He cares deeply about our world and Twitter's role in it." And this comes to the really interesting part. Barack, who's the CEO of Twitter, and Elon both lead with their hearts, and they will be an incredible team. I don't think I ever remember one board member being put on par in a statement and saying they're going to be a team member as opposed to an advisor to the CEO. So it does seem like he's going to have outsized power inside the company. What's your read on it?

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, corporate boards, especially lately, are usually just toothless, and they just rubber stamp what these powerful tech CEOs do. I mean, corporate boards, especially of tech companies, let's say. So that is pretty amazing.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  I would say even shocking. I mean, there must have been, look, Elon can be a charming guy when he wants to be. So I imagine there have been some free-ranging and very intense conversations between these folks and Elon. I have to say that I am not optimistic about this honeymoon lasting very long because

• 33:07Speaker 02

  we don't even have to like talk about Elon's personal life, although I think that does bear on it. Again, just looking at his other projects. Elon is somebody who gets very interested in things. He is very good at motivating people to, you know, follow him. You know, I think he is genuine in his strong feelings about these things. You know, he still has a tremendous intellect and capacity for assimilating facts and modeling things. And, you know, he probably has come to them with some ideas that they've never thought of, and they're like, oh, wow, you know, like, here we have the genius behind SpaceX and Tesla, suddenly earnestly trying to improve our service in a way that, you know, people haven't thought of before.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  But how long is that gonna last? And, and, and, and the day that he, let's say reinstates Trump, or there's some others free speech controversy? And, you know, a tenth of Twitter's engineering staff just quits on the spot. What's gonna happen next? I just, call me a cynic, but there is no way this honeymoon is gonna last.

• 34:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think I'm, I call you a realist on that. And it certainly puts Twitter CEO Parag Awal in a terrible position. I mean, he comes in as this, you know, former CTO, basically. I don't want to shortchange the CTO, but like, you know, the, the number one thing that could go wrong if he doesn't do his job is that the site goes down. And now like he is, he is responsible for navigating some extremely difficult, you know, some of the most difficult political questions in tech. And he's got Elon there to make, who's gonna make demands and Elon has the support of Jack Dorsey. It's like, how do you, how do you run a business in that environment? And I think it's very telling that, you know, when Elon's investment was announced earlier this week.

• 34:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Not, I couldn't find a single Twitter employee celebrating the fact that Elon would come on board. And here is, you know, undoubtedly like one of the most successful business people of our time. Who believes, you know, who seemingly believes in the company enough that he's gonna put billions of his own money into it and buy nine percent. And yet Twitter employees were quiet. And I saw some, you know, some people saying that like, that's an unfair observation because Twitter likes to handle things in-house. But give me a break, like, you know, they, they are very vocal when they're happy about things and they're quiet when they're unhappy. And so it seems to me that this is gonna be a, a culture clash between Elon and the employee base, which I find fascinating.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  I agree. I mean, I think, I think you're, you're, you're setting the wheels spinning and I think you're, you're turning into my assignment editor on this story. I'm just thinking of the last, uh, I'm not gonna name names here, but I'm just thinking of the last Twitter employee that I kind of really went deep with in a, in a piece. And I'm just thinking, what would this person make of, of Jack endorsing Elon? Of the new CEO endorsing Elon, of Elon saying that he's a free speech absolutist?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Honestly, I cannot imagine them being very happy about this. So I think that is excellent point. And I think that the other thing that we can't discount and, and, you know, we've certainly seen this at Facebook is that the reputation and the, and the values of the CEO matters in the battle for talent. Now, obviously, like, Facebook still has plenty of engineers. You know, Microsoft has survived many long winters and come out as, as the favorite tech company of, of many other people who buy their services. But yeah, I, I think, I think that there, as there has been previously at Google and elsewhere, there's going to be a

• 36:53Speaker 02

  real clash of values here, potentially.

• 36:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And so I also like you to respond to this tweet from Neil Dash, who says, who reacted to Elon joining the board. He said, "Yeah, that's bad. Wish they would have taken any of the many other suggestions of active users who could have been added to the board over the years, including those who are developers or experienced creators of healthy communities." Does he have a point there?

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Um.

• 37:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. I think, I think he does have a point. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think his point sort of just stands for itself, which is that

• 37:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Twitter has had plenty of opportunities to bring in other, other folks to influence its direction. You know, why, why Elon now? I mean, look, the dude's the biggest shareholder.

• 37:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, money. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. And well, hey, look, maybe on the bright side, at least Twitter's gonna have a A board member that actually uses the product because that doesn't seem to have been the case maybe outside of outside of Jack, but.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  I think though, I think you could also make the argument that Twitter's greatest asset through the years has been benign neglect. Has been frankly, that it is so little changed from its origins for good and for ill. I mean, in that way, it's almost an open protocol already. It's almost like email or something where it's just like impossible to change the protocol. So they just never have. Cause they can't get consensus. So just email, you know, and now we're seeing this renaissance of of new models, as you well know, all built on the back of email. Because like, hey, it's an open protocol and it's pretty simple and everybody can just have their own client. I mean, look, maybe that's where Twitter's already going and Musk wants to take it.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mean, the optics are not great. So, so, so I think that Twitter's own CEO has a really kind of is balancing on a knife edge here where, okay, you know, if Elon pushes them to like, you know, open it up, make it more decentralized. I think a lot of people will probably be fine with that. But if Elon pushes them to, you know, start making different kinds of decisions in terms of their content moderation. It's going to be a real challenge for them. I mean, you could see a, it's funny. You could see a mass defection, but to where?

• 39:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. And yeah, it is interesting that Twitter employees are like the most mission driven employees that you'll find in the tech world. Okay, we're coming towards an end. So here's the big question. Do you think Elon's involvement is going to be a net good or bad for Twitter?

• 39:43Speaker 02

  It's been a net good for their stock price, right?

• 39:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, they've been up like, I don't know, they're up at least 30% this, this week. And it's, you know, we're not even halfway over, so.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, look, Elon's a, Elon's a an agent of chaos in a lot of places, a lot of markets. I mean, he, you know, generally makes the value of things go up.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  So I, I, I, while I hesitate to predict anything in the long term, like it does feel like this is gonna bring a lot of fresh energy and scrutiny on the company. But, but again, it comes down to what, what, what is he influencing them to do, right? I mean, if he influences them to open up Twitter in a way that really does increase its user base, like that'll be tremendous. It'll be tremendous for Twitter. It's what everybody's talked about forever and then sort of gave up on. Um, you know, if he influences them in ways that just kind of alienate the core user base without bringing on a lot of extra uh, users, then obviously it's, it's just gonna be terrible.

• 40:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  So I, yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think to answer that question, you have to get into like second and third order effects. Like, wait a minute, how much of the company does Elon need to own to have enough voting rights that he can potentially replace the CEO if he wants? Because that'll determine how much influence he has. I mean, Twitter, as far as I know, is not, you know, better than I probably. They're not one of these companies that had the super voting shares like

• 41:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's correct.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Facebook did. Right. So there you go. I mean, Twitter, Twitter weirdly is kind of old school and that you like the board could replace the CEO if they wanted.

• 41:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm. Yeah. And I think you make a great point that Elon, as long as Elon's money is in there, it's really hard to imagine the stock going under what it was earlier this week. So I think that 25, 29% jump that we're seeing this week is, is going to be permanent. Now, on, on the business side, you know, one of the things that's underrated is that um, Twitter had an activist investor come in in 2020, Elliot Management, and they only took about 4% of the company. And the product group basically went into overdrive and shipped more in like a couple of years than they had in five years previously. And they actually built a pretty successful feature inside the company, their Clubhouse clone spaces.

• 42:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  So if they, if Elliot Management was able to, you know, light a fire under the butts of people inside Twitter, then I think Elon definitely will. And the question is, what, you know, if, if he, if he does, you know, for instance, push, you know, really hard on the content moderation front and open it up that way, you know, is that gonna do enough damage to sort of mitigate, to, to, to erase some of the gain that we might see from the product team? And frankly, I don't know. I'm curious what you think about this, but It seems like the content moderation complaints are somewhat overblown. I don't want to say that they're not without merit. Um, I think these companies can tend to over moderate in times, although it's a really hard line to, to, to find, but

• 42:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think most people in the middle would sort of, you know, within, you know, maybe a, a small degree of, of error. Largely agree with most of the content moderation decisions that are made on inside these companies. What do you think?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, content moderation is really, really, really, really hard. As everyone who, who is a part of this, uh, who has ever taken a good or bad faith stab at doing it knows. I mean, it is, you just, I, I, I feel like being in charge of a social media property is the least forgiving job on earth because you're always going to piss off somebody because at the end of the day, yes, it's social, but it is, it is media. And your content moderation decisions reflect your values, you know, like it or not. And, um, that, you know, it affects the business. Look, in, in this day and age, if you want to,

• 43:49Speaker 02

  you know, make a lot of your revenue from advertising, you've got to be very careful about the decisions you make. Um, otherwise you're, you're gab or you're truth social. And we know at least what's happened to truth social. Um, you know, you, you, you will forever marginalize yourself because you're the, uh, you know, the one American network of, of social mediums. Um, when if you want to be big and you want to cast a, a, a big tent, you've got to be closer to the, you know, frankly, you've got to be closer to like the CNN of, of these things and, uh, you're always going to piss somebody off. And that anger is always going to be directed at you. I mean, whether Twitter is

• 44:31Speaker 02

  is over moderating or not, like, I mean, they they have made some questionable decisions like, what was it? They banned any links to the, what was it? A New York Post story? About Hunter Biden's laptop, you know, like that, I think, felt like an overreach. Even if it was a fake story, it's like, well, at that point, you've got to,

• 44:52Speaker 02

  wait, you're banning a news outlet? You know, I mean, it's it's if if if the entire news outlet is fake, because it's just a Russian troll farm, that's one thing.

• 45:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And there's no way that would have happened, I think, if Elon was on the board. So that will have some immediate impact in terms of them being more reserved about their decisions. Hey, before we jump, I'm curious how your LinkedIn experiment is going. You've said, I think you've said a couple of times that you're exploring LinkedIn. I've been pretty active on the platform. So yeah, what's the state of that?

• 45:24Speaker 02

  I mean, to be perfectly honest, like, like, I like LinkedIn and I like playing around there. But I think that overall, I I I just have to plug the the health and mental health benefits of minimizing exposure to all social media. And I honestly think that where I stand now is I'm I am the world's biggest fan of email newsletters, like yours, others. I I I love human curation. I love that there are so many humans who want to wade into the morass of social media for me. And frankly, some of these newsletters that I love are are showing me corners of social media

• 46:09Speaker 02

  that I just I wouldn't find on my own, no matter how many hours I spent scrolling. So bizarrely, I I I'm getting to the point where I think that the best way to consume social media. Is secondhand primarily and then of course I'm going to dip in myself, you know, a few minutes a day. But, um, you know, look, you and I are part of an industry where so much of, of what we're sourcing and talking about and the drama that we're citing, it's all, it's all there. It's being parsed by other humans and made sense of. So for the same reason that I don't sit down and read a stack of academic journals every week, you know, I rely on other trusted sources to filter that for me. I don't know how much

• 46:54Speaker 02

  we need to be exposing ourselves directly to social media if we have really good trusted sources who are, who are doing some human curation for us.

• 47:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Love it. Well, look, I will be on, I admire it because I did DM you on Twitter asking you to join the show. And then I was like, let me try email. Finally, finally it worked. I was like, damn, Chris is like great self-respect, especially on a day like today. So, all right, we're, we're out of time. I'll be, I'll be speaking of which I'll be on LinkedIn, taking questions about the show. We have a newsletter as well. Chris, if you want to join and make use of your, you know, whatever hour of, of social media time a day or week, you know, please do. So if folks are interested in that conversation, come find me. My page is Alex Kantrowitz. Grab Chris's books, book. It's called Arriving Today From Factory to Front Door. Everything has changed about how and what we buy. It's especially pertinent

• 47:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  now that the supply chain is causing all this chaos in the economy and might actually be the thing driving up inflation and not the Fed rates. So you're going to want to read it. And you should also check out Chris's columns in the Wall Street Journal. They're always great. And that is where we will leave it today. Chris, thanks so much for joining.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, Alex. Genuinely a pleasure.

• 48:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Awesome. Thank you, Nick Watney, for doing the editing, especially returning this wrong quickly, given the Elon news doesn't stop. Appreciate you, man. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. It's been a blast. Let's keep it going. Thanks to all of you, the listeners, for coming back each Wednesday. Appreciate you joining us. Come back next Wednesday for a new show with a tech insider or outside agitator. And until then, take care.

• 48:43Speaker 03

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