Front Burner - Elon Musk owns Twitter. Now what?

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has only been “Chief Twit” of Twitter since Thursday night, but he’s already fired four top executives and dissolved the company’s board. Musk had repeatedly tried to pull out of his $44-billion US deal to acquire Twitter since April, leading to legal action from the company. Now, as Musk and his investors take private ownership of the company, his messages about free speech and lighter moderation have been joined by an assurance to advertisers that Twitter won’t become a “free-for-all hellscape.” Today on Front Burner, Washington Post tech analysis writer Will Oremus details the chaos unfolding inside Twitter as Musk begins his reign, and discusses what the ownership of social media by billionaires such as Musk could mean for our online future.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Pussall. So, Elon, a few hours ago, you made an offer to buy Twitter. Why?

How'd you know? So just listen to the laughter in the background of this TED interview with Elon Musk in April. Back then, it might have seemed like a joke to you that Musk could own Twitter. One of our podcast titles even asked if it was tactics or trolling. And all summer, Musk tried to find ways to cancel the $44 billion U.S. deal he signed. He started complaining about the number of fake accounts on Twitter. The company sued Musk to go through with the sale. Musk countersued. At this point, Musk clearly doesn't want Twitter anymore, and Twitter's leadership isn't too fond of him either. But on Thursday, the day before a court-issued deadline to complete the deal, it was official.

We have just learned that Elon Musk is now officially in charge of Twitter. The bird is freed. Elon Musk's first tweet as chief twit, which is what he's apparently going to call himself. And in one week, the New York Stock Exchange will delist Twitter because Musk now privately owns the company with a bunch of investors. So today, I'm joined again by Will Orimus. He writes about tech and society for The Washington Post. He'll explain the chaos that's unfolding as Musk takes command of Twitter and what his ideas about free speech could mean for the battle over moderation on social media. Hey, Will, thanks so much for being with me today.

Thanks for having me on. It's such a pleasure. This is a very fun chat to have. So maybe let's start with the latest news. We're speaking on Monday afternoon, and we just heard this. Elon Musk has dissolved the Twitter board and made himself the sole director. And I know this isn't necessarily a huge surprise to someone like you who follows this, but just tell me a little bit about that move and what it means practically. Yeah. So as a publicly traded company, Twitter had a board of directors. The board was the group of people who negotiated this deal with Elon Musk. They accepted his offer to buy the company for $44 billion. They fought him in court when he tried to get out of that

purchase. And ultimately, they closed the deal with him. And having done that, Musk dissolves the board. He is now the sole owner of Twitter as a private company. I should say the sole director. He, of course, has investors with a stake in the company who financed his bid. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about how else has he kind of shook up the company since he bought it Thursday night? It's been a bit of a while. It's been a bit of an entertaining and wild ride. So some business people, when they first take over a giant company like Twitter, might spend a little time getting to know the place, tour the headquarters, meet the executives,

hear from the staff before making any drastic changes. That is not Elon Musk's style. As soon as he took over, four of the top executives of Twitter were unceremoniously escorted out of the building, fired immediately. There was no announcement to the staff as to what had happened. And there was no announcement as to who the new chief would be. They later found out that it was Elon himself, who's calling himself not CEO, but chief twit. And the chaos has continued since then. There have been widespread reports of layoffs and firings, but nobody knows exactly who or why or how or when. There have been, my sources at Twitter said that at least as of Monday morning, there had still been no official communications to staff, even that Elon was now in charge or that their CEO had been fired, let alone about anything else that was going on.

Oh, man. I also saw that for employees who work on the code for Twitter, there's like automotive engineers reviewing their work? Yes, sort of. It's not quite as bad as that makes it sound. These are some of his software developers from Tesla, which of course is an automotive company, but it's also a company that does a lot of work on software. And so he brought in some of his trusted coders.

It's actually very unusual because, especially if you're not familiar with the company's broader code base, you can't always look at their code and know what it's doing, let alone whether it's doing it in the right way or why things are done in a certain way. Nonetheless, at first they asked them to actually physically print out their code on paper to bring it in. I wasn't in the office at the time, but you can imagine scenes of people lined up at the printer, like a paper jam, trying to get my code here. They soon after scrapped that plan and said, no, don't print it out. Just come in and meet with us and we'll look at it. So yeah, so all these code reviews. And the reason is clearly that they want to get a sense of which engineers they're going to trust and roll with and which ones they're going to let go.

But nobody knows exactly on what basis those decisions are going to be made. Everyone's operating under the assumption that a significant part of the Twitter workforce will be fired or laid off in the coming days and weeks. Wow. As someone who recently finished watching that WeWork show on Apple about Adam Goldman, I feel like there's probably a really good television show, at least these days, on Twitter, probably the whole thing, for sure. Right. That's one of those scenes where if you saw it in the TV show a few years later, you'd be like, that didn't really happen. People printing out their code and bringing it into the

offices to see who's getting fired. But no, apparently it did happen. who's getting fired. But no, apparently it did happen. Can you just explain to me why Elon Musk strolled into the Twitter offices holding a sink? On one level, yes. On some deeper level, I could not possibly explain what goes on in the mind of Elon Musk. But yes, Elon walked into the offices on Thursday night, unannounced, holding a sink. I guess he must have had somebody run out and buy a sink from Lowe's or Home Depot or whatever. And tweeted, as he timed with his entrance to the building, let that sink in. You just can't help but let that sink in. Which is a play on a Twitter meme where when you say something that's profound or you say something that's sort of faux profound as a joke, you say, let that sink in. So he wanted them to let the

sink in to the offices. I think as a gesture, it kind of makes sense. I mean, everybody at the moment at that time was scared about what Elon's going to do. Are they going to be fired? And he walks in cracking a dad joke, kind of styling himself as this funny, friendly, self-deprecating person. But, of course, that impression was quickly reversed when he began this reign of terror. Yeah, this sort of reign of terror that they're now seeing. I want to talk a little bit about his vision for how he wants to change Twitter. I know he's previously said that he hates advertising and he's talked about other ways he wants to make money off the site. But then he tweeted this appeal to advertisers on Thursday. He said he wanted to make Twitter, quote, the most respected advertising platform

in the world. So does he want advertising? What does that even mean? Twitter, like most of the big social media platforms, makes the vast majority of its money from advertising. Musk has said he thinks that they should shift to other ways of making money, maybe helping content creators monetize, and then Twitter takes a cut of that, maybe some sort of subscription business. But he walked in the door and he has to make the finances work out in a hurry. I mean, he took on huge debt to finance this acquisition of Twitter.

He's got investors who want to be paid back. And Twitter, by the way, is not a money-making company. It has generally lost money. And so he realizes he can't afford to alienate advertisers, at least in the short term. And so he posted a statement that said, I'm not going to let Twitter become this free-for-all hellscape.

Those were his words. We understand that advertisers don't want their content, their ads, to be surrounded by toxic hate and racial slurs and all that sort of thing. So a big part of Musk's vision for Twitter has been less moderation, more free speech, right? But what does that mean to Musk? Like, what does his idea of moderation now seem to be on the platform? Musk has really gone back and forth. When he came into the deal and started talking about it,

he was really gung-ho on the idea that Twitter should be all about free speech, unfettered free speech. You know, it shouldn't be a place where people get censored for misinformation or get banned from the service for saying something that offends liberals. And this is why people on the right were so excited about Musk taking over the company. It's just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law. And a good sign as to whether there's free speech is someone you don't like allowed to say something you don't like. And if that is the case, then we have free speech. And it's damn annoying.

have free speech. And it's damn annoying. But almost every social media company realizes as they go along that just unfettered free speech is not really a content moderation policy. I mean, just for starters, there are certain types of speech that are actually illegal for social platforms to host in many countries around the world. And then there are types of speech, quote unquote, like spam and scams and bots and people pretending to be somebody they aren't. There are foreign influence campaigns. I mean, there are trolls backed by the Kremlin or by China who try to influence other countries' elections or get involved in other countries' politics. So even if you want to be really permissive when it comes to sort of legitimate political discourse, you have to do kind of a lot of content moderation work just to sort of do the bare minimum that social media users expect.

And then there's the question of stuff like hate speech. So on the first day that Elon Musk was in charge of Twitter, hate speech. So on the first day that Elon Musk was in charge of Twitter, there was a report that said the use of heinous racial slur, the N-word for black people on Twitter skyrocketed by 500% because racist trolls were so excited about Musk being in charge and implementing this free speech regime where anything goes and you don't get in trouble for it. So Musk has now tried in several ways to sort of moderate his own stance toward moderation and say, well, we're not going to allow everything. There are going to be some rules. The basketball legend LeBron James tweeted recently that he was concerned by the reports of people using the N-word on Twitter and not getting in trouble for it. And Musk was

quick to reply and say, well, look, we're looking into that. We don't think that's okay. We don't want it to happen. So he kind of has this internal battle over how much of a free speech warrior he's really going to be versus how much that in practice would scare decent people and marginalize people off the platform. It might be worth noting here, like he already just got absolutely nailed for posting basically a conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi's husband on the site already. Right. So Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, her home in San Francisco, someone broke into it and assaulted her husband, Paul Pelosi. cisco someone broke into it and assaulted her husband paul pelosi investigators say the stranger shouted where's nancy then tried to tie up her husband and wait for her to come home now if you were to look at the attacker social media footprint with various memes and conspiracy theories about

covid19 vaccines global warming jewish people and q anon fan fiction like the supposed cover-up of hillary clinton tweeted about that and tweeted her concern and tweeted a link to a sort of mainstream news article. And Elon Musk replied and said, well, maybe there's more to the story here. And then he posted a link to a site that is a sort of a known conspiracy and misinformation site, not really a reputable site at all, that was advancing this theory that Paul Pelosi had been involved in some sort of shady activity, maybe shady sexual activity, and that that was really at the root of this home invasion. And so Musk, you know, here's the CEO of a company that for years has tried to take on responsibility for- Yeah, to moderate stuff like this. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. To do moderation that reigns in viral lies and conspiracy theories. Here's the new owner pushing what appears to be a viral conspiracy theory on his own site. Deeply concerned about that. But interestingly, a few hours later, he actually deleted the tweet. So again, I think we see Musk a bit at war with himself. I mean, again, I think we see Musk a bit at war with himself. I mean, he wants to be this provocateur, this troll, this guy, you know, this free speech warrior, anything goes, this hero of the right. And at the same time, he's very quickly getting a crash course in how detrimental that can be to this extremely expensive new investment that he's just taken on. And just talking about how detrimental this

could be or, you know, other consequences here, like, let's say he lightens up on moderation big time. And if a lot of these layoffs go through, there would be, I would imagine, way less people to even do any kind of moderation. And what kind of impact do you think that may have on, say, social movements in repressive countries? I don't want to assume too much about what Musk understands and doesn't, but he has not evinced a very nuanced understanding, at least in his public statements so far, of the role that Twitter plays in speech around the world. of the role that Twitter plays in speech around the world. He seems to have the impression that most of Twitter's content moderation efforts are about censoring or suppressing conservative users in the United States,

or maybe, you know, in the English language. In fact, a lot of what Twitter did around speech was to try to stand up for the speech rights of people in countries who maybe were protesting against the government or publishing things that the government didn't want them to be able to publish. I mean, this is part of why Twitter has always allowed users to be anonymous on its service. That's different from Facebook. Twitter has fought legal battles around the world to protect those people's rights. I think it would be a shame if he starts making big changes at Twitter without a full understanding of Twitter's global user base. Actually, only about one in five Twitter users is from the United States and Canada. The majority are from elsewhere in the world.

India is a huge market for Twitter, and Musk has said very little about that. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know

their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of days in particular. You know, if this battle around content moderation is this ongoing culture war. Musk now has this massive social media platform. And like meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he now owns a significant piece of the global discourse. And what do you think these billionaires snapping up platforms could mean for our online future, controlling or snapping up platforms. The concentration of power over online discourse in a few hands is absolutely a legitimate matter of concern. Of course, the idea of wealthy capitalists wanting to control media is not

new at all. Many of the early media magnets in the newspaper world were sort of the billionaires of their time. My company, the Washington Post, is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. So this trend of, you know, when you have, when you can buy almost anything in the world, you know, maybe one of the things you buy is influence over the media or over discourse is certainly not new. I think what is new is that these global platforms like Facebook and like Twitter, you could throw TikTok and YouTube in there, are bigger than any traditional media source ever was. They reach more people. They arguably have more influence. And crucially, they aren't bound by the same norms as to their responsibility for what gets said on there. And they don't have sort of

journalistic ethics in the same way that a media company does. And of course, you can criticize the ethics of any number of media companies, but you're doing it according to an understood set of standards, that they're only supposed to publish things that are true, right? That they're supposed to report the news without a heavy partisan bias, that they're supposed to focus on things that are worth saying and not just distractions. Social platforms do not generally accept those responsibilities. They have gradually come to accept some of them over the recent years. But that is, in fact, what Musk seems to be pushing back against. He thinks that it really should be a tool for people to say whatever they want to say, as opposed to a publisher that

takes ownership of what gets published under its watch. So I think we are seeing gradually a reaction to this concentration of internet power in the hands of a few billionaires in the form of government attempts to regulate social media. The European Union has been in the lead on this. But you see in Canada, the United States, Australia, various attempts by regulators who in the past have taken a sort of hands-off attitude toward the internet and toward social media to reimpose some kind of public accountability for what can be said on there. But then, of course, you run into the question of we may not want billionaires deciding what we all can say online. Do we really want governments deciding what we can all say online? So that's a struggle I think that's going to continue to play out in the years to come. One more question before we go, Will. What do you think this new Twitter is going to look like under Musk? Is it Twitter that we know dead?

It is so hard to predict Elon Musk for some of the reasons that we've touched on in this program. So how exactly Twitter will be different in a year from now, if Musk will even still own Twitter in a year from now, is really, I think, impossible to say. And anybody who thinks they can guarantee that is kidding you. But I do think we can say that Musk has already changed Twitter. The people and the corporate culture that made Twitter the company what it was are quickly leaving, whether by choice or by compulsion. The company's image of itself as having a responsibility to foster so-called healthy conversations or to at least try to rein in toxicity and hate and anger. You could argue about whether they ever really made a lot of progress on it, but that is no longer the core mission there. And users get that, right? I mean, so Musk has said that he is going to form a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints to oversee big content moderations. And he won't make any big changes to the policies until that happens.

But even without him making a single change to the policy, the attitude that he has brought to Twitter is different and users get that. And so we see right-wing accounts ballooning in followers as their supporters are energized by the idea that now this is a free speech zone. We can, you know, the liberal censors are out. We, you know, we can say whatever we want now. There's great enthusiasm and growth on the political right of Twitter. And you can see people who lean left, people who are from marginalized groups, people who are worried about being the targets of hate speech, harassment, and bullying, already fleeing and looking for other

places to go. Certainly they've lost any sort of faith or trust in Twitter, that Twitter's leadership has protecting them as its goal. And so it's already a different platform, even without a single change of content moderation policy. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. That was so interesting. Thanks so much for having me. All right, that is all for today.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you soon.