On with Kara Swisher - Will Elon Musk Turn Twitter Into Yahoo Mail?

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Twitter rose to prominence as a global public square that helped enable the Arab Spring, but Elon Musk has changed all that. The platform is complying with governments more, and a murky algorithm and blue check jungle makes it feel less relevant and less reliable than ever before. Nayeema and Kara break down how the fruit has fallen and where it may eventually land (Yahoo Mail, anyone?) with Zoë Schiffer, managing editor of Platformer, and Ryan Mac, The New York Times’s tech and accountability reporter, who was among those banned by Musk back in December. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Instagram — yes, Instagram, it’s better than Yahoo Mail — we’re @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Just kidding, I'm Naima Raza. Yeah, I'm Kara Swisher, and I get to be a guest today. Nobody is Kara Swisher but Kara Swisher, just so you're aware. You know what? You keep Kara Swisher. I'm very happy being Naima Raza.

And it's wonderful to have you on as a guest today. We're going to talk about Twitter, and while we're sometimes loathe to cover it, we get the emails and the reviews that are like, stop talking about Elon. And by the way, again, may I stress, he's an important figure in tech right now and across the world, whether it's cars or space or Starlink, Ukraine. He's very important. So I'm sorry if you're tired of him. So are we. But here we are.

Alas. And it's critical this week as Elon's supposed free speech absolutist got tangled up with the Turkish elections at the behest of Turkey's President Erdogan, who's been in power for, I don't know, a mere 20 years. It's similar to actions the company has taken in India, the UAE, Germany. He is complying with governments more than ever before, according to certain reports. And it begs the question, are Twitter's town square days over? Yes. This is a company that really rose to prominence during the Arab Spring, and now that DNA seems to be completely gone.

Yeah, that's gone. That's gone. It's basically the Elon show now, and sometimes it's a pretty ugly show, whether he's bringing a new home for Tucker Carlson, which is fine as long as he has other people on the platform, whether he's attacking George Soros and playing into all those anti-Semitic tropes,

whether it's racism, somehow he's still found time for Pepe memes. Yes, and that's just in the last week or so. And that's why we thought it would be a perfect time for this panel to discuss where Twitter is at, how far it's kind of fallen from its original vision, and whether the new CEO, Linda Iaccarino, is going to be able to change any of this. We'll be discussing this and all things Twitter with you, Kara Swisher, as well as with two of the best source tech reporters on the beat, Zoe Schiffer, who's the managing editor

of Platformer, and Ryan Mack of the New York Times. And just so you know, Linda Iaccarino, this is just for you. We made this podcast just for you. You're going to need it. This is your manual, your operating manual for how to win at Twitter. That's correct. Anyways, great to see you, Zoe and Ryan. Thanks for being here with us today. Yeah, thanks for having us. So I want to start with the global here.

On Friday, shortly before the Turkish elections, where the incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to enter yet a third decade of rule, Twitter announced that the company will comply with some takedown requests. And this caused a bit of fervor from the media. So Zoe, why don't you explain what happened? Yeah. So, I mean, this isn't the first time that Twitter has blocked links to specific content at the behest of the Turkish government. It's done it before, actually, in 2014, Twitter took the Turkish government to court. It sued because it was blocked in the country over a very similar squabble. But I think it's pretty significant

because the entire reason that Elon has said repeatedly that he bought Twitter was because he's a free speech absolutist and wants to allow the maximum amount of speech. And critically, Tesla entered the Turkish market last month. And so I think it wasn't just a concern that he was blocking some links ahead of a very important election. Like you I think it wasn't just a concern that he was blocking some links ahead of a very important election. Like you said, it was that people are quite concerned that under Elon Musk, Twitter now has other reasons outside of this kind of narrow legal angle to comply with the Turkish government's request, namely that he has an interest in keeping Tesla in the country. And SpaceX, let's add SpaceX

because they have a relationship also. And he's, you know, many, right when Twitter was bought, someone very prominent said to me, it's because of his other business interests that you'll see it over time where he can, not in this country, he'll make a lot of noise over here,

but elsewhere, if he can do favors for autocrats that he needs to do business with, he will. He's definitely trying to focus the conversation on, like, would you rather not have Twitter in the country at all? Like, as early as February this year, the Turkish government did block Twitter momentarily after the earthquake, and that is quite significant. But I think it's distracting from these other concerns that are legitimate that people have about why the company seems to be capitulating so quickly on these requests. Right. And there's a big change because, as you were saying, in 2014, they actually went and sued the Turkish government. In this case, they're complying, which is very different to that. And Twitter could have called the bluff and pushed Erdogan to shut down Twitter in the days before an election, which would cast a long shadow of doubt.

But at the same time, Twitter isn't alone in doing this. And Ryan, you had called this a blueprint for repressive governments everywhere. But Elon defended Twitter's turkey call in this case, saying that A, he's always held that free speech is defined by what matches local laws. He's always put an asterisk on it. B, that the choice was to have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access in some tweets. And C, that this is par for the course for all internet companies, that everyone was doing it, you know, Twitter was just being transparent. Does he have a point there? I think there's some semblance of

truth in that last point there that all companies face these issues. I think Facebook is one of them. They have also withheld content within the country at the behest of the Turkish government. But the whole point of this is this kind of seeming hypocrisy with coming into the company saying, you know, I'm acquiring it because I'm a free speech absolutist. If it comes down to it, I'm going to lose money protecting free speech. But at the same time, having this carve out this very big exception that if a government comes and tells me to do something, you know, I'm going to follow the law of that region. Yeah, I mean, to Ryan's point, he's like set up this scenario, you have every other major tech platform is or is supposed to release transparency reports where they talk about

all the times that they've complied with government takedown requests. The issue is that those CEOs aren't coming out and saying the entire reason that we are in business right now is because we believe in free speech. And so, you know, it is the hypocrisy, like Ryan said. I think the outcry in Western media is focused on Elon Musk as if he's out on a limb when actually YouTube or others are also complying with requests, as if Twitter is doing this and dangerously slowing the elections when Twitter reaches a particular segment of the Turkish population, which is probably less likely to vote for Erdogan as is. But I think the more kind of more intellectually faithful critique is about what you guys are saying, that Elon's hypocrisy as a free speech absolutist who's been using these Twitter files

to shame a previous regime for complying with governments and then coming out and complying in an outsized way. And then two, almost a mourning of old Twitter, Twitter that stood for something, Twitter that would sue Turkey in 2014. So, Kara, I want to talk about that irony here because Twitter 1.0 really had its heyday during the Arab Spring in 2011. It dined out on that for a long time. So did everybody. Well, yes. The Facebook revolution, the Twitter revolution. But you were covering the company then. I was working in the Middle East then, seeing what was happening with Arab Spring.

But talk about what Twitter and social media was like at that point. Well, it was hopeful. It was the idea, you know, Mark Zuckerberg crowed about it. You know, this idea that it wasn't so much different than in China, in Tiananmen Square, when they used the fax machine, right? That was the revolution of the fax machine. It didn't work, of course. The tanks rolled in and everything happened the way we thought it would. But it still was a moment of great.

They were using fax machines. In this way, they were using Twitter to organize. They were using Twitter to express themselves. These were populations that didn't have an ability to express themselves, and this was the first time publicly they could do so, sometimes to their detriment later, of course, because they couldn't take names, make lists and take names. And so, I think it was a very hopeful idea. And as usual, social media doubled down on that they were the reason it happened. Like,

look at us, we did this for them when they were only the communications vehicle at the time. And at the time, I felt it was like, well, you know, I think the people change things, not Twitter. But okay, sure, they use Twitter I think the people change things, not Twitter. But okay, sure, they use Twitter just like they use a telephone or a fax machine or a broadcast network. But it was definitely a heady time for sure. Yeah, I agree with you. It would be the people. And also I would say that 10 years on, you know, the Arab Spring hasn't yielded the results that anyone would like.

That's right. Like a lot of these countries are worse off. Tiananmen Square, Arab No, that's right. Like a lot of these countries are worse off, Egypt, Libya, et cetera. Tiananmen Square, Arab Spring, everything. Yeah, but one Twitter executive was recently describing to me how in the early 2010s, this became a defining core of the company,

a recruiting alley that was instrumental in attracting young employees, attracting leaders like Vijaya Gade to the company, the person who's been credited with the decision to bump Trump after January 6th. So Zoe, I'm curious if you can talk about that, because this seems to be a really important part of the Twitter transition under Elon, taking a bunch of people who believed in one thing, rallied for one thing, and replacing

them with quite the other, or in many cases, not replacing them at all. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think about, like, from a recruiting standpoint, Twitter didn't pay as much as the other big tech platforms. The stock wasn't worth as much. The reason that a lot of people went there was twofold. One, the company legitimately did care about work-life teams in particular, it really felt that under Dorsey, despite all of the problems that people did have with his distracted leadership, that the company really stood for something and that it was invested in fostering civic discourse and democracy across the world. democracy across the world. And I think that that was a primary reason that a lot of people joined the company in the first place. And it was kind of a motivating factor in a lot of decisions that they made. Twitter was the most, the people that worked there were the most free speech, besides Reddit, I guess. They were, you know, the others all made compromises from the get-go

and cooperated much more or, you know, talked a little bit about free speech. But Twitter really talked for a while. And of course, people in this country would say no, the right wing would say no, they shadow banned us, this and that. What about the Twitter files, which of course was a giant bust? They were making mistakes in real time, you know, like with Babylon Bee. I never thought that was a particularly good idea to stifle a comic comedy site. It wasn't a very funny comedy site, but sometimes it is. And so, you know, so that was the problem is that this was in the DNA, but then there's someone who does everything by fiat, what he feels that day. If he didn't have a good breakfast or he had a really party night the night before, whatever he's feeling is how the company expresses itself now.

But I think also, like, we're talking about distinct eras of Twitter. And there was this long period where Dick Costolo said we're the free speech wing of the free speech party, and the company had massive problems with harassment. But I do think there was an overcorrection around 2021. And it's because there were real business implications for not moderating enough speech on the platform. Disney was going to buy Twitter and pulled out because the harassment was so rampant and bad, there wasn't enough content moderation. And I think that there was a big push around 2020 and 2021 to like really crack down on a massive number of accounts that employees saw promoting QAnon

conspiracy theories and other things. And I think that we're now kind of seeing the company, you know, go in a... Too far the other way. The pendulum has swung. Exactly. Well, it's capricious. It's capricious is what it is. Yeah. He's mercurial. It's capricious. We can't kind of glean what's going on. But you're saying that Elon has a bit of an argument that Twitter had overcorrected. It was no longer this neutral trans square. I don't think it has the kind of political bent that he ascribes to it. But I do think if you talk to employees who are making these decisions around 2021 they would say we just

had blunt tools to police content at the time like the things that we could do were essentially like ban accounts and there was a need to bring in other tools more interstitials more warnings um so that we weren't just like taking off you know 70 000 q anon accounts after the um january 6th insurrection like i think a lot of people would have said that was that was too much yeah i think one of the things is january 6th scared the shit out of everybody like they did realize well again it was the people who did it um in this case social media definitely played a strong role here and i think all of them didn't want to be i always call them they didn't want to be handmaidens to sedition really and that's what they felt like for a little bit there. And especially with Donald Trump using that platform, because that's the key part is Donald Trump made Twitter his, I'm not going to use the term, but he used it a lot.

for his own devices, and quite well, as I've written that a number of times. But that's what changed, is the Donald Trump being the main character of Twitter, and then the insurrection. And I think that really impacted that company rather significantly, and gave an opening for Elon. 100%. 100%. And I think that, you know, obviously there's no rhyme or reason. I think that's part of the challenge. Elon has said that he has certain principles, free speech, openness to debate, equity. But if you look at his actions from blocking content in India, blocking a BBC documentary in India, blocking content in Turkey, suppressing sub-stack links, or suspending journalists like Ryan Mack back in December, there doesn't seem to be any principle that explains the system. I don't think. Though, Ryan, you've been in the front lines. Do you see a principle?

Well, I mean, there are policies that are made within minutes or hours after these things happen. But yeah, not speaking too much about my own incident. But yeah, it's blocking Taylor Lorenz, for example, for supposedly sharing outside links to Facebook or Twitter. Or sorry, Facebook, Instagram, or other accounts, Substack, that kind of thing. These things seem to be made in posts like very quickly and without rhyme or reason. Again, whatever he kinds of thinks up that day, it's gonna be a new policy. And it is pretty telling, you know, I don't think there is any free speech basis to this and he seems to just act on a whim whenever something is is not going his way so um but yeah that was a that was a weird

experience does anyone else want to comment on ryan's because he doesn't want to comment on his own situation i mean i think that that was a moment where like the hypocrisy was first really really revealed i specifically specifically remember Ryan being blocked and or banned in December as like, oh, okay, all of the other reasons we think that he has bought Twitter. But I feel like a lot of what we see Musk saying publicly is an example of him operating with incomplete information.

Like sometimes he'll come out and have these explanations for why Twitter is slower in certain countries or a specific policy or something that happened in the past. And you'll see a whole bunch of Twitter employees immediately be like, that's not real. That's not what actually happened. That's not how it works. But I think it's not in my mind that Elon is like coming out and purposefully lying necessarily. It's that he is getting bad information from the people around him and he has created a situation internally where no one wants to tell him the truth. And I've heard people say again and again, when Elon asks you a question,

what goes through your mind is what not what is the right answer, but what is the least fireable answer? And so you see people giving him these answers and then he's coming out in front saying like, oh, you know, this is the situation. And I think from the outside, you're like, oh, wow, he doesn't seemingly know what he's talking about. See, I think he's being disingenuous a lot of the time. And you noticed that last night in the CNBC thing with the guy in Allen, Texas. Dave Faber from CNBC asked about the situation in Allen, Texas, these shootings. favor from CNBC asked about the situation in Allen, Texas, these shootings. And he kept insisting this guy with no proof whatsoever was not a white supremacist when even the Texas government is

saying that, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like if you're wearing a swastika tattoo, you're pretty far along in the white supremacist group. And so he keeps saying things and part of me feels like, is he just lying, or does he actually believe it? And I think he certainly has moved in the, has sort of, I don't want to use the term red-pilled because it's so overused, but he's definitely seemed to believe it, like what he was saying, and it reminds you of your, you know, your drunkle at Thanksgiving, your drunkle from some, you know, from some place where you're like, that's not true. That's not true. So if you take a look at his Twitter diet, accounts, he follows the accounts he engages with, I mean, it's many of these accounts that are promoting this kind of conspiracy stuff. So I mean, it's, it's interesting to watch him

to watch his brain kind of morph over time as he follows these, I mean, going back to the idea of operating on complete information. I mean, going back and looking at the Substack issue, he saw a tweet from Substack saying, we're going to launch this new product. And he worked himself into a frenzy saying, you know, they're a competitor now, we're going to do everything to block them. And so it's stuff he sees on Twitter. But this is the thing. So just to wrap the Arab Spring of it all, back then in the Arab Spring, Twitter had two things. And for a long time, it has relevance and reliability, right? And when Trump came in, it had maybe even more relevance because it became the president's primary platform for communicating in a lot of ways.

I'm curious right now what you guys think. Give it a grade on relevance and then on reliability. Zoe, why don't you go first? I mean, I think both of those, you would have to say, have degraded. I know people like to talk about, oh, well, Twitter is still operating. It's still up, even though it's slash three quarters of the engineers. But there's no question that during moments of peak traffic, the site is glitchier and buggier than it used to be. And I think people are tracking that and we have data now to kind of prove it. And I also think like there are more prominent people and organizations that are defecting to other platforms. And so to your point, like with relevance, you know,

it is important when you see organizations like NPR and Twitter power users going to blue sky and not posting on Twitter at all. And there's the kind of blue tick jungle, the 4U algorithm sucks, all you see is Elon. I mean, there's a lot of problems with the product overall. So I don't know, Carrie, I know you'll give it a grade. Give it a grade on relevance and reliability. I don't use it as much because I only use it to tease Elon,

really, pretty much. Now I'm not even marketing our stuff on it because it's what's the point what happens is I've had to turn off comments because if I don't the name calling and the crazy people are just quantumly like and you don't want to deal with it's like having a bunch of people who you don't like screaming outside your house and it's not necessary that's happened but there's also jump in porn. Friends of mine have sent me all kinds of porn, which is just like, that never happened on Twitter. What kind of friend? Lots of them, lots of women. You know, but they want to say, what is going on here? They're not even, but if you leave comments on, that's what happens. And then of course-

So give it a grade, Cara. You know, D, a D. It's like my son's, when my son got a D in math, he goes, at least it's not an F. And I'm like, it is an F, Louie. It's an F. So it's an F, but it's a D. It's like my son's, when my son got a D in math, he goes, at least it's not an F. And I'm like, it is an F, Louie. It's an F. So it's an F, but it's a D. It's working and it's going, but it's certainly really, and for relevance, Zoe's exactly right. People are moving. The whole social media ecosystem is exploding in a weird and interesting way where people are going elsewhere. Ryan, you agree? Reliability, relevance? Yeah, I'd agree with that. I mean, relevance, I mean, I don't want to extrapolate too much of my own use of it,

but I'm spending less time on it. I'm using things like Blue Sky more. And looking at the experience now, the recommended feed, especially for recommended followers, I was getting like Andrew Tate the other day. I don't know what I'm engaging with that is... Must. Everybody gets must, right? Yeah, I actually took aate the other day. I don't know what I'm engaging with that is. Yeah, I get everybody gets a screenshot the other day where you know, on his page where it says the people you should also follows Andrew Tate and Roger Stone and it's not the stuff I necessarily want to see. Can I make one other point? The ads are really bad. Like the ads are

they feel like late night cable at 2am. If you look at like Twitter's Slack, you see people continually, like Elon will screenshot an ad that he sees and say, why am I seeing this? And then you see these whole conversations. This has been happening for months where people are like, why is Elon seeing this? We have to tweak the algorithm this way

because the ads are showing up like this. It's like he says again and again, like use me as the example. I'm the user telling you something is wrong but when you optimize for one person and one person who has an incredibly unique experience because he's the most followed person on the site like you're gonna get a totally wacky experience for everyone else you know i love screenshotting those like horrible ads and just like sharing them you know i think it's like this hobby yeah what's the best ad

yesterday one of my friends sent me um an ad for a duck door which is like you know a door for your pet duck and they just had like a which is kind of a cute video you know you had the duck walking in and out of the door and i was like why did you get this like what were you looking at that you know who's who's advertising this there's no advertising left and they weren't good before let me just say we'll be back in a minute after an ad that's not for duck doors. And when we return, we'll talk about the new chief twit, Linda Iaccarino. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. Grammarly, enterprise ready AI. Let's move on from content moderation and get into the new hire at Twitter, Linda Iaccarino. Some have called her the adult in the room. That was a call back to Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, who was definitely not 51 at the time. I think, Ryan, you pointed out that Elon is 51.

He is 51. That was a factual statement, yeah. But is he, Ryan? Is he 51? I think he doubts that. Physically, 51, yeah. Elon, in an interview with Dan Faber of CNBC on Tuesday evening, said that Linda Yaccarino is going to be a Gwen Shotwell type, using this SpaceX president and COO analogy, who runs the company. We don't hear from her much, but she runs the company and keeps it moving and grooving. And others have joked, including myself, that she may be Esther Crawford, loyally sleeping on a sleeping bag on Twitter floor one day and then gone the next.

Do we have any indication of which one of these three models or something else entirely will be the right one? Ryan, I'll start with you. I think probably a mix of some of those models. But you know, the point of all this is that she's going to be serving at the behest of Elon. And when you're in that position, you are going to be ruled by his whims. You may have the chief executive title and the position, but he's already making it clear that she's not going to be completely overseeing all aspects of the business. He's going to have oversight of product. He'll be overseeing engineering. So it creates this very interesting dynamic. I think everyone is pointing to like Gwynne Shotwell as the example here. But Gwynne Shotwell has had experience

building up a company from almost day one at SpaceX. I think she was employee in the 20s or something at SpaceX, you know, believed in the mission at SpaceX, learned how to deal with Elon over many years. And, you know, Linda Iaccarino doesn't have that. And, you know, she pursued this job pretty job pretty heavily, but now she's going to have to learn how to do that on the fly. And for most people, that doesn't work out when you're working with Elon Musk. Zoe, anything to add? I think it's relevant to say that, like,

Elon was saying very early on in the acquisition of Twitter that the company needed to completely overhaul its business model. It needed to be less dependent on ads and move towards subscriptions. The rollout of Twitter Blue has been nothing short of a dumpster fire. I think we can say pretty confidently. And now we're seeing an overcorrection and they're going back to ads. Like there's no other way to read the CEO pick in my mind than the fact that he has seen that the company absolutely needs to woo back advertisers. And Linda is the person to do that. The other thing that I wanted to say, which to Ryan's point is like, if you talk to employees

as other companies, they will say that all of Elon's companies operate like startups, no matter the size. And the people that thrive in those environments are people that are willing to work nights and weekends and be really scrappy. I think that the new CEO has said publicly that she prides herself on her work ethic and is willing to put in those hours. But whether or not she's able to operate with a kind of scrappy startup mentality, that will make her a lasting CEO. I think we have yet to see. Kara, you know her. I know her very well. And let me just say, Gwen Shopwell, do we know what she looks like? No, we don't. Because Gwen Shopwell never appears anywhere or does many interviews, first of all.

Linda likes the attention. She does, and she's wanted that. She's wanted to be a prominent CEO because she, even though she brought in a lot of the dough at NBC, she never was put up for Jeff Schell's job. You didn't hear her name bandied about. And she's told me she's wanted to be a CEO for a long time. Yeah, because she was so good at what she did no one wanted her to leave she's great but the transition from running ad sales to running a company is rather significant so that's one one thing second she likes the limelight so does he so that's gonna be i i don't know how that i don't see her as a backseat taker the way

the others are as to she's worked at a modern regular old media company for years moving into the chaos of twitter she's gonna it reminds me a little bit when marissa mayer went from google to uh yahoo yahoo was a mess and i was you know i was like this is not a first world country the water doesn't work the you know kind of thing and so um she wasn't used to it because google had been such a country club for for most people who work there at nb, for all its faults, run very well by the Comcast people. And then lastly, she's, well, she is aligned with him politically, most definitely. Although I don't think she's a fan of white supremacists. I don't think she would tweet crazy things. She's not like that. She's pretty regular conservative, a Trump supporter. But is she going to stop him from doing it? That's the question.

No, that's the thing is she's going to have to, once he gets into the crazier stuff, she's going to have to either go along with him, or she's going to have to spend all her time explaining to advertisers what he's doing. And he's still going to be the attention. Everyone looks at him. And that's what she's got to do with moving white supremacists off the platform. Advertisers don't want to be next to them. And I can't imagine, I think they'll, because she's so well regarded in the ad industry, and she really is. And she's funny. She's really interesting. She's sort of a Long Island chick. You know what I mean? She's got a real like swagger to her. They're going to give her the money at the beginning in small amounts. And then if it doesn't work, and by the way,

I was at a dinner of advertisers the other day and they were like, it never worked before. And it really doesn't work now, but they'll give her 10 million bucks or this and that. And then they won't. Were you the one that was saying that? I think this was you, but correct me if I'm wrong, that the way that she's used to wooing advertisers is with really big

budgets and being able to wine and dine people and elon is famously um cheap pretty stingy and cheap um and so whether he's going to give her those budgets and allow her to work like she's used to i think it's like con i'll be interested this upcoming con event in france i'll be interested she was big on the parties big on the scene scene. She always loved being on stage. I did several stage events with her, and she's good at it. We'll see if that's going to, I don't know how, Elon's the draw, and the minute she puts him there and he says something offensive. Maybe she can give him another puff piece interview for the duck door guys. But the analogy is interesting. I'm curious, there may or might be a good one, but she didn't have to manage Jerry Yang, which is, I think, the very challenging. And Jerry Yang was also not this.

No, he's lovely. One thing, Ryan, that's working against her is that Linda Iaccarino, while she'll be working to make Twitter brand safe and drive up these CPMs for advertisers, is Elon in his tweets. And on Monday night, there was a series of tweets in which Elon took on George Soros. He likened him to the X-Man villain and Holocaust survivor Magneto. Magneto.

Magneto. Sorry, Cara. Cara Holocaust survivor Magneto. Magneto. Magneto. Sorry, Kara. Kara's the comic expert. Magneto. I know. I've got to go to X-Men University. You've got to go. This after it came out that Soros Fund had dropped their position in Tesla at a kind of high point last quarter.

So again, back to his business interests. So, Ryan, you had a great tweet summarizing Elon's movements. Do you mind to kind of summarize how you look at this man? before he was in Cabo dancing at a rave, some kind of music festival. It's just weird to see how fast he turns, you know, and the rate at which he puts out these very insane tweets. But, you know, I was also thinking of Linda coming in and also what she would have to deal with. It's going to be her job telling people, you know,

well, this is actually what he was thinking when he tweeted about George Soros. So this is what he meant when he put out this racist meme. Yeah, the racist meme about how the media covers white on white crime, black on black, et cetera, white on black crime. He liked someone's meme. Yeah, he liked it. And he said accurate. Yeah, that's right. He seeks that stuff out so he doesn't have to post it himself yeah he's a master kind of sub tweeter and commenter i mean

in november though when he did that twitter spaces with yoel um and robin i there was an industry an ad industry exec who asked like how should we think about your brand versus twitter's brand like they the two seem so connected and he had kind of this answer where he rambled on about, well, if I say I'm doing something, then it's me. And if Twitter's doing something, then it's Twitter. And those are distinct and they can't be the same. And I think, you know, it was kind of like. Well, you've said from the Slack instructions,

that's not the case. He's saying this, I am the user, I am Twitter. It's not the case. But I do think like that, like separating those two is going to be Linda's job from the user. I am Twitter. It's not the case. But I do think like that, that like separating those two is going to be Linda's job. Well, the thing is, Linda is Linda's way of separating them. I've heard from a dozen people. She's had lots of lunches recently and breakfast is, you know, they're just tweets. Don't just ignore them.

You know, she's sort of down his highway on the woke stuff, too. And so she's like, oh, don't worry about them. That's how she's dealing with it right now is like, just ignore them. They're just silly. You know, they're not silly, Linda. Like that to me, when I heard that from half a dozen people, I was like, what? They're not silly. And then, of course, she's literally going to spend all her time doing this when she needs to be doing other things, which she won't have the power to do because she's not going to be able to turn off the white supremacists. She's not going to be able

to turn off the porn. She doesn't know how. And she doesn't run product. She doesn't run product. He does. Yeah. And Elon himself, he's kind of going back and forth. He said to the BBC, oh, I really shot myself in the foot. I should really stop tweeting after 3 a.m. He clearly doesn't. After Raven Cabo, he's tweeting away. But on Tuesday during the CNBC interview, David Faber asked Musk about his itchy fingers. and Musk said something kind of alarming. Let's play a clip and just be forewarned of Elon's awkward pauses here. Do your tweets hurt the company? Are there Tesla owners who say, I don't agree with his political position because, and I know it because he shares so much of it? Or are there advertisers on Twitter that Linda Yaccarina will come and say,

you got to stop, man, or, you know, I can't get these ads because of some of the things you tweet. You know, I'm reminded of... You know, I'm reminded of... There's a scene in The Princess Bride. Great movie. Great movie. Where he confronts the person who killed his father.

And he says... Offer me money. Off offer me power i don't care so you just don't care you want to share what you have to say i'll say what i want to say and if if if uh if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it. Gosh, spoken like a badly raised dramatic teenager. That's like ridiculous. Spoken like someone who has a lot of money and a lot of power. And was badly raised, let me just say. I mean, everyone said this was the most, Ryan, Zoe, you all tweeted this was the most alarming part of the interview. Go ahead, Ryan, what were you going to say? Well, I think if you rewind that clip a little further,

like a minute before that, that was in response to a question about why he was sharing, you know, conspiracy. It was actually a minute after, but yes, he does ask him that. Tweets about Allen, Texas, you know, and why he thought the shooter was a psyop, basically. And, you know, David Faber is asking, you know, what do you think the impact is of your tweets, you know? And that's, you know, that's just bizarre. Like, I don't know. It's a very nihilistic view. I didn't, by the way, that silence there, that's his little trick. He does that in interviews. He's silent for a minute to make everyone uncomfortable. Does it make everything seem deeper?

No, he's doing it, I'm a genius and I must take a moment to collect my thoughts. It's a total stunt. Jack Dorsey does it too. Like that. And then comes out with the genius of the Princess Bride. I don't care was the most, I don't care should be the motto for Twitter and the management of Twitter. And that will give Linda, he does not care. And he doesn't. And not just because he's rich, Zoe, he doesn't. He has a very nihilistic view of the world and shared by a lot of people in his group. And so they don't care. And that's really problematic if you want to build a business. And he's not kidding about that. He doesn't care. And yet, you know, so much of what's been done at Facebook, we talked about this with Casey Newton back around the Facebook Files reporting here. I remember when Casey came and said, well, naming and shaming is a power that the world has over Facebook by naming and shaming some of these executives. Someone who's shameless, someone who's so wealthy. I mean, Ryan, you've covered billionaires, tech and power for a long time.

as someone who's so wealthy? I mean, Ryan, you've covered billionaires, tech and power for a long time. What is the path to getting him to care or what he might care about? Oh, man. I mean, I think the answer to that is, you know, a significant impact on Tesla's share price. I feel like he cares when his pocketbook is hit, despite what he's saying about money in that clip. His baby is Tesla, and when there was people arguing he should hire a CEO at Twitter so he can focus more time on Tesla, he somewhat paid attention to that. But I don't know. I don't know how you can get this person to stay focused and care. That's how he's operated his whole life. I don't know if he's going to change.

Yeah. I mean, he's always, he has had elements of this, and that's what's been so disturbing is they were there, and they'd pop up stupid memes and dumb juvenile jokes for an adult. Often it was sort of like, hmm, that's a little bit juvenile. But it's taken over his personality because the person Linda's dealing with can be very cogent and very smart and interesting, and then this pops out, and that's taken over his personality because the person Linda's dealing with can be very cogent and very smart and interesting. And then this pops out and that's taken over.

And I don't know what the precipitating event here was that caused it, but it's certainly, I mean, Zoe, you've talked to people internally. It's capricious. It's weird. It is. And when you talk to people who work quite closely with him, what they'll say is he says himself, it's an act. Use me, use the specter of Elon Musk to get out of this contract. Use my personality to do X, Y, Z. Like, I think there is a way in which he's seen that it's advantageous to have a reputation as a very bombastic and fiery leader. And that when people talk to him one-on-one, he tends to be

a little more reasonable. You know, he still makes all sorts of decisions spur of the moment that I think people question, but I do think that there is an aspect of this that is an act. It feels Trumpy. But ultimately, they believe it, right? I think Trump now sort of believes in his act. And it's performative on many levels, and he's always right. But he actually is embracing it and living it now, I guess. And there's a point where it's not play acting. People tweet at me like, how could you spend your time years ago pushing this guy forward? Well, he was reasonable. He was brilliant. He was doing things. And this did not happen. And then it just did. And I don't know if there's some personal problems he's having. I suspect there are. I don't know if he's, you know, being so rich for so long and having everybody

lick you up and down all day changes you. But something, it hasn't, can you guys think of anybody else who's turned so dramatically? I don't know. Ryan, can you think of anybody? Not with that much power on. Zoe, can you think of anybody else who's turned so dramatically? I don't know. Ryan, can you think of anybody? Not with that much power. Zoe, can you think of anybody? No, no. And I think when you're at that level of money and power, you have to really work to stay grounded and connected with reality. And when you do the opposite, when you estrange everyone who's willing to tell you the truth and you fire anyone who's willing to stand up to you, then you create an echo chamber in your actual life and you create an echo chamber on social media and they're reinforcing. I can think of people, by the way, because I've lived

in a lot of autocratic countries and I could think of people, I think autocrats are actually the model. I mean, even Erdogan after 2016's coup, this is what he did. Or there are journalists. Journalists. I mean, I'm not going to name anyone because I don't want to invite. Oh, go ahead, Zoe. But I think we can all think of a few people who we looked up to in our early years who have now gone off. Gone off the deep end. Yes, exactly.

Matt Taibbi, come back. We loved you. Oh, my God. Did you? Is that what you said? Okay, I'll say this, and then I actually am going to, like, get harassed and banned on Twitter because of this. But I wrote, I think, my college admissions essay about Glenn Greenwald. I was going to say Glenn Greenwald.

I looked up to him so much. Yes. And that's all I'm going to say. We'll be back in a minute to discuss Tucker Carlson's return to Twitter and our favorite part, predictions. you may need Indeed. Indeed is a matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast.

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And use promo code VOXBIZ. LegalZoom.com and use promo code VOXBIZ. LegalZoom provides access to independent attorneys and self-service tools. LegalZoom is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice except we're authorized through its subsidiary law firm, LZ Legal Services, LLC. Let's talk about some of the ways that Elon intends to make money outside of the ad sphere, which is going to be an uphill battle for Linda, as we discussed. Content media play. So Tucker Carlson has arrived to the building. Ryan, what does that content play look like?

Does it become a model for the next kind of YouTube influencer with worse hair, the next conspiracist influencer? I think it's really unclear what he's going to do with Tucker. He's claiming he doesn't know, like, he didn't know that Tucker was going to make that announcement. But the idea is, you know, build this creator side of the business so that people subscribe to Twitter and do these premium subscriptions. You know, and then Twitter will take a cut of that. You know, he's hoped Tucker can be a model for that.

And so, yeah, that is one aspect of the business he's trying to build. I don't know how big that can be. I don't see it being very big, but you're thinking of creators like Mr. Beast or Libs of TikTok is another one that is now people can subscribe to. And they're going to be revenue generating and it's YouTube type of play. That's the idea. I think that's what he hopes, yeah. Zoe, what about the value of the subscription itself? You've recently reported on new product features, which aren't really there, smoke and mirrors. So they're heralding encrypted DMs that aren't actually encrypted.

Explain what happened there and just give us a couple of other big product bets that Elon is making and where they stand, whether it's TwitterX or encrypted DMs. Yeah, so the encrypted DMs project, Ryan and I were both talking about this publicly. But yeah, I mean, Twitter has been working on this since 2018 under Elon. The company resurrected this project and said, we're going to launch Encrypted DMs. We had Chris Stanley, who's a top Musk lieutenant who joined Twitter in October as part of the transition team leading the project. And when security researchers started tweeting about how Twitter's implementation, how the project was being implemented and kind of raising questions, oh, look, it looks like it's vulnerable to man in the middle attacks. It looks like actually, you know, Elon had said the acid test is if you put a gun to my head, could I read your DMs? They were saying, yes, the answer is, it looks like the answer is.

Don't put a gun into his head right now. Yeah. And Chris Stanley was saying, we had a third-party firm audit the implementation. Those guys are amazing. It was this company called Trail of Bits. Well, it turns out that when we talked to folks at Twitter, Twitter hadn't even signed the contract with Trail of Bits. So there had been no audit, no assessment. And when the project actually launched, Twitter was forced to kind of say publicly,

these DMs are not end-to-end encrypted. They are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. Oh, they're not encrypted then, right? Like, oh, oops. What about, I mean, Elon has become the everything commentator. What about the everything app? Does that have legs? They're all shaking their heads now.

I would be curious what y'all think about this. But in my mind, he's been obsessed with the idea of X since the 90s when his second ever startup that he sold to PayPal was called X.com. This has been, I think, a goal of his for a very long time. Now he's bought Twitter and he's kind of putting that dream onto Twitter. That said, when you talk to people who are in the developer platform space, what they will say is that you need open access to an API for third-party developers to be able to build apps on top of it because you're not going to be able to build

all of the functionality for a super app in-house. And you're definitely not going to be able to do that with like 500 engineers or fewer. And unless you're the Chinese government, right? I mean, it works in China. And also, you have to change people's habits. People are used to using different apps here in this country. It's never caught on the super app. Facebook is the closest to it. But I actually don't know what it means. Like he keeps saying it like it's some provocative thing. And you know, he hasn't presented any models for it. I mean, I think I think most

people imagine it being something like WeChat, you know, in China, you know, you get payments, you have your food ordering, you have your taxi, all in one app, your social media, etc. But he hasn't really laid out what that means. What is the, like, there's no explanation from him. He just keeps saying this phrase over and over and over again until it's like, you know, singed into our frontal cortex. But like, you know, there's no, no one's like asked him, like, what do you mean our frontal cortex but like you know it's there's no no one's like asked him like what do you mean by that what do you exactly envision um beyond you know he's talked about payments a little bit beyond that it's not clear what it is also there's paypal it exists also there's you know uber why would you venmo it's just it's u.s consumers shifting

consumer behavior is so hard and that's just not how people are getting attracted by the way you know who's going to do it if they do it? Apple will do it. Payments are the big cornerstone of this project for him. And he's definitely trying to lay the groundwork for that. But to get people to upload credit card information, like we've seen with Twitter Blue that he was not able to get anywhere even remotely close to the number of subscriptions that was needed to shift even a fraction of Twitter's revenue away from advertising and towards subscriptions. And payments are predicated on trust. You need people to be able to trust the platform.

Media is hard. Yes, media is very hard. And media is hard and not lucrative. Let's end with just a few predictions. So first one, will Elon stay committed to Twitter or will he move on to, will he kind of go away to Tesla, to AI, to whatever his next best, you know, girlfriend is? Prediction. I think his ego's really wrapped up in Twitter personally. And I've been surprised with how long he's stayed committed to it, but I don't expect his attention to completely shift away.

I agree. Will Linda Yaccarino last or will she go the way of Esther Crawford? Ryan? I think everyone has an expiration date in Elon World, so I don't see her being long for this world. Zoe? I only know from talking to Tesla and SpaceX folks, what they will say is, this job can be great, but every day could be your last. And I think that Linda has to keep that in mind as well. Kara?

I think she's very stubborn, so she'll last as long as she can. She wants to make this work because, you know, there's not really a downside for her and she could get rich. Will Twitter still be relevant in two years? No, not the way it's been. Zoe? I don't. I find that one so hard. I mean, the trend to me is that it's getting less relevant over time and there are actually viable alternatives now. So I would say bigger chance than not that it will not have the relevance that it used to have. Ryan? I think it'll still be around in the way that Yahoo Mail

is still around. Oh, God. That's amazing. Oh, sick burn. People still have Yahoo Mail addresses. I know. I'm glad you didn't say AOL mail. She didn't go right to AOL mail. Oh, my God. It's not AOL mail. It works. It works most of the time. People use it. And on that note, we're going to go the way of Yahoo mail.

That is a... Shout out Jerry Yang. I really judge a person when they give me the Yahoo mail address. It's like a hotmail. Oh, my God. So good. Thank you, Zoe and Ryan, for being with us. Thanks so much.

Thanks for having us. Yahoo Mail. That felt a little hopeless. I'm just telling you, Yahoo Mail is cooler than Yahoo Mail. I can't believe it. I mean, I feel like that's a competition I don't even want to be a part of.

Yeah, Yahoo Mail. You know, they all go the way of Yahoo Mail. They do. We're laughing in the whole going the way of Yahoo Mail thing is very funny. But it's also sad for people in places, for example, Turkey, people who know that their state-run media is wrong

and therefore relying on Twitter for news. There'll still be YouTube in other spots, but it just hits harder there. Yeah, 100%. Do you have any, I mean, it's funny, they have been covering, it's now the 13-month anniversary of when I guess Elon announced he'd be buying Twitter.

These beat reporters who have been covering him day in, day out, do you have any advice for them? People like Zoe and Ron? You know, this is an impossible story in a lot of ways because people are super interested in it and then you get weary of it yourself. You can't get weary, unfortunately. I covered a lot of companies like this, whether it was Yahoo or Travis Kalanick at Uber, that went on forever. And then my very first story that I got well-known for was the Haft family. That went on for years. Yes. It went on for years. This is a rich family in Washington, and I was right in the middle of it.

This was for the Post. For the Post. It really made my career in many ways, that story. But persistence and stick-to-it-ness, even though you literally, I didn't want them to call me anymore, the Hafts. I was like, stop calling me. But I was right in the middle of it. You ride a story like this and try to do your best. And both of them are excellent, excellent reporters and have broken a lot of stories and have great insight.

And as you do it longer, you get better at it. You get better at it. But you do definitely are like, oh, what did this idiot say today? You know, he just did the Soros thing, but let's not forget he did the Paul Pelosi thing and he did the this thing. And he did, there's dozens of them. And after a while, you become, I'll tell you what, the one thing, don't become tired by it. Don't make him exhaust you. It's still terrible what he did about Thoreau's, and it was terrible what he did about Pelosi, and it was many of the terrible things in between. So don't forget that. Don't let him wear

you down. See the forest. They are both, Zoe and Ryan, both excellent reporters. You can follow Zoe at Platformer, Ryan at the New York Times, or you can follow them on their Yahoo Mail accounts. I mean, Twitter accounts. Twitter accounts. Twitter accounts. Which is increasingly irrelevant, but you can do it. Find them on Blue Sky where the excitement is happening. They are on Blue Sky.

Exactly. I'm there, too, but I'm like, I have to remember to sign in. Yeah. Anyways, Cara, can I ask you to read us out? Absolutely. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza,

Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Hayley Milliken. Rick Kwan engineered this episode. Our theme music

is by Trackademics. If you're already following this show, it's a duck door for you. If not, it's just porn and not porn that you wanted to watch.

Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more. Do you feel like your leads

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