Tech Won't Save Us - Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover is a Disaster w/ Hussein Kesvani

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Paris Marx is joined by Hussein Kesvani to discuss the mess of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, the problem with his solution to blue check privilege, and what we should learn from how he posts.Hussein Kesvani is a journalist and the co-host of Trashfuture and Ten Thousand Posts. Follow Hussein on Twitter at @hkesvani.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.Also mentioned in this episode:Paris wrote about Elon Musk’s new plan to allow users to pay $8 to get a blue check, priority on their posts, and other features as part of an updated Twitter Blue.Private texts revealed from the Delaware court showed the rich and powerful groveling to Elon Musk.A long list of companies have stopped advertising on Twitter after Musk’s takeover. He blamed it on activists.Roko’s Basilisk brought Elon Musk and Grimes together.Elon Musk has decreed that people making fun of him by impersonating him on Twitter will be banned.Support the show

Elon's whole kind of thing at the moment, like he's diagnosing the problems as just basically saying that like there isn't like an elite class of liberals who like have these advantages on this platform and they use those advantages to make fun of me. But like by extension, also all the people who like follow me and respect me and all those things. But it's like that's not like the key problem of this platform. The key problem of this platform is like much more to do with just like the environment in which social media like exists in at the moment, right? Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks. And this week, my guest is Hussein Kasbani. Hussein is a co-host of Trash Future and 10,000 Posts. And he's also a journalist who has written for a bunch of different publications, including Mel, BuzzFeed, and BBC. Obviously, you know what happened recently. Elon Musk took over Twitter and it has just been a mess ever

since that has happened. It's been hard to really take your eyes off the dumpster fire as Elon Musk has continued tweeting through this whole process of taking over the company, trying to remake it in the way that he thinks it should work, and constantly running into issues when he finds that his vision for the company, the tweets that he's putting out there, are not aligning with how other people are feeling about it other than, you know, a kind of niche group of people who he seems particularly aligned with, whether that is his cult or, you know, these people on the right who he has increasingly associated with and taken these arguments around free speech and whatnot from. And so over the past couple of weeks, we've seen Elon Musk put out these ideas for an $8 verification service with post-priority,

bringing back Vine and other kind of video aspects of this platform, introducing paid DMs and other features that could be introduced to the site to try to monetize it, even as he has scared off advertisers. And this is something that we will talk about in the conversation and how he's really not portraying that in an accurate way. And instead of looking at how he has pushed advertisers away from the platform, even scared them off because of the things that he has been tweeting and doing since taking over. Again, it's not only his tweets.

It's the fact that he has actually had meetings with advertisers, with various groups, and the kinds of things that he has told them have not been very reassuring. But then, of course, he went on to blame it on activists and leftists who are pushing these advertisers off of the website to try to destroy him and Twitter and what have you. And it's just not an accurate representation of what's going on here. So for me, it's been obviously fascinating to watch this. You know, I'm someone who writes a lot about Elon Musk, who has been following Elon Musk for years. But I also wonder if this is a moment when the mask is kind of coming off Elon Musk himself, right? When he has been this figure who has supposedly been building the future, been introducing all of these innovative ideas to

society, was really held up by the media as this really important figure. But there's already been this turn against him, people waking up to the actual impacts that he's having on society, the way that he treats his workers at Tesla, the environmental impacts of SpaceX, just his own kind of behavior toward people and women, and how all of these things are problems. And then we look at what's happening with Twitter and his takeover of it, and it's quite clear that he's also not a very skilled business person. He's really fumbling the ball with this after going through this six-month process of trying to get out of a deal that he signed because he later realized he was paying way too much money for this company and it was

not really going to work out as he expected it to. And certainly, that's what we're seeing now that he's taken over. I think that there are questions about what's going to happen, whether we're going to see Twitter implode. I don't think that that is going to happen immediately, but it will be interesting to see how, you know, use of the platform will change over time as Elon Musk's ownership of it, as the changes that he wants to make are slowly implemented on the website. So yeah, it's a really open question right now. You know, there is this discourse around whether we should all just move to Mastodon and abandon Twitter. That's not really something that I'm interested in. I know that there are some people who are. I have set up a

Mastodon account and have been checking it out, but I don't think that Mastodon is going to replace Twitter tomorrow or in the near future or anything like that. I think it could be an interesting alternative for some people where there might be an alternate community, but I don't really think it's a replacement. And maybe that's a topic to discuss even further in the future. But for now, please enjoy my fantastic conversation with Hussein Kasvani. So happy to have him back on the show. And I think that this is a really, you know, wide ranging conversation, a really interesting conversation that gets to so many different points. So I hope you really like it because I certainly enjoyed it. If you do like this episode, make sure to leave a five-star review

on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would enjoy it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making this show every single week so I can have these conversations with people like Hussein so we can keep digging into these critical issues

and tearing apart Elon Musk when he does these ridiculous things, make sure to go to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus where you can become a supporter and support the work. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Hussein, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Thank you for having me back on. Thank you so much, even for joining me all the way from Brisbane, Australia. Do they even know who Elon Musk is down there?

You know, I haven't heard like much about Elon or Twitter. I'm in Brisbane right now. It's very sort of chilled and laid back. And like, it feels like the internet doesn't exist here. But I wish I could just mean that, I don't know, I've been to other cities. And like, you know, every so often you'll sort of see like graffiti walls and the graffiti walls will have like Bitcoin, like logos and just like Bored

Apes or whatever. And I haven't seen any of that over here based on my two days that I've been. So it's been a remarkably offline couple of days, which is quite nice. I've heard nothing about Elon Musk. I have not read any news. So I'm looking forward to having to sort of reckon with the idea that he is very much like still up to his shenanigans sounds good i wonder if that it will stay that way like during your trip you know maybe when you get to sydney or melbourne you see a bit

more of that good thing you're not going to adelaide because he set up the big battery down there that i think there's been a bit of controversy over it. Oh shit, yeah, of course he did, yeah. I completely forgot about that. I wonder what people's opinions of him are over there. During the flight from London to Australia, like, and that was sort of like 25 hours, not like entirely, but we had like a layover. But because I wasn't able to access the internet, I was sort of thinking about like,

from the time we leave London Heathrow to the time we get to Australia, I wonder whether he'll have like destroyed twitter and he hasn't quite done it but i feel like he could have if he tried like if he really wanted to so i'm looking forward to like talking about the ways in which he could or probably will do it yeah i feel like in spite of his efforts he hasn't destroyed it yet but you know give him a few more weeks maybe yeah give him like a week or so maybe by the time we leave australia we'll we'll we'll return to london and we'll be trying to navigate the post twitter world and how to sort of like do a podcast uh in that type of environment yeah you'll take off you know you'll still be able to open your bird app then you'll hit down and he throw and you won't be able to open it anymore yeah yeah it'll just like won't exist uh no i'm looking

forward to it so he took over a little less than two weeks ago you've missed a couple days of it what have you made of this this whole takeover so far okay well first of all i've got to take vl uh so i'm not on my show 10 000 posts which i do with my friend phoebe roy we have talked about elon like on a few episodes and i think like the impression was very much the case of like oh he's not going to buy it like he sort of just sort of got himself into like he started kind of talking about it as a meme and it kind of got a bit out of control but he's not really going to do it and then there was that period of time where like he seemed to sort of be making excuses like oh twitter has a bot problem there are too many fake accounts which like kind

of is true but he's sort of saying it in this like you know it seemed that he was looking for an exit and maybe he was and again like i'm not a finance guy so i don't know like the kind of real specifics of the deal but my understanding was that Twitter kind of called his bluff and basically forced him to buy the company. And I kind of like stopped paying attention because my thing was ultimately like Elon Musk is someone who craves detention. And like, if I know my presumption was like, he's going to like try find a convenient way to like back out, maybe like lose some money that he doesn't really have. You know, get some more kind of, you know, get some more kind of funds from banks. And yeah, basically he'll just do Elon shit.

Right. But then all of a sudden, like seemingly there was this video that came out where he's like walking into Twitter with like a sink because, you know, he's a very funny guy. And like, you know, let that sink in. Hilarious. Yeah. Very, very good. And then I was like, oh, okay, what the fuck is happening right now? And then like, it was just like, yeah, he bought it. He bought the company. And now every time I sort of go on Twitter, it's really just like this sort of maybe you can talk about this a little bit. This discourse about like, you know, should we move to Macedon? What kind of like alternatives to Twitter?

Lots of conversations about like Twitter is like digital infrastructure, which I think is like a good thing to think about, you know, and I think that actually is like the more interesting part of like conversations around Elon Musk owning Twitter. And then couple that with just like all the sort of like bizarre moves that have been made. And just the fact that he's kind of like live tweeting it all, which feels really strange. And yeah, I don't know, it's kind of just it's felt like a fever dream in some ways. And I'm not sure whether it was just because like, I was reading a bunch of stuff in the run up to this trip, and like things were already kind of a bit stressful. So

it just added to it. And I wondered actually whether you sort of felt the same way where there was just periods of time where it's like, OK, what the fuck is going on right now? Yeah, there's a million things I want to pick up on there. First of all, I feel like like you, I feel like my kind of opinion of whether he was going to be able to take over Twitter or whether he was going to do it like shifted multiple times, like during the past six months, right? Like when it was initially announced, I was like, oh shit, here we go. And then when he tried to back out, I was like, of course he's going to try to back out.

This is what he always does. This is typical Elon Musk. But then as it continued, I felt like, okay, you know, some way or another, he's going to be forced to take over this company because he's just such an idiot. And because of the way he signed into this deal, he's not going to be able to effectively get out of it in the way that he has in the past, based on what I was reading about this Delaware court where they were supposed to be going. And then, of course, it looks like one of the incentives for him to finally kind of stop trying to get a better deal, stop trying to reduce the amount that he was trying to pay for the company was that these details, these texts were coming out from the court, you know, as part

of this discovery process, it was looking really bad for him and his buddies. And then of course, it was like, instead of having more of this come out when it looks like I'm going to be forced to take over the company anyway, just going to have to go ahead and do it. Right. But I would say, yeah, since he's taken over, it's just been wild to watch. Right. You know, he's been the main character on Twitter every single day since he's taken over. He's constantly tweeting about the process of taking it over, you know, what he's going to do with the company, what it means that he owns the company now. And then when people like, like you know say that he's an idiot because of what he's doing then he starts to like respond to right-wing accounts that are saying like you're the best elon you know you're taking on the activists and the leftists or whatever and

blaming the problems that he's having on you know external forces that are beyond his control kind of a thing and it's just been wild to like watch and experience all in real time and it feels like for me as someone who's written a lot about Elon Musk that it's like kind of have to be like constantly paying attention now to see what he's actually doing and what's actually going on here yeah I mean basically that's kind of how how I've sort of seen this and on the last point about just like having to pay attention, I think that's like a really interesting thing. Because I don't know if like for a while, my sort of approach to Elon Musk was kind of, yeah, like fine, I don't really have to pay that much attention to him. Because like, especially even when he started like tweeting kind of like a lot more regularly, like, you know, it would be something that initially I found a bit

amusing. And then I kind of found quite boring especially like during 2021 or something when he was doing all the sort of weird crypto like scams to try and like pump up tesla stock it was kind of yeah i don't know it was just like this is a guy who just like is terminally online in like multiple ways but i i think actually during the whole crypto thing and during the whole like trying to pump up like dogecoin in order to pump up tesla i kind of thought to myself like okay he acts like an idiot online but actually maybe he's a bit smarter than i expected not in like an intelligent way but more in a kind of like conniving ceo you know ultimately like this is just a guy who wants to

make money and he's just doing it in this, like, really, really bizarre way. Whereas now I kind of look at the stuff he's doing on Twitter, it's like, no, he's bad at business too, right? It feels like we might get some poetic justice in the sense of, like, this man who has been, like, venerated and presented, and, like, also just, like, someone who fashioned himself as, as like the Tony Stark character, the kind of, you know, the person who, you know, presented himself as just like wanting kind of amazing progress and stuff. Now, we kind of see that, no, this man was like a charlatan. And this man, like, he was able to sort of build this reputation in kind of economic circumstances that favored people like him, right? And also like access to like cheap credit, like being able to sort of like put his

wealth in stocks, being able to basically convince like banks and investors that he was a really, really smart guy. Like, so when he was able to exploit the system, like he did it really, really well. And I think, and I'm wondering whether like, as we approach a new economic scenario in which access to that type of credit is much harder, I wonder whether like cracks are starting to appear. And I wonder whether that's like one of the reasons why, well, that's one of the things that is kind of being shown as advertisers sort of pull out. Like one of the things I was thinking about, and I didn't know whether you have any opinions on it, is like a lot has been made about like corporate advertising kind of being removed from Twitter and advertisers not wanting to use the platform and some of them have sort of presented it as kind of being like in response to how Elon is

like managing the platform and they've presented it as kind of like sort of an ethical thing in some ways and I wonder whether like actually what's happening is that these advertisers are kind of becoming more aware of who Elon is. And also just like now that he has control of Twitter, I don't know. I don't know if this is making any sense because I'm sort of just thinking about it as I talk. But I wonder whether his ownership of Twitter is kind of revealing that Twitter, the value of it may be not as significant as it was sort of presented to be over like the past decade. Yeah, it's really interesting, right? Because I feel like, especially on the advertiser point, like I've been wondering what the real impact here and what is driving this, right? I feel like in the beginning, you know, when you had General Motors and later

L'Oreal kind of announced that they were pausing advertising temporarily. I feel like initially, like those kind of advertiser step backs or whatever you want to call them, we're just kind of like, you know, we're going to pause for a second, see what's going to happen here because of some of the stuff that Elon Musk is saying. But it's most likely, you know, that we're going to reactivate our ads in the near future. That was my kind of feeling of what was going on there, right? But then when you start to get Elon Musk kind of attack the advertisers, be more kind of outspoken in the rhetoric that is using around what he sees the platform as being, I feel like that kind of

then scares off more of the advertisers who say, okay, we need to back away from this now because it looks like it's going to be something like that we don't want anything to do with. And that is going not so much that we don't want anything to do with, but it's going to look bad for us in terms of the types of customers that we want to attract, right? This is what advertising is all about. It's not really about the ethics of the company or something like that. But then I also think it's a really easy move for them to do, you know, because they've certainly talked about boycotts of ads on Facebook and things like that in the past, where in some cases, some of the companies would step back for a little while, and then they would be quickly back in, you know, once the kind of ruckus faded. But I feel like with Twitter,

it's such an inconsequential advertising player. And from what I hear, like the advertisers have very little insight into the actual impact and like the quality of their ads anyway. So I feel like it's such a small spend. It's such an inconsequential platform in terms of, you know, the way that advertisers use it and what benefit they get out of it, that it's really easy for them just to pause and say, well, I'll just reallocate that money to Facebook or Google or Amazon or wherever else. Right. Yeah. It kind of gives like a easy kind of escape course. I've done like working like social media and stuff like as social media managing. And like it was very clear that like of all the sort of like platforms that did well for the type of like companies I was

working for, Twitter was like the least effective platform at kind of doing targeted ads and kind of like hyper-specific ads and stuff. Like most of the time we were sort of on Instagram. I imagine now most stuff is heading towards TikTok or like TikTok equivalents, which is also why I think Elon is looking at like video as kind of like, one of the things he says, and it is true, is that Twitter doesn't really make that, like in terms of its sort of like value as a money making platform, it doesn't really do that. I don't think many social media platforms do make money.

And like you've talked about it on your show. We've talked about it on our shows as well, about like how, you know, a lot of these sort of like overvalued tech companies really don't, if you kind of really break it down, they don't really make money. And I think what's interesting, I think like on a bigger scale, I think advertisers and banks, investors and so on are sort of realizing that like social media doesn't really make money, right? Or it's kind of like, it's very tricky to sort of monetize it while also sort of like presenting the idea of like a social like a genuine social experience i do think that like there is a contradiction in those two things but for a long time and again

like i speak about this as someone who used to work in like content management and social media and everything it is very easy to bullshit how much your stuff has value in it so like i told the story and like on my show a couple of times, but I had a job like it was funded by an external charity. And so I would have to justify my job every like six months or something. And you know, I would sort of like mock up these charts, which were just like, yeah, like, you know, our average kind of reach for each post like went up by 120%. And that means it's reached like X amount of people, like more people. And like, you know, the click through rates were much higher and the read through rates are higher. None of this was like made any sense. And none of this kind of like pointed to the idea, but like, this was valuable. We weren't even trying to make money. It was just like, are people kind of like reading the research that, you know, the organization I was working for at the time was doing. But I think like,

because you're sort of talking about value in the terms that these platforms set out, I think for a long time, we've sort of been talking about the value of platforms based on the metrics and the frameworks in which like, of which platforms set for themselves. And I wonder whether we're now coming to this point where like like you're sort of seeing through all this and people are starting to ask questions about, well, how does this stuff make money? What's the sort of return on investment? And then realizing that, oh, like all of it is clout and all of it is hype. And like, you know, none of that is like that could end like clout and hype is the stuff that sort of like Elon Musk runs on. Like that's how he sort of built this reputation as not just being a CEO, but like a sort of global innovator, despite the fact that he hasn't innovated anything. And if anything is sort of like prevented actual innovations

in transportation and infrastructure from happening. And then ultimately that brings me back to this point, which is like, this was such a stupid time to buy a social media platform, right? Like at a time when like, we're sort of seeing facebook crumbling and like the meta platform sort of just being laughed off where you know we're sort of seeing like other platforms that are either kind of hemorrhaging or saying static and like again as i think you've spoken about this on shows in different contexts like twitter has collectively it's like one of the least popular platforms it's just it has an it's like one of the least popular platforms. It's just, it has an outsized influence

because of the people who use them in specific professional contexts. And I suppose what has like seemingly happened is that like post 2016, it kind of became this ground in which to sort of enact various culture wars. And then at the same time, where digital news platforms,

you know, who again, like lots of them were overvalued, like your BuzzFeeds, your Vices and so on. So like 2016 to I think like 2020, you see this kind of like these series of kind of like constant layoffs and like cost cutting and everything. Like, you know, you go into BuzzFeed website now, it's like really very much just like a shell of itself. And it's quite remarkable to like sort of see that it's like really very much just like a shell of itself and it's quite remarkable to like sort of see that it's effectively now just like a shopping website but where you then have like news outlets that are not only like sort of cut to the bone but are like far more dependent on platforms like twitter i would kind of liken to be like an information bridge right it is a way in which to kind of like take content that exists in other platforms and sort of bring it into the space where like so-called influential people can then sort of recycle it i guess like what i'm trying to say is that because of like twitter's like outsized influence and elon musk

kind of like being involved in those culture wars i wonder whether his sort of bit to like buy twitter was really just a way to sort of signal to certain people like what side he was on. Like, basically, I wonder whether it was like, initially an attempt to just sort of extend his like PR exercise. And now he's kind of been left with this platform that isn't really worth much. And he's trying to figure out how to make money. But the problem is, his obsession with Twitter wasn't like monetary, you know, say what you will about like Mark Zuckerberg, like he kind of wants to make money, right? Like that's his kind of thing he wants.

He would like Facebook to sort of be like the dominant platform or like meta to be the dominant platform. But he wants to do that broadly for commercial reasons. He is not someone who's like a poster or even uses his own platform, right? That's kind of what makes some of it quite funny. And then you sort of look at like the kind of conglomerates that own like Tumblr, for example, like I think Yahoo, like the Tumblr,

or like with TikTok where, I think TikTok's a really good example of like how aggressively corporate that is in terms of like how much they're chasing advertisers, the way in which they very early on like built like commercial influencer networks and so on. But with Elon, it's like, it doesn't feel like he's, he's making the point of like, oh yeah, Twitter needs to make money. But it's like the proposals that he's suggesting

feel so basic and derivative that it doesn't feel like he actually is taking that seriously. So, I mean, ultimately, I would guess I would just conclude by sort of saying that, like, my kind of feeling on Elon right now is that he's trying to present himself as being like, you know, a serious seat, like tech CEO. But in reality, he just wants to sort of like post on Twitter. And what he's sort of realizing is that you can't do both, really. And before we talk about his posting, I want to ask you about something else, because it's directly related to this. And I feel like I can't not bring it up.

And that's, of course, you know, you talked about kind of the badly considered ideas and new features that he's supposedly going to roll out for the platform. Obviously, the one that comes to mind most of all, the one that's received the most attention so far is his plan to charge $8 a month, not only to get your verified blue check, but then you get, you know, priority on your posts that you post in replies and mentions and in search and things like that. And there are a few other benefits with it that are rolled into the Twitter blue. But you know, what do you make of this plan to roll this out? It's already started to roll it apparently, but the kind of benefits of it have been delayed until after the US midterm election. What do you make about the potential

impact of this? What's it going to do to the platform? So I predicted quite early on that, like when this was sort of happening, that if he did own the platform, like the first thing he would do would be to like either eliminate people with blue checks or like to try reform, like redo the blue check process. and i think some of that was instilled by watching these like right-wing followers who sort of have this fixation on blue checks you've probably seen like the sort of like derogatory wojack memes of those ilk of like you know uh uh like uh angry liberal blue checks and i found it very funny like being called a blue check you know lib or whatever by these people for like making kind of like fairly mundane points that like racism is bad

and you know all that stuff and like you know how dare you yeah that's like a bad thing i'm trying to like there was a very funny one where someone was like oh yeah typical blue check lib and i was like what but like the blue check has sort of been this kind of weird fascinating like i do think that there is a problem with the blue check system as it was before. So I have one and I got one just by default when I joined BuzzFeed in 2015. Like you basically just put your, you kind of gave them your BuzzFeed email and like they would get blue checks. And...

Oh my God, I'm speaking to a blue check right now. I can't believe it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll send you an invoice for eight dollars afterwards it was like really cool to have one like back in 2015 because you like get this special thing and like i remember being like oh yeah like i have a blue check i'm basically like drake right now uh you know and you kind of got to like dm celebrities and i did dm drake that was my first dm when i got my blue check uh he still hasn't responded to me. But after a while, you start thinking about it and you're just like, okay, so like this hierarchy has sort of been created. What was supposed to sort of be like a verification system, which makes

sense if like you're a really big celebrity, for example, now kind of becomes this hierarchical system where there are sort of like inequalities, right? And, you know, those inequalities mean that like, you do get like certain advantages, discoverable posts or that stuff, which can be kind of like useful for your career or at the time could be useful for your career. So inevitably, I think as kind of like Twitter sort of chased more members,

like people like more signups and stuff and more people exist on that platform, inevitably you would end up like having these types of conflicts over like, well, you know, I spend more time on Twitter than this like average fucking blue check cuck. You know, why don't I have one and stuff like that. And I think that it will kind of also like sort of accelerated a lot of kind of weird online right wing politics as well. Right. The idea that like, oh, you have this like sort of special privilege class and you can then project, you know, there was a reason why like, I think the fixation with like Twitter and like,

you know, Twitter media liberals and stuff sort of emerges around about 2016 to 18 with like Trump rhetoric kind of becoming like a lot more normalized. So I kind of agree that like the blue check situation does cause problems and it does cause resentment and where more of like economic activity takes place on these platforms, giving certain people advantages over others for like seemingly arbitrary things probably wasn't a good way to sort of run that platform. So I sort of agree with like Elon's diagnosis, but the problem is, is that like his kind of attempt to sort of reform the blue check thing is really just stupid, right?

If he had said something like, yeah, if you work for a news organization, we're going to take away your blue check. I think his followers would have loved that and probably wanted that. But instead he's trying to kind of like solve the contradiction of being the tech CEO, but being the poster as well.

So he absolutely wants to get rid of like my blue check. He wants to get rid of Taylor Lorenz's blue check. He wants to get rid of, do you have a blue check? You don't have a blue check, do you? So I don't know. No, you've got to pay your rate bucks. I'm not cool enough. He wants to get rid of like, you know,

all the sort of like New York Times journalists, like blue checks and everything. Well, he replies to like, one of his new things is like, if someone criticizes him, right? He responds and yeah okay but pay me eight dollars yeah well we can go to his posting in a bit it's like yeah we'll get there but like yeah he's he's trying to resolve the contradiction inside himself of being the poster but being the ceo but the problem is is that like it's very transparent but like his blue check his attempt to reform the blue check system isn't like part of broader thinking about how does this platform work and how do like social relations exist on this platform and how do like power relations

and dynamics, like how do they play out? Right. Because I think if he actually seriously did that, he would find that, oh, like this platform really facilitates a lot of racism and sexism and transphobia. And like, you know. Don't you mean free speech? Oh, yeah. All those things that come under like, you know, actually, this stuff is good. I can imagine like just kind of like a whiteboard in his office being like good stuff,

racism, transphobia, bad stuff, making fun of me in a minor way. No permabans. They should never exist. They're the worst thing in the world unless you impersonate me then you are off this platform yeah unless you sort of like say that grimes divorced me and i i don't get to see the kids um yeah so like and i think that's the problem like kind of trying to resolve that contradiction inside himself of wanting to just be like a power user but then trying to figure out okay well how do I kind of take this ideological premise and then build that into like a successful business model? So then what we have left is where you've got this like pay to get verified system. Where you're not even verified. No,

but even if you were, it's like, well, you're still, you're having to like pay quite a lot to do this. Right now, maybe there's a kind of thinking in his head, which is, okay, well, if you're a celebrity, then, you know, your manager and stuff will sort of like pay your fee and like, it's something that you're just going to have to do, right? Or, you know, if you're a big company, then you can sort of afford that and expense that. But if you're like a freelance journalist or something, then it's probably an expense that you're not going to like take. So but then we're sort of left with like, okay, you've got a platform where celebrities and like corporations have the blue checks, which like could be fine. But then the like buy to kind of like play thing, then

sort of means that you will kind of see an influx of people who will sort of pay to kind of have the experience of outsized influence. And again, like, I think one of the problems that is probably worth addressing is that this is very much like paying for a particular kind of experience that doesn't really exist. So I think there's like a thinking among certain people that like, oh, if I had a blue check and my searches and my posts were like really, really really visible then actually all the really smart things that i think and say will get more attention and the problem is is that the woke liberals that run twitter like are actually like suppressing it which is why people don't engage

with my posts right so i can then imagine that you'll have a lot of people who will pay into the system believing that like finally they will kind of be able to get the influence that they felt they deserved and we'll sort of find that like the influence doesn't really exist because i can sort of say that like as a blue check person like even without those sort of privileges like the payoff is not so significant that it kind of gives you any sense of like influence or power and so on right maybe it used to i definitely just don't think it does now and i think that's sort of where the problem is right it's like you know to a lot of the kind of elon fans that support the idea of like being

able to pay for a blue check the idea is kind of like really rooted in this resentment of believing that like the libs have suppressed you and the libs have kind of like made your life miserable and now you'll you'll be able to get one over because by having the blue check that you'll at the very least be just as important as them without sort of realizing that like i just don't think that people who use Twitter really regularly kind of care that much about blue checks. Right. And, you know, combine that with just like the way in which like people with blue checks who are like subject to like harassment campaigns and so on, or like who are just trying to

like desperately avoid being the main character, like how posting is sort of changing in that way. So I guess, again, to summarize, it's very much like his diagnosis isn't entirely incorrect but it's kind of it's powered by people who kind of sort of share this resentment of a worldview that doesn't quite exist or doesn't exist in the way that like they're sort of convinced it is yeah i i think it's really fascinating and just to pick up you know i agree with you that i feel like the verification the blue check isn't worth as much as it used to be, right? Like it's not as important as it used to be. Certainly, you know, I've applied for verification before.

I haven't received it. I don't really care. It's not a big deal. I was going to add one thing really quickly, which is kind of in relation to like the value of a blue check. Because I think, again, back in 2014, 15, like the blue check would sort of give you a bit of clout and it might be like kind of like a fun thing. And sometimes like, you know, if you were a journalist of blue check, like suddenly like ad agencies or PR companies would take you seriously. So like

when I got my blue check, I like got invites to like lunches and coffees and everything. I thought that was kind of cool. But the thing is like social media has sort of expanded so much now and become a lot more commercialized so i would much rather like do spawn con on instagram for stuff and get like material things from it than like have this blue check it doesn't really yield me that much anymore i think so i think that like economies of influence across platforms have sort of changed so much that i think like there needs to sort of be this much broader conversation about like considering how much time we spend on these platforms what are we actually

getting from that and I think with like the Twitter blue check it's literally just clout if that and whereas like if you're sort of TikTok famous then you know you can be in Netflix films and like get invited to you know Hollywood parties and stuff and you know if you're doing like SponCon and Instagram, like at least you'll sort of get, you know, loot boxes or whatever, you know, genuinely is this like, it's very funny to me that Elon's kind of thing is like, yeah, you've got to pay to have like this sort of simulation of clout that doesn't really exist on the platform anymore. I feel like the part of it that I still need to see how it's going to play out, but has me more concerned than the verification thing. Like,

certainly there's the opportunity there for impersonation and things like that. And maybe that will be an issue. We'll see what happens there, especially where he's gutted, you know, part of the moderation team and things like that. But I feel like the other piece of it is the priority on the posts, right? And what that is actually going to look like in practice when it is implemented. And so, you know, my concern then, of course, is that he's pissing off all of like the liberals and the people on the left. They don't subscribe. And so then you have people on the right and his kind of cult getting their posts kind

of further boosted because they're buying into this service. But I think that still remains to be seen how it actually works in practice and what's actually going to happen with it, how it's actually going to work. So yeah, it's hard to say for sure right now what that's going to mean. But it kind of also misses the point of how the platform and like how social relations on the platform work anyway, right? Absolutely. Well, I would say it's an idea that comes out of Musk's specific experience where his mentions are full of crypto scammers and shit like that and so he wants the people who like him

who are going to pay for this service to kind of rise to the top it's this idea of dimensions from someone who gets like thousands of people replying to every post that he posts rather than the average user experience which is nothing like that yeah and i think like for like the average user experience, which is nothing like that. Yeah. And I think like the average user, like, I don't know if they actually care that much about like blue checks or not. Right. So, you know, you think about like, I don't know, in England, like football Twitter, for example, or like just kind of niche kind of hobbyists, like all those things, like they have this sort of like, you know, the advantage of Twitter is like the discoverability component of like, oh, people who like the same stuff as me or people who are like interested in like this football match and so on like you know i've sort of like looked at football twitter and

stuff during kind of other bits of work that i've done and like blue checks and kind of like fixations on symbols and symbology on these platforms like doesn't really come up there it only really is sort of fixated in kind of, like, politics media Twitter, of which I don't feel there's enough sort of Elon supporters to, like, sort of be able to be kind of, like, profitable, right? But, and I think I was also going to add, but, like, it kind of misses the point of social relation, like, how even that section of Twitter operates. Because, you know, my thinking is, I think, you know, among sort of like certain like right wing accounts and stuff, there is like, you know, they enjoy kind of dunk, like trying to dunk on blue checks. And they, you know, they enjoy like responding and being mad at Taylor

Lorenz's posts and all that stuff. Right. Like it works in that kind of like reactive way because Elon's fans are basically all reactive. Right? And the whole sort of perception of Elon as being kind of like this warrior against the libs comes from this sense of like feeling resentful and feeling as if like the libs have kind of made your life miserable. And therefore you're kind of like seeking out that conflict. Like what happens when you kind of supposedly win, right?

So like what happens when, you know, the libs kind of like lose their blue checks or like, you know, many of them just decide to like exit the platform. And then what you're left with is kind of like this. Yeah, there's like, I think there's like a shell of itself, right? Just like, yeah, kind of like it looks like Twitter

and it functions like Twitter. But the reason why like certain Elon fans like definitely want, like wanted to kind of come on there that like no longer exists. And then all of a sudden it doesn't become fun, right? And in the meantime, like in order to kind of like have all your advantages, you've got to like pay into it. But then even when you get those advantages, it's like, well, what are you going to like really do with it? Also, what happens when these users kind of like are at the receiving end of those advantages? Like, you know, they kind of like get

10 DMs a day, but all those DMs are like accounts being like, hey, cool project with like, you know, the crypto aesthetics and everything. I can imagine that will get quite annoying as well. It's a really bizarre solution, but also like the problems of it feel so obvious. Maybe like we use it fairly regularly. And I imagine that we've been on the platform for a long time. And, you know, we've also seen platforms kind of like live and die and all that stuff. So you're kind of like, you can sort of notice patterns and everything. And I don't know whether like Elon recognizes that. I don't know. Again, it all comes back to like, he's wrestling with his internal contradiction of trying to be like tech platform CEO, but also just really wanting

to be like a poster that gets loads of engagement. And I just feel like the two don't reconcile. You know, I think that's a really great segue because we've been talking about Elon Musk, the CEO, and what is what his acquisition is going to mean for this company. But what do you make of Elon Musk, the poster? What do you make of his posts and how that has evolved over time? Well, he's like just very openly like a Reddit guy, right? We did like a 10k post on this, like, I think, at some point last year, where our friend Sophie came on to like talk about his fixation with like Rocco's Basilisk, which I still don't like fully understand. So like apologies to your listeners if I like butcher it. But Rocco's Basilisk was considered to be like the most terrifying, like thought experiment of all time it was like on the sort of like something awful forums I wrote

down like a summary of what it was I'm just trying to find it because this was like a conversation that he had with Grimes online before like they started hooking up or whatever really yeah it was like that's kind of like how they sort of like interacted online and like you know before they were dating and everything so yeah the theory is pretty dense but for the purposes of the experiment it can be treated as a hypothetical program that causes an artificial super intelligence to optimize its actions for human good yet if a super intelligence makes all its choices based on which one is best suited for achieving quote human good it will never stop pursuing that goal because things could always be a bit better. And because there's no way to like actually kind of like create like a computer program

to do human good, the AI will end up making decisions that seem counterintuitive to that goal from a human perspective, such as killing all humans that didn't help bring it into existence as soon as possible. But so from basically, I suppose like the Rockers-Bastard situation is like this kind of, I genuinely like don't understand like the kind of mechanics of it. But what I do know is that Elon Musk was kind of like obsessed with it when he was a forums poster. And it sort of like fit into this kind of like the weird libertarian politics that he was into. But I guess like the point of the story was that he was a forums guy. And like that type of forums guy that will sort of spend like ages and ages like posting and sort of arguing with everyone and getting mad and like doing flame wars and all that stuff. So in one

way, like what does this sort of tell us in one way? I think Elon's like relentless posting mirrors that type of forum styles. So if you compare him to like other kind of like social media CEOs, and I guess like the obvious comparison is Zuckerberg, right? So like Zuckerberg's whole thing is like very kind of like polished, very corporatized, very like trying to basically use like corporate speak in order to promote his product with the idea kind of being that he just wants to capture as many users as possible and kind of keep people on board as much as he can which is kind of where you get then get meta which is like the visual embodiment of that type of like very polished very kind of corporate speak into a sort of like vr system that just kind of looks really odd again with like tiktok it's kind of like they have like

a sort of like similar approach to it but their thing thing is very much like, oh, you know, TikTok is just a platform. And like, you can kind of create loads of different things. And like, you know, we have advertising partnerships, influencer partnerships and stuff, again, very sort of like corporately outdriven. Elon is as like sort of the face of the company right now. Yeah, it's just kind of like, what if you gave Twitter to like, the most person on Reddit and see if they can kind of run a company? So like, he's like posting all the time. He's kind of like trying to hide the fact that he's angry, but like, it doesn't quite get there. As you mentioned, like when he responds to people, he responds to like specific accounts of people who are like clearly either very sympathetic to him, but it's like, he won't

respond to like any sort of like low B account. Right. He'll like, he's kind of like talking to right wing influences for the most part, knowing that they kind of like had this like influence on the platform that he's on. And I, again, I wonder whether like there's a strategic reason for that or whether it's just like, Oh, this kind of account with like 50,000 followers is telling me that I'm like a

really cool guy. So I should sort of like engage with them, which again, is like, it's a very sort of post this thing to do to kind of be enamored by people with like big follow accounts or like blue checks, for example. Right. It doesn't seem like he's just going for accounts that have like a particular following or something like that. Like, I feel like the trend is so much that he's often responding to these really right wing accounts, right? Like, it seems very specific that these are the types of people who he is, you know, following posts by, who are kind of have the ideas that he is increasingly more outwardly associated with, if not, whether he's held that internally or not for a long time, it's harder to say, I guess.

Yeah. And it sort of like speaks of him being like very aware of like the discourse like or in certain aspects of the discourse but at the same time he's also like a really bad poster right so like when he posts memes they're this like really low quality often watermarked memes they don't they're not quite dad jokes but they're sort of just like they're the jokes of like someone of an like an adult who's on like the beginning stages of being radicalized online right so they start sharing like wojak memes even though they're not quite sure like how suitable it is or you know they'll kind of he'll sort of like post something that he found fun like again like very much if you're like a

parent or a grandparent received like something on whatsapp and they thought it was funny they would then like you know copy and paste that and post it onto like whatever social media feed they're on. It sort of feels like in one way, he's kind of hyper aware of like some of the discourse or like the political discourse. But in other ways, he's kind of like really behind on the kind of visuals or like where the culture war is actually at at the moment. So I compare that to like someone like Peter Thiel, for example, who't a poster but is very very aware of like much more niche right-wing discourses which is also partly why he kind of like goes away and like funds them right so he's basically out he's giving funds to people who he knows are much better posters than him and you

know again i think one of the solutions for elon is like you know you should just outsource your kind of you should just outsource all your content to people who like know what they're doing but are you looking for a job yeah i'm looking for after after this tour i'm like i'm thinking about my career positions but uh elon elon got your social media manager right here i i've given him a lot of like my advice to him yesterday which i thought was actually really good advice is that like if he wants to like revive the platform, he doesn't need like a tech solution. What he needs to do is like feed like the hogs on this platform. Right. So what you need to do is like combine all the worst discourses into just like one thing and make people so mad online about this kind of like conceptual thing that he just like shoots engagement so he needs to like talk about the last jedi he needs to talk about like having adhd uh he needs to talk

about like how age gaps like just everything all the stuff that like has made people mad in the part like he needs to just like tight he just needs to post jungkook onto like twitter and just get all the stuff like the k-pop stands like just flooding in there and again it's kind of a joke but it's also sort of serious in the way where it's like he needs to actually understand how this platform works and what twitter is useful for you know because i know that this isn't necessarily a part of like the kind of like musk side of the episode but like when i think about the value of twitter i know there are people who are like, oh, yeah, Twitter is a horrible platform. Like if it dies soon, then great, like we'll finally kind of like get to move on. But like, if you think about all the other

platforms and other platform strategies, all sort of like moving, we're doing this kind of like much wider societal pivot to video, right? So like, you've got your TikTok, Instagram, which is kind of just going heavy on reels, Facebook, which is going to be like a VR platform, like wants to be a VR platform. But there aren't really like many text platforms anymore. And the thing that I like about Twitter is that it is like a text platform and it is like refreshing to kind of be away from this sort of like market-driven demand

to like monetize everything through like video, which again, like, you know, having been through that as a journalist and like being laid off in the whole like pivot to video through like video, which again, like, you know, having been through that as a journalist and like being laid off in the whole like pivot to video type of stuff, like it is, it brings like out stuff in me. And so like Twitter, I think it's important because of that distinction. One of the other kind of like Elon Musk CEO things that is coming out is that he's now trying to, well, he's now like promoting the idea that if you go onto twitter blue but you can upload videos that are like 45 minutes to an hour long so even he's like looking towards like the pivot to video thing even though i don't really like take that that seriously

but it's kind of like twitter is kind of like useful because of that distinction and so like the person who runs it should sort of be aware of that and be aware of like why people like it for that reason. And that sort of feels like the bigger problem. Like Elon's whole kind of thing at the moment, like he's diagnosing the problems as just basically saying about like there isn't like an elite class of liberals who like have these advantages on this platform and they use those advantages to make fun of me. But like by extension also all

the people who like follow me and respect me and all those things but it's like that's not like the key problem of this platform the key problem of this platform is like much more to do with just like the environment in which social media like exists in at the moment right no absolutely and i completely agree with you with the fact that twitter is kind of like the only real text platform that's left. When we're thinking about social media platforms where we communicate and things like that, I don't want to be taking photos of myself and videos of myself all the time just to engage in these kind of discourses and conversations. It's very different and distinct from what is available on Twitter. And it feels like if Twitter goes away, then that is just kind of lost. Like, sure, there's the conversation about going to Mastodon instead or something like that. But it doesn't feel like that's really like it feels like if Twitter dies, that form of kind of social

media as a dominant form of social media kind of goes away. Yeah, I think that's kind of where the bigger problem is, right? Because I think the way that people have framed it has been like, oh, Twitter is now being taken over by like the right wing. And therefore we need to move to like a left wing alternative. And like, I think the problem is, is that we risk the same problem as like the right wingers who felt that Twitter was too liberal. So they moved on to like truth social and like gab and all that stuff, which is ultimately that like, well, both those platforms basically were flooded in with people who got banned from Twitter and then just use it to post Twitter screenshots. Which is a lot of what Mastodon is right now. People mirroring their tweets, right? Yeah. And I mean, I've never been on Mastodon, so I don't really know what it's like,

but I wouldn't be like, I'm not surprised that that's the case. Which then should spark these questions about what makes Twitter like, what makes it like a useful platform and what makes it like an important bit of digital infrastructure. And like, you know, it's not to say that I'm not kind of like saying, oh, if you left, then like, you know, that's a problem. Or if you stay, that was a problem. I think the bigger issue really is, is that like the death of it does mean that like, all we've been got left is like video platforms, but also video platforms that are much more like, I suppose, again, it's very much like we're existing in a broader social media climate

and like an expanding content economy where everything then needs to sort of be monetized and made into content. And the thing with the video being considered to be valuable. And again, like this is a problem in the same way that like media pivot to video was where you sort of found out that actually like the video really isn't as valuable as these platforms say. Is that what is sort of the end game of trying to get people to post as much audio visual content as possible? Well, it's very good for like, making surveillance tools, it's very good for like, the police, it's very good for like, you know, arms of the state that wants to kind of like, you know, criminalize people, especially like, people who are not cisgendered white men, what you've been doing is creating a social media climate, which is much more hyper surveilled and

much more securitized and far more restrictive as well. The stakes of that feel so much higher that, you know, in some ways, and I'm not saying that like Twitter is the last kind of barrier and we need to sort of like keep it stable. Otherwise, you know, the gates of hell are going to break loose. All I'm saying is that like elon taking over twitter certainly is a problem but it is a problem within like a much broader context of like the internet and just like communication tech being increasingly monopolized and then also just being like made far more restrictive and that should be like a thing that sort of concerns us all and like we should really be having conversations about like, well, well,

what is digital infrastructure? And like, you know, how do like models of ownership and stuff operate or like what alternative models of ownership could like be used to facilitate. And, you know, again, you're like,

you know, much more about this than I do. Like you've done a lot of like work on this, much more work than this. And I do. So I will kind of like leave that to you. But to me, that sort of feels like the kind of conversation we should be heading towards

in the aftermath of like the Elon thing. Yeah, no. And I think it's a much more productive discussion than just, oh, Elon Musk took over Twitter, moved to Mastodon. That's our big solution to what's going on here, right? I think it's a discussion that needs to be had. We'll see if it's actually one that ends up happening. You know, to close off our conversation, where do you think this all goes next? Whether it's with Twitter,

with social media more broadly, what direction are we heading in? It's really hard to say I, because there's this part of me that wonders whether like, it would have been better for Elon to just sort of like, mostly maintain Twitter the way it was and just kind of like use his CEO position to do like asinine tweets about like the stuff that he's doing right now. Right. I don't think that Twitter is going to collapse or like it's going to sort of crumble. But again, like I think the contradiction inside Elon of being like the poster and the tech CEO, it'll change like how Twitter functions and it won't change it in the way of like, oh, suddenly it'll become like a lot more right wing because like, I don't know, I think that stuff has sort of been obvious for a long time. I wonder whether it's going to be more like the

website of like the independent in the UK. So I don't know whether you've ever been onto the independent website. But like, it's basically impossible to use because the moment you go on it, you're just sort of like inundated with like advertising. And there's like way too much going on. And it's just like an unpleasant user experience and i suppose like another example is like you go onto like your facebook wall and it's like similar situation where it's like all the stuff that's on your wall that's supposed to sort of like reflect your interest don't really at all because you've kind of like invited advertisers to like pay to kind of like become more influential and you've then got like creators who like are able to flood the system with content to kind of like become more influential. And you've got like creators who like are able to

flood the system with content to kind of like make their stuff more visible. And as a result, like your user experience just kind of like worsens. And I imagine that Twitter might become like that and where you might then have like an exodus, not necessarily to TikTok, but maybe to like a kind of like micro blogging competitor or something, just because like the user experience just kind of isn't rewarding, right? So I wonder whether it will become more likely that Twitter will sort of become this place where you'll see like a lot of weird posts where you'll see like a lot of like sort of things that are kind of familiar to you, but you're just not interested in. And where I kind of also wonder whether like a lack of an alternative

will sort of mean that the way in which we use Twitter will change as well. So I don't know if you use Facebook or like how you use it. And I still have a Facebook account, but like I use it mostly to like contact a few of my friends and family members who like use it mostly. So when I go in there, I'll search for someone and I'll message them or I'll like send them like a happy birthday message or something. And then I'll just like leave it. Right. I won't scroll around in anything. And I wonder whether Twitter will be like that where like we'll use it to kind of like contact specific people or we'll use it like because of like a group chat function. But like the wall stuff doesn't really matter because like we don't really use it anyway. So I do wonder

whether like, yeah, it'll exist because it has to because it's such a big part of like a kind of content economy thing. But until like an alternative that actually has like a good user interface operates, it'll be much more likely that we will use it as a kind of like maybe like a WhatsApp thing, maybe just like a contact book or something like that. And that will change the way in which like the user experience operates. And I wonder whether that will sort of extend to social media as well. Because again, I don't think that the whole like pivot to video stuff is tenable in the long term. We're sort of seeing fractures of it right now. The demands of like platforms for people to like continue, like just to make loads and loads of content and like resultant burnout and stuff like that is kind of like becoming a societal problem. And I wonder whether like, that will change the way in which like, platforms and creators sort of interact with each other and like their expectations of

each other. Again, that's like a much bigger conversation that we don't need to go into. Yeah. So I mean, ultimately, I guess like to kind of summarize, I don't think there's going to be an exodus. I think that it will survive in some form, but I just kind of think that like the timeline functions of Twitter will become so confusing and exhausting that we will literally just use these platforms as a way to like contact our friends. And that's it. Maybe I's just not compelling to me. I was gonna say this is the other thing too, because like for us, like we kind of are kind of podcasts and our shows and stuff like our audience sort of exists, and I think will continue to exist on Twitter. And we know we've been having conversations like, you know, the TF guys, and also just like the people I work with on other things about like oh should we like be going to instagram should we like what other platforms

could we use like we were sort of looking at like sub stack options i have a sub stack but i don't really update very often but like rss feeds mailing lists and so on are also like alternatives as well i think one interesting thing might be whether stuff like patreon or subscriber services basically will kind of expand to kind of try to ape twitter features i think sub stack's already done that i've been like getting a bunch of emails from sub stacks that i follow but are like inviting me to chat rooms and stuff discords i can have an example of that too so i wonder whether like if you're a creator if you're sort of like existing in the creator economy the absence of twitter will kind of mean that like you'll rely much more on your sort of like subscriber based services and so like you'll sort of have these like mini social

networks that exist on discord patreon and so on which kind of revolve around an individual in the hyper personalization which like has some advantages i guess in the sense that like you don't have to deal with like your content sort of ending up in a part of twitter that it shouldn't be and then having to deal with like being like a main character or sort of being just dealing with all the bullshit that comes with like people who's like the tweet wasn't intended for deciding that they're gonna like make your life horrible the negative side of that especially as a creator then is that you are like kind of facilitating an environment of like enhanced parasociality where i wonder whether like you know and again this is sort of projection but like from experience as well i wonder whether that would mean that like you know your subscribers

or like the people who like your patrons and stuff will feel like much more entitled to being part of your sort of like online social media experience or what like i don't know if like lack of a better term and that will kind of like shift the way in which people consume content but also the way in which people relate to the people that they pay this kind of feeds into a broader question around like transactional interactions online and i think like one of the great things about Twitter is it's like, well, because of the perception that it was free, you know, communicating with people didn't really feel like a transaction. It didn't really feel like there was like a sort of like monetary cost

to it. You know, it simulated a social experience. And I wonder whether like a post Twitter internet will kind of remove that because it kind of foundationally, the premise of it is very much like everything has a transaction. And so in order for you to like talk to me, you need to like pay me five bucks a month to get through my paywall or, you know, you need to like pay for this episode or you need to pay for this video, you need to put like, or it needs to sort of be like a monetary reason for like putting something on the internet. And so like, you'll just have a much more financialized online experience. And obviously, it'll be a very different internet to like what we've been used to. No, absolutely. And these are things that Musk has been talking about as well to add to Twitter. And certainly, you know, those are things that I'm sure a lot of people are thinking about right now

as we consider what this whole future is going to look like as Musk takes over Twitter. But Hussein, this was a fantastic conversation. I think we delved into so many different aspects of what could be happening with Twitter, with Musk himself, all of the key things in this moment where he's taking over Twitter and we're all just kind of balking at what is actually going on now. But thanks so much for taking the time, for joining me from Australia. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Hussein Kasvani is a journalist and the co-host of Trash Future and 10,000 Posts.

You can follow him on Twitter at at H Kasvani. You can follow me at at Paris Marks. You can follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is produced by Eric Wickham and is part of the Harbinger Media Network. And if you want to support the work that goes into making it every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.