The Chaser Report - The Fall of Twitter, Truss, and Democracy as We Know It | Dave Milner

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Dave Milner from The Shot joins Charles Firth to cover the fall of Twitter and Liz Truss and ask the question plaguing everyone's mind: will the world hurry up and end already? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. I'm Charles Foote. And today we have a very special episode. With me today is David Milner. Hey Charles. How you doing? That was very enthusiastic. Thank you. Did you like the energy? Yeah, yeah. I felt it.

There's only really one topic of conversation in the entire world at the moment, which is fucking Elon Musk. He's ruining Twitter. I like that place. I have fun there. My friends are there. Does anyone really like it? No, it's like a horrible place. It's terrible.

But I'm extremely addicted to it. And now the fun is making fun of Elon Musk because he shifts the rules around us. So you can't do that anymore. It's very meta, isn't it? It's become meta, which is weird because there is a company called Meta. Did you see Elon and Jack, the former CEO of Twitter, like Jack was basically criticizing a bunch of Elon Musk things? Oh, really?

Yeah, and he insulted Elon by saying that's a Facebook-ass name or something like that. Oh, dear. The billionaires are, I don't know, they're toying with us. They're toying with the places we play and it's not fun. But I think, you know, journalists and media types who all hang out on Twitter love talking about themselves anyway. Exactly. It's sort of the worst. It's the most self-indulgent.

Oh, my God. So do you think it'll last? I don't think any of the things that have happened in the last week bode well. that to be direct about it you know the story you know why they're in such trouble and why Elon Musk is actually in a genuine panic tell me this story about the new fronts so in may this year all the social media companies went to new york and did presentations about why you should advertise with twitter now at that point Elon Musk i think had agreed to take over twitter and then was trying to back out of it.

Yes. And making all these criticisms about how it was actually overrun with bots and a completely worthless network. Twitter sends its best advertising sales team. And the aim of it was to sell $8 or $900 million worth of ads for 2023. That's how all these big advertising networks work. So like NBC or CBS might expect to make $5 billion or $6 billion out of what they call upfonds, right?

In social media, you know, Facebook would book, probably about $5 or $10 billion of advertising. For Twitter, you know, $8 or $900 million, it's about 20% of their entire annual revenue comes from that one event. Guess how much they walked away with? $44 billion? No, they worked away with $0.0. They signed up zero advertisers in the...

No one wanted to advertise on Twitter. Back in May, because everyone was saying, this is a risk, we don't know what's going to happen. Is Elon Musk? It's not Elon Musk? And so everyone went, we'll pause, we'll come back once we know more. First of all, Elon Musk gets in. First person he sacks is head of safety or whatever, who is one of the people the advertisers really trust, right?

So didn't have that person. And the guy who's going to do the presentation quits the day before, right? So Elon has to himself just go to New York on his own, well, obviously with his entourage of lawyers and bros who, you know, and hangers on. But, you know, it's just him giving the presentation. and by all accounts, it went absolutely disastrously. In fact, one advertiser said that it was very clear right from the word go.

Elon's whole thing was just to bullshit. Like, he was just bullshitting us, right? And in that meeting, in that, like there was a Zoom call and then there was also a sort of physical meeting. In that Zoom call, advertisers were dropping off and dropping all their Twitter ads, canceling their plans. on the basis of the Elon Musk sort of thing. And these are not radical, but they're not like Greenpeace going, oh, we're going to, you know, the Socialist Democratic Party of America. No, I've seen Twitter ads.

They're mostly like anime porn mobile games and that sort of stuff. You know, it's sort of uni-leaver, Coca-Cola, Audi. And all they wanted was an assurance that there was a plan to make sure that their brand is not featured next to crazy alt-right conspiracy theorists. Elon Musk could not give that thing. Well, you can see why his actions aren't any way reassuring in that regards. He's paying this twin game where he's actually, it feels like he's bought Twitter to get the craziest, nuttiest, right with people to like him a bit more. Yes.

And that is who he is pandering to directly with his tweets at the moment. Yes. But he also needs to convince advertisers that it's not going to be this free-for-all hellscape. And he is not walking that line at all deftly. No, no. In fact, have you seen his tweet this morning? He is just, this is quite interesting. Yeah.

This is Elon. To independent-minded voters, shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties. Therefore, I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the presidency is Democratic. That's him this morning. To independent-minded voters, vote for who the billionaire tells you to vote for. It's a strange preposition. I've got a conspiracy theory about these. Hell yes.

This sounds a responsible thing to talk about it. Let's do it. Which is, I wonder whether he's got the presidency in his eyes. He's caught the bug that billionaires get, where he goes, actually, this is within reach. If I appeal to the Trump face of the Republican Party, I can become the next Donald Trump. That's a terrifying proposition. Maybe he'll finally get his space hand job if he's the president. Well, yeah, exactly.

And it works for him because a little. lot of his companies rely on the largesse of government, right? Like, it's not free into control. Like, you know, SpaceX is... Just become the government. SpaceX is basically a privatized version of NASA now. Like, NASA has billion-dollar contracts with SpaceX. To cut the bullshit, why do you think he bought Twitter?

I think he just made a complete mistake. I thought he... I think he thought it was a joke. No, no, but I think he's one of those people... You know how... You know, those people who just sort of bumble on. And when you're rich and white, you can just bumble on forever. And then people form a coherent story based on the bumbling.

It does feel that way. Yeah. And so he's just surfing along, navigating the thing. He thought it was a joke. It turned out to be more binding than it actually was. I think the reason he made the bid was so that he could exit his Tesla stock when it was at an all-time high. And he did. He successfully created a reason to sell $20 billion worth of Tesla stock at the right time.

That's how he needs to make money out of Twitter. He needs to use it for stock market manipulation, not charging us $8 for a little 10. Fuck, that's a great idea. It is, isn't it? It's what he's doing. Yeah. He keeps pumping up dodge coin. Yeah.

His crypto stocks. The thing is, he didn't need to own Twitter to do that, though. No, no, it's definitely the fragile ego thing and his crazy mates that he wants to better up to. It does feel like a mistake. It's really interesting seeing this car crash in rail line in real time. And it's a wonderful reminder that billionaires are just ordinary people who are very, very lucky. Yeah, who get born with like parents with emerald mines, that sort of thing. They're not a billion times more genius than a person who has only $1.

No, and this particular one doesn't seem very smart at all. What do you think is going to happen to Twitter? Do you reckon it will survive? Look, I am now on Master of. which is the master master master is it master done is it that's how they say in the power ranges don't worry okay master done and i'm quite hopeful about that like i've got like i reckon maybe 40 or 45 of the key people that i follow on twitter have moved over there some of them just retweet the stuff that they're posting over on twitter but it's increasingly becoming

something where i'll open the app and go oh yeah actually there's some interesting stuff. It's very, it's very climaty at the moment. The people I'm following are all talking about COP 27. It's a bit boring. I mean, incredibly important. Whereas Twitter's just picking on the person that owns Twitter. Yeah, yeah.

My favorite tweet yesterday was, um, it's like he's Elma Fad and he bought a website for the Bugs Bunny's. Yes. Yes. Visual. It's like we're the roadrunner and he's coyote. Coyote. It's like, yeah, and every tweet is like an acne exploding balloon thing.

It's just ridiculous. Okay, let's get serious for a little second here. Like, we're making light of this, but we are literally talking about the world's richest man. Yes. Owning the place where the conversation, the most important conversations the planet has, that is deeply dystopian. He's also a man with this libertarian, fairly nutty politics. Yeah, well, but also authoritarian.

Like, he thinks Taiwan should be owned by China. Ukraine, it needs to just concede a bit in the Crimea. And right now, he's claiming to have previously voted Democrat, but he sees now is the moment to get on board the Republican trade. It seems very, very odd. This particular moment, right when they're trying to topple democracy in various aspects, it's strange. It's not a good look.

No, it's not good. And, I mean, I think it's also interesting, to be honest, that it happens at this inflection point within social media. Like social media, Twitter was the last social media company because TikTok came in, it's not social media, it's actually addiction media. It doesn't matter if you follow someone on TikTok. You don't get served to them. It's just the algorithm that decides what you see each day, right?

And Instagram has also gone down that path and is now more algorithm driven. So it's not that you're getting shared stuff from the people you follow or the people share to you it's it's actually Twitter has that option you can set your timeline to highlights mode rather than chronological which is basically algorithm mode and Facebook is completely now more algorithm driven

than it ever was and and they've actually indicated no no we're going to go for the addiction model because it's a better engagement model it makes people addicted to you out they stay longer and so Twitter was the last holdout of an actual as you say town square that

actually was based on social media. And we'll look back at this stage of social media as a golden age, I think. I think it was amazing how democratic, like the shot itself would never have launched without access to social power of people republishing our stuff across their feeds and getting it out there. And it's going to turn in, like Twitter definitely will turn into addiction model where you've got to pay to play. You're actually, you're up against Sky News and the Australian and everyone in terms of getting it.

It is very interesting that his new verification model, which is the thing that the currently verify people are all very upset about, indicates because he's, he has said explicitly that if you pay $8 a month, it was 20, Stephen King bartered him down, it's so strange that that really happened. If you pay that $8, you will get prioritized in the replies. by the algorithm, which is, it is paying for some strange advantage, you know, in this weird website that we're all addicted to and try to accumulate meaningless numbers on. But you are paying for that algorithmic advantage.

It's monetizing the need to get these little dopamine hits from strangers. Yeah, yeah. It is addiction media already. It probably will work, won't it? Put in that term. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often.

Because I was annoyed by everyone who was sort of going, oh, we shouldn't have to pay for this. Because the truth is, you know, if you're not paying, then you are the product. Like, I think that there was, there was an interesting play there by Twitter. Like if they could have slowly brought in a subscription model, they probably could have made enough money out of that model. But it's not $8 to be verified. It actually has to be something that frog in boiling water type thing where it's good because getting away from advertising driven sort of thing is not necessarily a bad thing.

I think the really exciting thing is that Mastodon is not an owned company. It's actually an idea more than anything else. And it's a network. And that's why I hold out hope for it because it is such a, it's a purely social media play and that it may actually end up being the thing that we all become addicted to simply because it stays truer to those things. Like otherwise, like, if you're on Twitter, you're going to be, yeah, it is going to be this thing where suddenly, you know,

the equivalent of a buzz feed will just be feeding, filling up your feed because they've got the priority because they've paid the money for the priority. Like, I think the biggest problem isn't necessarily him wanting to earn money from its user base, it's like the philosophy he has applied to his attempts to do that because it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what's good about the platform. I like going on there and knowing that, you know, I can drunkenly like tap Tom Morello on the top shoulder and be like, that was sick guitar playing man and knowing that it's actually him.

Like that's actually the kick I get out of Twitter. Yes. And then all of a sudden, it doesn't, the blue tick doesn't anymore mean that's actually Tom Morella. it means that's a dude that's got $8. Yes. And the philosophy behind that is that he is viewing the verified checkmark as an insecure man would in that it's just this ego boost.

It's just this. All it is is clout. That's not how I really saw it. It's like assuring. It's a safety feature. It's like a badge on a car, isn't it? It's just, he's selling us. It is.

This is how rich people think about the world. Fuck, what a fucking moron. What an absolute worry is no understanding. He's bought something, he's bought something, he's bought a social, he's brought a party, like a social gathering, and he doesn't understand the socialness of the gathering. He's asked us to turn the music off. It's weird. Fuck. Jesus.

That's why I was upset. Yeah. Because you said you got pissed off and everyone was upset, and I was very clearly upset. Yeah. No, no, it was just like, well, you know, somebody's got a pain. And I think it'll be Elon Musk. Yeah, ultimately. Could this wipe him out?

Yes, I think it could. That bigger move. I guess $44 billion isn't small. Well, I think because the other thing, and I think this is more of a rumor than, we haven't seen the latest inventory models, but it is true that Tesla had a blowout in its inventory in the last quarter, right?

So suddenly people aren't buying new Tesla's at the rate that they were in the last couple of years. Why is that? Well, I think that's just rising interest rates and slowing economy, right? But add to that the fact that it's embarrassing now to earn the Tesla. Like, I recently went to the US, the places where you see the Testers are California. Like, in L.A., it's not Hicksville, Scottsdale, Arizona. You know, it is an East Coast blue thing to do.

So there's that. And then, you know, every time Twitter, needs more money, the only source of revenue that has, you know, that Elon Musk can tap is to sell more of his Tesla shares. So there's now constant

pressure on the Tesla share price and it could just become this vicious cycle where it drains him of all his resources. This is the best case scenario that he sees this and jumps ship from Twitter really quickly? It'd be amazing, wouldn't it? It'd be so good.

Yeah, well, we've set up, the Chaser has set up a... Are you trying to buy Twitter? We've set up Lettuce versus Elon Musk watch. Which brings us to Liz Truss. Which brings us to Liz Truss, yes. That was smooth. So you've been in London for the last few weeks and Europe, really.

Yeah, during the ill-fated Liz Truss. Oh, you were there. Were you there? I was there for basically all of her. Wow. For three weeks. It was quite a remarkable time. And so what is going on with the UK?

I don't think Brexit has gone particularly well to them. Just put it like... Really? Yeah. Yeah, this thing that seemed like a terrible idea and had no discernible benefits has eventualed thusly. And it's had a really interesting effect on family life.

People don't like to talk about it. It really seems like at the moment. Yeah, because it's very hard to admit that you got it wrong, isn't it? Like, isn't it still a bit of a sort of sacred cow that you know, politician will dare say, oh, the people got it wrong. No, yeah, it's this like, it's become, it's kind of like Q and on at American Thanksgivings. We'll just try not to talk about it that much. Right.

I guess I'd last been in London in 2019 just before the pandemic. And compared to how it felt now, two weeks ago, because the first thing that I noticed was that in all the service industry jobs and hospitality jobs, basically London used to run on Eastern European people getting paid. the minimum wage jobs, but, you know, doing it diligently and well. This year, they just completely disappeared from the city of London. All service industry jobs were basically just very grumpy Londoners, British people. I guess working the minimum wage, very grumpy about it. And then cost of everything was so expensive in London that they were clearly just in this cycle of getting to work and sleep and work and sleep and work and sleep and just not getting ahead.

the news was constant just various crises I'd never heard about before you know the latest in the broccoli crisis and like things were just disappearing constantly supermarkets weren't particularly well stocked really so it was it was like you know when Australia first started having lockdowns and the shelves it was sort of like mild as in the world interact degree but it was still going on yeah and so the high streets in i went to covengy which is you know in the midlands in the high streets there was that sort of every second shot was shut. I don't know if this is, like this is a small snapshot of the country. I'm sure it's not repeated everywhere,

but there were just signs of things just sort of eroding. And then as I'd speak to people, the Queen had just died too. This was a really strange time to be in the UK. And some of the people are talking to would sort of at a deep fundamental level quite disturbed about the fact that people were being arrested for protesting about the fact that, you know, the monarchy during this period of morning.

and fairly innocuous stuff, like a placard up outside Westminster and, you know, being sent to jail for it. These aren't vibes of things going well for a country. It definitely felt like everything, every single measure was just a bit worse and in some measures quite a lot worse than it was three years ago.

So why is Margaret Thatcher to blame for all of this? Oh, we're going there. Okay, so the UK has become wedded to this idea of basically austerity politics, which is that the poor deserve what they get, which isn't much, and rich people pull themselves up. And it's cutting back on social services. It is not taxing the wealthy very much. And this is why this is the interesting thing that happened politically is that Liz Trust basically got the job as the replacement for Boris Johnson by promising this extremely neoliberal approach to managing the economy. She was going to get in there

during these multiple broccoli crises that I'd never heard of, she's going to get in there and fix all of that by doing basically what the Australian government is it to do with its stage three tax cuts. She was going to make things a lot easier for rich people to not pay tax. And just the why this was interesting, because that's not news in itself. That's what Tories have done forever. Actually, I mean, that's what politicians of both stripes have done for the last 40 years

to be totally accurate. But she did it, and the market reacted to it extremely negatively for, I think, the first time ever. They usually love this sort of thing. Yes. But it was this, she lost all economic credibility because it was just so obvious that actually the country couldn't afford to do this. This was a dumb thing to be doing right now. And even the banks and the finance industry felt this way.

And the economy tanked, it was like 30% in a day kind of thing. People's retirement savings would we took down that much. And that is why she's not prime minister. And it was the fact that her ideology, her. approach to managing the economy was so neoliberal. It was like an extreme form of neoliberalism at a moment when the nation's economy just couldn't handle that anymore without collapsing in on itself. That is why she's no longer prime minister. And that is a massive, that is a massive change in the orthodoxy. It's really quite an interesting moment. It's almost like the contradictions

in capitalism have come full circle. So the lefties are now the bankers and the, you know, the lefties who believe in higher tax and now the bankers and the no that's not true but then did Murdoch hold on hope till the end

they must have still backed trust to the end you would have thought they back whoever the conservative PM is like you know there were great great pictures about her you know in the front pages a few days before this happened and then very enthusiastic pictures about

Rishi Sunak the next guy the day afterwards yeah they just want to keep this train rolling and it is such a shit show and for the first time in a long time the british labor party actually has quite resounding lead in the polls so that and that needs to last a little bit longer to the next election but change of government looks extremely likely you say that but i do you know you can always trust the british labor party to fuck it up you can always trust any labor party to fuck it up we're fucked aren't we yeah i think i'm going to write about the Victorian election the herald son this week that's so

Yeah, that'll be good. That'll be great. Okay. And are you four or against Dan Andrews? And what about the steps? We haven't covered the steps. No, we're going to cover the steps. I actually bought that newspaper, that edition.

Wow. Too funny. We'll get into the steps. Daniel Andrews is definitely going to win despite the steps. Fuck, okay. Gosh, how unassailable. I mean, only a dictator could win against steps. Well, that's kind of what's implied in that story.

The other thing that's implied in that story is that these are little bitch-ass steps and could only hurt a little bitch. It's really quite funny. They're only 42 centimetres high. It's like, it's really... You've got to do a line-by-line textual analysis of that... Can I?

Yes, you should. You should totally go through it. Okay, I'm going to do that. I'll be more meticulous than Media Watch. I'll be awful about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be perfect. All right, man, that was fun.

Do you reckon that was good? That was fun. Our gears from road microphones. We're part of the ACAS Creator Network. work.