Tuesday, Nov 1, 2022 • 25min
Twitter in the Time of Elon Musk
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It was long awaited, and some doubted that it would ever come to pass, but last week, the tech billionaire Elon Musk officially took over Twitter.
The platform was once the place of underdogs, a public square that allowed users to challenge the moneyed and powerful. Is that about to change?
Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times, and co-host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”
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Kevin Roose
Sabrina Tavernise
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Sabrina Tavernise
00:32
From
the New York Times
. I'm Sabrina Tavernise
and this is The Daily.Share
00:44
At the beginning
Twitter
was a place for underdogs, a public square where people could challenge those with money and power. But now it's owned by the world's wealthiest man who gets to call all the shots.Share
00:57
Today I talked to my colleague
Kevin Roose
about Twitter's
next chapter.Share
01:08
It's Tuesday November 1.
Share
01:16
So Kevin, I'm just gonna say it.
Elon Musk
finally owns Twitter
.Share
Kevin Roose
01:21
Surreal, isn't it?
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
01:22
Completely.
Share
Kevin Roose
01:23
Yeah, I've had to sort of digest it over the past few days as well because this is this thing that has been looming as a possibility for so long. But a lot of people kind of doubted that it would ever come to pass and now here we are.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
01:37
And Kevin, when the deal finally went through there were these photos that emerged of
Musk
actually walking into the headquarters of Twitter
carrying a sink like what was that?Share
Kevin Roose
01:47
You know, the best anyone's guess is that it was just a prop for the ensuing joke that he made on
Twitter
, which was, "let that sink in".Share
Sabrina Tavernise
01:57
Ah! Oh boy.
Share
Kevin Roose
02:03
Can we get like, can we get a rim shot?
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
02:05
So Kevin, this was all pretty surprising, right? Because you know, just a few weeks ago, the universal understanding was that
Musk
did not want to own Twitter
and was doing everything possible never to own it. I mean he made this $44 billion dollar offer, but he'd had this massive case of buyer's remorse and tried every which way to back out of it.Share
Kevin Roose
02:25
Yeah. So he initially offered to buy
Twitter
in April at a price of $44 billion. Then the economy tanked, and Twitter
stock along with other tech stocks fell dramatically, and it no longer looked like such a good deal to him, and he decided that he didn't want to buy the company anymore.Share
02:49
And spent months sort of publicly trying to get out of this deal using every method at his disposal.
Twitter
eventually sued him to force him to complete the deal and as the case was preparing to go to trial in Delaware
, he must have realized that he was probably not going to win this case. And so he at the last minute reversed course and said actually, "yes, I do intend to buy Twitter
just as I said, I would back in April".Share
Sabrina Tavernise
03:19
So Kevin, that brings me to why I wanted to talk to you because you are a long time student of technology, of Silicon Valley, and of course of
Musk
. And the moment this deal went through, you articulated a theory about why it matters like not just for Twitter
but for all of us, right? Like explain that for me.Share
Kevin Roose
03:45
I assumed you had me on because I'm a bona fide Twitter addict, but this is turns out not an intervention.
Share
03:55
So I think this deal matters a lot for two main reasons.
Share
04:01
One of which is just the practical reasons, so
Twitter
, it's not the biggest social network but it is still an important platform. I mean it is where a lot of people including media figures, politicians, celebrities spend their time and it's a big an important platform for public discourse. And so I think anything that happens to social network at that scale with that importance matters. So that's the practical reason that I think this deal is important.Share
04:32
And the second symbolic reason is that I think that
Elon Musk's
acquisition of Twitter
marks a kind of end of an era.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
04:41
How so?
Share
Kevin Roose
04:43
Well I think that
Twitter
part of its identity has always been that it was this kind of disruptive bottom-up force in society.Share
04:52
It was how ordinary people, people who didn't have power or influence or fancy jobs, it was how they sort of got a message out into the world, it was kind of a platform that gave power to the people. And that was how it conceived of itself for basically the last decade. And I think that that era sort of came to a natural end last week when
Twitter
- the power to the people platform - was acquired by the world's richest man.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
05:23
Okay, so take us through that journey, Kevin, where does it begin?
Share
Kevin Roose
05:27
So
Twitter
is started in 2006 in San Francisco
, it's this little SMS based text microblogging thing, and it really, for the first couple of years of its life, is just seen as sort of a novelty for nerds. You know, people are posting like "just had lunch" or you know, "anyone wanna go to the park?" and it's not really seen as a place where important dialogue is happening.Share
05:58
In fact, one early critic calls it the "Seinfeld of the internet", there are no stakes, there's no like... it's just people, big people.
Share
06:07
And I joined
Twitter
in 2009 and it's still kind of had that feeling to it and that really changes in about 2011.Share
06:19
So 2011 is when activists all over the world start realizing that
Twitter
can actually be a good way to get a message out and especially a message that is not getting out through more official, more formal channels.Share
06:34
Twitter
, Facebook YouTube and similar sites were instrumental and helping to bring down the government of Tunisia
.Share
Kevin Roose
06:40
So during what we now know as the
Arab Spring
...Share
06:43
Twitter has been very active over the past day or two, people seem somewhat amazed that they're able to see such a momentous event, essentially unfolding live on their own computers.
Share
Kevin Roose
06:52
Activists and pro-democracy movements in countries like
Tunisia
and Egypt
and Libya
all of a sudden realize this tool, this microblogging service. This can allow us to circumvent our government's censure.Share
07:08
In the case of it really played a critical factor in getting out the word on how to organize on how to meet up.
Share
Kevin Roose
07:15
To keep in touch with fellow activists.
Share
07:17
We can see that these sites were used in order to get the word out, how to bypass checkpoints, how to get across bridges, how to get to places where people wanted to demonstrate.
Share
Kevin Roose
07:26
To kind of get around the official apparatus and reach millions and millions of people all over the world.
Share
07:39
And this was not just happening in the Middle East.
Share
07:46
This was happening in
America
, this was the time of Occupy Wall Street
.Share
07:55
It was also around the time that people on
Twitter
started protesting racial injustice and police violence. And in 2013 and 2014 they started organizing around the hashtag Black Lives Matter
and led to these just massive protests and this global movement that really changed the course of history.Share
08:25
And I think that all of this, this sort of anti-establishment protest and political activism really helped fuel one of the defining ideas, I would say of the first half of the 2010s, this sort of idea that social media was this new and disruptive force in society, that it was basically built for underdogs and that it would help empower dissidents and topple tyrants and give ordinary people these super-powerful publishing tools that would allow them to rise up and take power for themselves.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
09:03
So take us to the next chapter, what happened?
Share
Kevin Roose
09:07
So as these protest movements are rising on
Twitter
the platform just gets noticed by everyone, including powerful people. So authoritarian governments are interested in using Twitter
to repress dissent and protest celebrities get interested in Twitter
as a way to build their brands and reach a bigger audience and the secret is sort of out about this platform.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
09:35
Okay, so powerful people begin to notice it and use it too, but when does Musk come into the picture?
Share
Kevin Roose
09:43
Yeah, so
Elon Musk
like me joined Twitter
in 2009, and he was not a particularly active user. At the time Tesla
, this electric car company that he ran was small and struggling and most people didn't know who Elon Musk
or Tesla
were. And I was going back the other day and reading some of his early tweets, and it's just incredibly banal stuff, you know.Share
10:09
He tweets in 2012: "Just returned from a trip to
London
and Oxford where I met with many interesting people, I really like Britain".
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
10:17
Oh boy that does not sound like the
Elon Musk
of today.Share
Kevin Roose
10:20
Yeah, in 2014 he tweets was going to work out this morning, went to Ihop instead just like you know just dear diary stuff like nothing of consequence when he was a minor figure
Twitter
was this sort of minor social network, but then sort of towards the middle of that decade, things start to change.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
10:41
So
Twitter
is growing and has the attention of many, many people now.Share
Kevin Roose
10:47
Elon Musk's
profile is growing and the way that he uses Twitter
starts to change as well, he does these sort of weird attention grabbing stunts, like he sells this $500 flamethrower as sort of a fundraising stunt, and it really starts to pay off for him. He gets this following, that is very into Tesla
, that is very into SpaceX
, that is very into him, and it really lifts his businesses to new heights.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
11:21
Okay, so this is the second phase of
Twitter
, right? This platform that had been for regular people is now for people who already have power, people like Elon Musk
.Share
Kevin Roose
11:36
Yeah, and I think the tenor of what's happening on
Twitter
also starts to change. Twitter
in this sort of middle of the decade really starts to feel like a place where people are learning to weaponize the platform, not just activists and, you know, grassroots organizers, but authoritarians, bullies, trolls, political extremists, and culture warriors.Share
11:60
They're all sort of learning this formula where you act crazy, you break the rules, you behave in outrageous ways, and you get attention. And you can convert that attention into power, and the most obvious example of that is what happens with
Donald Trump
in 2016.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
12:19
Exactly, so when
Musk
buys Twitter last week, you know the transformation that you're describing must have to you, Kevin felt pretty complete.Share
Kevin Roose
12:31
It did, it really felt like this decade that began with the
Arab Spring
in 2011 kind of reached its natural conclusion. And I'm not saying that Twitter
will all of a sudden change entirely, Twitter
will still have political protests and social movements and acts of rebellion, but I think Twitter
has always been sort of an odd social media platform for a long time, users really felt like they had a sense of ownership - even if they didn't literally own shares in Twitter
, the company - you know, they were inventing features, they came up with a lot of the kind of weird customs and inside jokes that really defined Twitter
for the last decade.Share
13:14
And so even though it was a company that was controlled by executives and shareholders the whole time, it felt like kind of a class project sometimes just this organic kind of weird thing. And now that's all changing, right?
Share
13:30
So this company that was publicly traded for many years has been taken private,
Elon Musk
is the owner, there is no board, employees of Twitter
will have their stock bought from them, so they will not have a meaningful ownership stake in the company either, and it really does look like it's going to be Elon Musk
and his friends who are running Twitter
. And that is just a very, very different thing than Twitter
felt like for most of its history.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
14:00
So it goes from this public spirited college project to the private domain of one man.
Share
Kevin Roose
14:08
And not just any man but the world's richest man, who is I think it's fair to say extremely unpredictable.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
14:23
We'll be right back.
Share
Break
Sabrina Tavernise
15:22
So Kevin, what does happen to the people's town square when it's bought by a billionaire?
Share
Kevin Roose
15:27
Well, I think we should just pause and back up for a second, because thinking about what's coming next for
Twitter
really relies on understanding why Elon Musk
bought it in the first place. And a lot of that has to do with this period in the middle of the last decade when Twitter
was sort of becoming this wild and unruly place, with harassment campaigns and threats, and conspiracy theories running amok.Share
15:53
And a lot of that is happening as social media as a whole, is sort of reassessing its own role and responsibilities in the world.
Share
16:02
Our top story, the head of
Twitter
, Dick Costolo
says he's taking full responsibility for the rampant abuse, harassment, and basically hateful filth that spews from the keyboards of trolls, attacking people on Twitter.
Share
Kevin Roose
16:15
And so
Twitter
like other social platforms, decides, "wait a minute, we can't just be this kind of wild free for all. We have to actually put some rules in place to prevent bad actors from weaponizing and ultimately wrecking our platform".Share
16:29
He went on to say that this causes people to leave
Twitter
and that he promises to put more resources...Share
Kevin Roose
16:34
And it starts coming up with all of these rules and procedures to kind of stop the platform from being weaponized in this way.
Share
16:42
In the coming weeks, the social media company will give users new tools to report abuse or bullying...
Share
Kevin Roose
16:47
And you know, it implements new rules, harassment and hate speech...
Share
16:51
Twitter
has made it official revenge porn is now banned on the service.Share
Kevin Roose
16:56
It bans a number of high profile repeat offenders who had violated the rules over and over again.
Share
17:03
Milo Yiannopoulos
, a conservative writer for Breitbart.com was permanently suspended from Twitter.Share
17:08
Twitter gives
Alex Jones
the boot.Share
Kevin Roose
17:11
And some people really like these changes really like the, that
Twitter
is less of a wild free-for-all than it once was.Share
17:18
But of course these actions that
Twitter
takes also open it up to accusations that Twitter
itself is acting with too much authority and power that it's targeting certain forms of speech, that it's too willing to block people permanently, that it's overstepping its authority.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
17:42
Right, and the most memorable example of this is when
Trump
got banned from Twitter
after January 6th.Share
Kevin Roose
17:48
That became a global news story and a huge flash point for the political right, in saying that
Twitter
and other social media companies were acting essentially as left-wing speech censors.Share
18:01
And that message resonates with a lot of people, including
Elon Musk
whose own politics have been shifting quite a bit during this period. He's become more and more sympathetic to right-wing views and he's become very suspicious that Twitter
is acting in a way that is politically motivated.Share
18:22
And one sort of strange way point in this journey comes earlier this year, when
Twitter
suspends the account of the Babylon Bee
.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
18:34
What's that?
Share
Kevin Roose
18:35
It's sort of like the conservative version of the onion, It's a satire site run by conservative Christians, and they publish you know basically satirical articles mostly about you know Democrats and people on the left.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
18:49
Got it.
Share
Kevin Roose
18:49
So it gets suspended from
Twitter
after making what was widely regarded as a transphobic joke about a transgender biden administration official and that really riles up Elon Musk.
Because he likes the Babylon Bee
, he thinks of it as a, as a sort of necessary corrective to kind of left wing comedy sites, and he gets really mad about it and that's when he starts tweeting and talking about, "maybe I should buy Twitter
and change the rules".Share
Sabrina Tavernise
19:22
So it was all about this
Babylon Bee
thing.Share
Kevin Roose
19:25
I think that's a little simplistic, but I do think that there is sort of a strange kind of butterfly effect here, where
Elon Musk's
favorite comedy site gets censored, gets suspended by Twitter
and that's sort of his breaking point, where he says, "Okay, I'm not just going to complain about this on Twitter
, I'm actually going to buy the company and liberate it".Share
Sabrina Tavernise
19:46
So when
Musk
says he wants to liberate it, it kinda sounds like he's saying that he wants to return it to its roots as the champion of the underdog. Is that right?Share
Kevin Roose
19:57
Yeah, I think that's what he would say. I think he's really nostalgic for this period before
Twitter
and other social networks really took a heavier hand in moderating their platforms.Share
20:08
He kind of liked the spicy wild west free-for-all that
Twitter
was. And I think that's what he's been aiming for with his version of Twitter
is to sort of in some ways, bring it back to that earlier, less moderated, less policed version of itself.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
20:25
But at the end of the day,
Twitter
is a business, right? I mean, and he needs to grow the profits of that business to take it seriously as a business. So how do you see him balancing these competing demands?Share
Kevin Roose
20:40
It's going to be very tricky for him. I mean, not only does he have strong beliefs about social media and
Twitter
and what kinds of content it should and shouldn't moderate, but now he has a whole group of fans and supporters, including many on the political right, who are expecting him to, you know, as he put it, "free the bird".Share
21:00
But he also, you're right, has these real business pressures now. He's spent $44 billion you know, he's taken on debt, which he's going to need to start paying back and he needs to make this company a much better business very quickly, if this deal is going to work out for him.
Share
21:20
And so I think
Elon Musk
is really rapidly running into this central tension that I expect is going to be the sort of biggest question. And source of uncertainty with his governance of Twitter
is, are the steps that he's going to take to open Twitter
back up and make it a more free place, also going to make it a less profitable business?Share
Sabrina Tavernise
21:42
And Kevin, is there any sign of which direction he is going to go? I mean, is this going to be old school Musk, who wants to free the bird or new
Musk
? Who wants to grow his business and make sure his investment doesn't evaporate?Share
Kevin Roose
21:57
I think in a confusing way it's going to be both. So what we've seen from
Elon Musk
since this deal closed last week is sort of this veering between these approaches. So you know right away he tweets: "the bird is freed". He tweets: "comedy is now legal on Twitter".
Share
22:19
Essentially saying like the
Babylon Bee
and other, you know, sort of edgy comedic voices can exist on the platform. We're not going to ban them anymore. But then he has all so made some edgy tweets since this deal closed over the weekend.Share
22:35
He tweeted a story making baseless allegations about
Paul Pelosi
, Nancy Pelosi's
husband, who was recently attacked in his home. And so he posted a very spacious story about this attack and some of the reasons behind it as a reply to Hillary Clinton
weirdly. and then deleted that after he was accused of spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
23:02
So old
Musk.
Share
Kevin Roose
23:03
Right. But then we've also seen glimpses of this sort of more moderate
Musk
. He released a statement last week after the deal close which was basically a plea to advertisers, the people who account for about 90% of the company's revenue at this point, basically saying Twitter
is not going to become what he called "a free-for-all hellscape".Share
Sabrina Tavernise
23:27
Interesting.
Share
Kevin Roose
23:27
He said basically
Twitter
is not going back to the way it was before we took all these steps to make it safer, not just for users but for at advertisers. So advertisers please don't get scared and leave Twitter
because we are not going to throw open the gates and let anything go like we once might have.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
23:47
So this is kind of a chastened new
Musk
.Share
Kevin Roose
23:52
Well it's a
Musk
who realizes that in order to have this deal work, Twitter
can't lose all of its advertisers and a big chunk of its users overnight.Share
24:06
He has a lot of his net worth now wrapped up in the fate of
Twitter
as a business and he understands that until Twitter
stops being dependent on advertising, it's going to need to be a more tightly moderated place.Share
24:24
You know, I've stopped making predictions about
Elon Musk
a long time ago, but I think we can expect to see some lurching between these two approaches, and ultimately I think he's going to really resist giving either of them up and he's going to want to have his cake and eat it to.Share
Sabrina Tavernise
24:48
Kevin, thank you.
Share
Kevin Roose
24:49
Thank you.
Share
Sabrina Tavernise
24:52
Kevin will be following what
Elon Musk
does with Twitter
and other tech stories on his new weekly podcast, Hard Fork.Share
25:01
We'll be right back.
Share
Break
Sabrina Tavernise
25:47
Today. On Monday federal prosecutors filed charges against the man accused of attacking
Nancy Pelosi's
husband in their San Francisco
home. David DePape had broken in and attacked Mr Pelosi
with a hammer while he was sleeping in their bedroom. De Pepe later told police that he wanted to hold Miss Pelosi hostage and quote, "break her kneecaps".Share
26:11
Prosecutors charged with attempted kidnapping and with assaulting the relative of a federal official. The
San Francisco
District Attorney's Office was expected to file charges, too.Share
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