It was very expensive. Guys, this is a gift. It's a it's
an iou worth forty four billion dollars, so well, you know, uh
frey, forty four billion would be with that much anyway, that's a good
one, so I might want to hang onto that one. Yeah, hang
on to that one. Okay, that's a big one. I will treasure
this gift. But it's seriously crazy to us. We come into the Twitter
Twitter headquarters. We were you know, banned from Twitter in March twenty twenty
two. You restored us on a bunch of other accounts in November twenty twenty
two, and then now we're invited and we get to come here and we
weren't even allowed to go into our account. You know, absolutely, it's
like barbarians storming at the barbarians, not really at the gate there through the
gate and pullaging much. That's what we were doing. We're in and we're
pillaging the march. You're the bar You're you're the barbarian. Yes, just
making sure two of my barbaria and friends. Okay, I want to ask
about that. So the restoring of accounts, Yes, when you came in,
so you took over, you closed the deal, There was the lawsuit,
there was all that, There was the drama. We were we were
like riding a roller coaster wondering what was actually going to happen, because we
had no idea if you would ever actually take over the company, if we
would ever actually get out of Twitter jail, because we had vowed to never
delete that tweek right, So we were watching and just kind of wondering,
what's really happening. Um. Then you finally take over and you go in
on day one, what are the conversations like, take us behind the scenes,
Like what happened behind the scenes where you're talking with the team, You're
trying to figure out what to do with the advertisers and all of that.
What was the conversation behind the scene that around were storing accounts? There are
a few questions around wise king of Sinkum, but where is the sink?
Is the sink still here? Um? Security has its do really? Yeah
it's here? Um yeah Um. I'm still running into people who didn't don't
Actually they asked me, why did you wakens lovely with the sink? Because
it us Yeah, thinking a punt let that sink in, Um that couldn't
help it. You know, I felt like if I showed up with the
sink, they'd have to let me in, right because you can't help but
let that sink in. It's impossible. It seems it seems like the perfect
Halloween you know costume. Yeah, if you want to presume you want to
get into people's houses, Yeah, that's hysterical. So you came in though,
and you said bring back the battle and be you bring back these accounts
like and then there was like pushback, right, didn't you get pushed back
internally? That's what was reported anyway? Just going off the way was in
the news. Yeah. Um, I mean it was chaos in the beginning.
Um. I was trying to figure out, you know, how to
run this place, what was going on? Um? And very difficult when
the whole company works from home. So you know, it's like who do
you even um zoom with, you know, right, Like, I don't
know. It's like normally you could walk around, introduce yourself to people and
have common stations, but Twitter gone to almost fully work from home, so
this building was empty, um and Twitter pulling around the world or empty,
So it was just very difficul actually just trying to understand where was going on.
I'd say it like the analogy. It would be like, I mean,
teleported into a plane that's in a nose dive with its engines on fire
and the control stone work, and you gotta take it out of the nose
time. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta connect reconnect the controls, you know,
like who do what's what's the old structure, what's the management team?
Um? Because unlike literally the hour one of the thing closing, I exited
the top old people of the company, um, and then then a whole
much people also quit. So it was like, you know, organizational structure
was like Swiss, like Swiss cheese that you put in the microwave. Yeah,
you know, it was like full of hells and melted. How is
your Twitter feed? You funny to be better these days? What? Well?
I only use the following tab because to me, that's what I always
wanted social media to be, was just everybody I follow in order exactly the
order that it's posted. So the for you is more, you know,
the algorithm driven stuff. Yeah, but I think you try it the for
you try it out, Yeah, And I use it predominantly and I might
time on the opposite insane because because there's it's feeding me so much stuff,
you know, like stuff I'm watching like crazy fight scenes like no context humans
or CCC video exactly, yes, uncensored video. I'm getting drawn into these
things, you know, CCTV stuff. Um, yeah, I think it's
it's good. I mean, I'm not. I'm seeing a mix of opinions
too. I'm seeing people that I disagree with pop up that I don't follow,
which a lot of people object to. They don't want to see that.
They only want to see people that they that they agree with. Yeah,
well, well, the system actually does take into account your interactions.
So it basically if somebody, if you argue with someone else, it'll seem
that you want you want, you like arguing, which probably maybe someone secretly
does actually like arguing. They don't want to admit it, but they actually
like it. Um it's like that Monty Plathon sketch, you know, have
you ever seen that one where for an argument here, for an argument,
you accidentally goes into the insults room abuse. Um so if if if if
if, well, if one account argument with another account, but augument will
assume that that's what you want. You want you want more of more arguments
or more of that, you know, because you chose your time to spend
your time that way. So it will actually then show you content that that
other content you might want to interact with. UM. But I think that
over time, the recommended for you tweets should be extremely compelling. UM.
I suspect um that you'd probably want eighty twenty recommended versus following. It'll also
put it, it'll the most compelling tweets from your followers are also in for
you. So so skip the boring ones that people pretty much yeah, you
can go right to the good stuff. I mean there's some casts that I
follow that tweet twenty times a day or more. UM, So it tends
to fell up the following. UM. But at you know, you if
you'd want, like say, the best of the people that you follow should
be in for you or something's wrong. Um. But the intend is to
maximize unregretted user time. So that's that's a that's I think the metric,
that's the metric I've got the whole organization focused on, is um unregretted user
time. I mean so because I mean frequently here someone said, tell me
they spent a lot of time on TikTok, but they kind of hate themselves
afterwards. Um. And so that's un called up you know, regretted user
time. Um. And you know, so if we can, we wanted
to be that you spent the time on on x slash Twitter and you're glad
you did, like you were informed and entertained. Um. And I do
I think get more laughs from Twitter per day than everything else combined. Frankly,
yeah, because everybody's moving turns algorithm, Facebook's algorithm, and YouTube's all
algorithms driven TikTok, So what's Twitter doing differently that's getting you that unregretted user
time compared with these other apps. Well, I guess it matters what content
is on a system to be recommended in the first place. Okay, so
you know TikTok has a lot of teen dance videos. Um. So classically
it's a populous popula topic. Um. Twitter is more of you know,
intellectual debates and you know, learning things, humors and and and humors.
It's it's a much more a variety of a variety show, but but includes
you know, serious information um and brand breaking news. UM. So you
know it's what it matters that even if you had identical. There are identical
algorithms between Facebook and Twitter. Twitter content is better or interesting in that way,
you still prefer Twitter and and as as you've seen, we've open sourced
the algorithm and made at this point, I think well over one hundred changes
based on user feedback. Um. But how will we stay informed if NPR
isn't there anymore? You know, at any given point, I'm not sure
if NPR is there or not. Um. I wasn't aware that they were
there until they said they were not going to do that. Um. That's
I was with Jim Carrey when I foundut Jim Carrey was leaving Twitter. I'm
like, I didn't know Jim Carrey was on Twitter. Yeah, and maybe
it's back. I don't know to find out. I mean, we we're
trying to apply the rule is consistently at Twitter, so that you know.
The NPR thing is like, well, UM, if we're going to call
some media state affiliated, well, there's plenty of meat organizations in the in
the US that are or in the West that are state affiliated. UM,
so then we should apply the label equally. UM. And then they get
prey upset about that UM and said that there will state affiliated implies that the
state has editorial authority of an influence over the content, and like, so
you're saying you don't have that, how self? Where are you? Um,
you know, it's on their website. Well yeah, I mean there's
there's they well, NPR are literally on their own exactly on their own websites.
Said, I felt, you know, comment funding is essential to their
operation, right, and so we even changed it from state affiliated to state
funded. So that's just literally a statement of fact, right. I mean
we could actually just look the same text from their website and put it at
the label. But they're still they're unhappy with that. Yeah, they're unhappy
with that. It gives the wrong impression, the true impression. Well,
I mean I think they got to pull their punches and critiquing the government at
NPR. It's just a gas, you know, based on their extreme dependence
on government funding. I mean, you don't generally buy the band that fees
you. Let's real quick though, back to the when you came into Twitter.
Okay, so the plane is going down and you and you're at the
controls and trying to save it. So you're doing all these things, but
you also did want to restore banded accounts. Yeah, and so like the
trust and safety team and everybody was where they were arguing with you about that,
pushing back on that. Or was it primarily advertisers who were giving you
the most pressure and saying, if you restore all these accounts, we're pulling
our ads. What was happening there with pressure you we're getting well, I
mean it was just a totally coowdic situation because they're still gonna run tells on
SpaceX M while trying to figure out anything about how Twitter runs. Um,
uh you know where you know, I actually exited the top four people in
the first hour, and then there were a ton of others that either got
exited or quit yea. So I was really just trying to keep the wheels
in the bus. Is the top priority? Um. That Twitter codebase's very
It's actually much more complex than you think, and it's not something that just
works, you know, it requires a lot of carapeating. Um. And
there were many people who are predicted that the service would go down and would
Twitter Twitter is not going to exist after this weekend. There was a whole
World Cup was going to kill it, right, because yeah, it was.
It was gonna get crushed by the World Cup. Number. Predictions that
Twitter is about to die were ridiculous. I mean, well, can just
go like almost particle right, Yeah, it's like but but it was still
they didn't have They did kind of have a point in that it wasn't too
easy to keep things running. Um. There there were so many estary corners
of the Twitter software and the system operations that make it hard to you know,
it's hard. It's hard to keep running. It's not it's not I
can ephasize that enough. It's not a so like some app on the phone
that just works. It's a super complicated thing. Financially, it was a
very tough situation because Twitter in a normal year would do probably four and a
half billion dollars in revenue four and a half billion in cost. So it's
a you know, it's they'd probably lose a little bit of money because I
you know, so I called a really expensive nonprofit because Twitter is of its
lifetime. I believe negative on profitability, like it's lost more money than it's
made. Um. But with because the high price the acquisition um which is
very foolish, foolishly high on my pob um, there's twelve and a half
billion dollars a debt and debt so I was saying, it's a billion and
a half So. And then there's a cyclic decline in advertising that seems to
start maybe around May of this year, but it was pretty significant. That's
what you saw. Facebook and Google and others also do some layoffs as a
result. Um. So there's a cyclic decline in advertising, and then um,
a pretty major pause in advertising where advertisers weren't they just put their their
campaigns on pause. Um. They didn't definitively say no. I mean if
in a few cases they did, but mostly in a response to you taking
over and passing free speech, they're like, oh, we don't want free
speech. Yes. Uh. Well, it's more like they are worried about
something that would affect their brand. I suppose, um, although it seems
like sometimes they worry about the wrong things, the things they should be worried.
They should be worried about some things, and they aren't and aren't worried
about other things and should be. Um. But nonetheless, there were a
lot of the advertisers put put the advertising on pause, kind of like see
where things go. Um. And that causes about a it's almost affective set
of reduction in revenue immediately um so. So in rough terms, we're um
during about negative three billion dollars a year in cash flow and possibly trending to
do worse than that, possibly four or five. So how hard to tell
where the bottom was? Um and a billion dollars in the bank, so
called roughly four months to live. What were the options if you go?
If you ran out like you would have to continue to fund it, you'd
have to seek funding from outside. Yeah, I mean it's a limited you
know, how much tells the stock I can sell and I can't sell it
all the time. I mean the reason I saw stock in December last year
was which I regret at this point, was because I wasn't sure how much
money Twitter would need. I've thought, you know, I might just the
you know, in October it was six million, six billion dollar cash burne
and we don't know where revenue is going to bottom out. I had to
get the company to financial stability, which we I think more we're close to
natural stability, roughly not quite break even, but close to it. And
I think training positively, you know, I think I think it's it's at
least the planes in level flight. The engine of engineering, software and sharing
is in much better shape. Um. I think we've played more futures and
capabilities in the last six months than Twitter is down in the last six years.
So with us twenty percent of the team, that's crazy. Yeah.
Do you do you feel like it was worse it? I mean, do
you ever regret it and go, why did I do this thing just to
make a stand for free speech? Or Um? I think it was necessary
and I think I wouldn't say that there's anything that's in retrospect has caused me
to um. Like, I think it was still the right move to acquire
Twitter, even at the outrageously high price. Um. Yeah, I think
it's gonna turn out to be important. Well, the price wasn't just financial
either. It's like, no, I mean this is a I mean I
should say, like you know, I do there there were there are other
investors beside me and Twitter. Um, and I'm the majority on it.
But I have to. I want to make sure that those who invested with
me do not suffer loss. So I'll make sure that the ultimate outcome is
better than their original investment. But it's so I want to became of us,
you know, so it's it's it's but but certainly get this will be
this is a hard way to get richer, that's for sure. Um this
is thought. This is the mega pain way to make money. Um that
this uh a lot of pressure on whoever's running Twitter, who you know to
do this with that on the platform, as you might imagine at any given
point, someone you know, someone powerful is unhappy basically um So anyway,
but I think it was it was still important to do UM and I because
they know pretty much all of the social media companies and the search companies were
acting in unison and along with your legsy media. So it was just where
do you find you know, actually, where do you find the truth?
And you know, if everyone is in lockstep with a lie? Well you
just did you see Obama's comments recently in a CBS interview I think it was
CBS where he was talking about how the thing that keeps him up at night
is how the media. There's like diversity in the media now and there didn't
used to be, and so now you have different narratives and people basically in
having different realities and that's the thing that's like keeping him up at night.
Is like the big problem that we faced right now. We wanted to go
back to the glory days. Yeah, there was one narrative. The media
was unified, three different channels. I'll telling you this. So you disagree,
you're telling us you disagree. Well, I haven't seen the full video,
so it's possible there maybe some contextual elements that mitigate community notes will help
us with that one. Yeah, cur notes is being pretty good. Um
yeah, I'm watching it closely to make sure. Because the as community notes
gains credibility, the the value of gaming it increases. So um, we're
going to make sure that it is as ungamable as possible. I mean,
the you may notice, but the I mean, the essential idea behind community
notes is that a note is only shown if it is rated highly by people
who historically have different opinions. So where to people who would normally disagree agree?
Yeah? Um, And so even if there's a lot of people from
say like one political point of view, it doesn't have to be political,
but one point of view, and it's only a small amount of number from
another political point of view, they still have to agree. You can't just
brigade the thing with with one ideology. I think the value and community notes
goes so far beyond just like fact checking notes. It's actually entertaining when somebody
gets noted. It's like it's bit's better than getting ratioed. It's it's it's
awesome. It is awesome. Yeah, the human value of some of the
notes, yeah, um. And I think it's when fact checkers get noted,
it's like it's so ironic, you know, it's beautiful. Well,
we have so much experience with fact checking because we were getting fact checked by
Snopes all the time for our jokes, you know, but that was just
one blue haired lady or something getting mad at one of our jokes. And
it's so much more powerful when it's, like you said, people that just
agree, the community coming coming together to fact checks something. And yeah,
I mean the ones that I see are there, they're solid. It's like
rare to see a wrong one. So um, and anyone can I can
get community noted, UM clearing me obviously, UM, as well as advertisers
and and presidents of countries and whatnot. So I think once you get noted
a few times here, it's an honesty amplifier, you know, so well
they're not used to it. People they're not used to it. Yeah,
people that are on the left or just in their own echo chamber government leaders,
they're not used to that kind of accountability or not. I think it
definitely comes as a surprise when they get a community notables the first time.
Have you been noted? How many times have you been noted on? I'm
not sure, maybe three times. I don't know. Um, I've never
been community noted. I don't think BABILMB hasn't been community not yet. I
was wondering about that. If if we're gonna get like marked like this was
satire, if people believed it was true or something like that and hasn't happened,
Well, we don't make any truth clims really, right, I mean,
so, I don't know. That was the weird thing about the fact
chicks people believe it. Sometimes they can't tell if it's real. I can't
blame them, so I can't or some of these articles are I can't tell
it. I mean, I can tell that that doesn't have a bee logo
on it. But but but the actual text of the headline is indistinguishable from
a ya you know piece. So it's very very common at this point.
Um, it's a crazy world reliving. Yeah, that's why I don't blame
people when when when someone says that they you know, they make fun of
people who think that satire is true. I'm like, I don't, you
know, it's the real. The real headlines are so satirical in nature they
seem like a parody. So if you believe it be article, it's just
yeah, the naturally is going to happen. So you want to say,
you know, like you see some of these things where it's like free speech
is bad from free speech or so you know, if there was like one
headline to that effect, yeah, yeah, it's very it's as a sentire,
real real. It's like, um, you know what you New York
Times had like critical thinking is bad for our democracy or something. I remember
that, Like, what are you talking about that in saying there's a lot
of those. There's a lot of them. But you want to see Twitter
be a place where truth prevails through debate, right, where people actually go
back and forth, rather than you having somebody from the top down deciding this
is what's true and this is what everybody needs to believe, and in lockstep
unison putting that out there and silencing and stamping out everybody else. Yes,
we definitely want devotion narratives. That doesn't mean they have to be um you
know that that people need to get get violent about it or anything. But
I think you want to have marketplace of ideas where um, people you know,
have different viewpoints, they argue the viewpoints and maybe some minds are changed
along the way. Um, so you know there's this, there's both isn't
it's also is the it's the narrative true? And who's choosing an narrative?
Who's choosing a narrative is a bigger deal than you know? Is the article?
Is everything? The article accurate? Because there's a lot of things you
can write about on Earth, Why I write about that thing? Yeah?
So yeah, So the aspiration here for X slash Twitter is to be I
would call it the least the least untruthful place on the Internet. Like we
should acknowledge that there will be things that are on true on the platform,
but we'd like to be the least untrue of any place. And people have
a right to be wrong anyway. Um, you know, but I think
we're succeeding if if it's if Twitter is the place where you can get the
most accurate, the closest to the truth, um, and different perspectives on
the truth, to degree that to agree that it's subjective, that's the that's
the goal, pretty straightforward. And Elon even thinks that he has the right
to share his opinion. Yeah, it has the audacity, which we found
the audacity to share your own opinions. I was thinking the opposite in this.
This is a reference to the interview that you had recently with CNBC and
and you were asked why you tweet certain things? Why do you why do
you share that publicly? Why do you share widely? Why don't you why
don't you keep it in the question? The sources Magneto. Yeah, sorry,
Magneto. I should undersaid that it's unfair to Magnetos. Unfair to Magneto
exactly. My mind goes the opposite direction. I'm like, what's in your
unsent drafts? I want to I want to know what you're holding back.
We promise we won't publish this, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll turn
the cameras on. Yeah, I probably. There have been a few cases
where you know, if this tweet, if I still want to send this
tweet in the morning, yeah, I will do so. Um. And
there've been a few cases where I should have done so. That would have
saved a lot of grief. Um. So there was some truth that I,
like a good friend of mine said, you know, it's not gonna
suggest out of stuff tweeting, but but you might want to consider saving it
as a draft and seeing if you want to tweet it in the morning.
Yeah, that's good advice. That should be a bible first. Yeah.
I think like Lincoln did something where he used to write these like angry letters
to people, and then he came to the conclusion that he really wasn't doing
any good and so you'd write the angry, angry letter and then see if
you wanted to mail it the next day. I believe that was and then
he almost never mailed it. But you don't write angry tweets, UM,
angry once in a while, you know, Well then sometimes that might tweets
are seen as angry when they're not. Um. So it's difficult to convey
tone, you know, sarcasm and a Tweetum, we need that sarcasm font.
That's a feature there. Yeah, on Twitter, you see what is
a sarcasm point? I don't know. We gotta we gotta make it up.
It's like the SpongeBob. It's the you know, the capital letters and
the capital yet letter eything. Yea make a sarcasm fun on Twitter and we
can see. Okay, you seem taken back by that question though, Like
I'm just starting like, how would you visually show that some of a sarcasm?
Oh? Yeah, I don't know. Um, there's no way to
do that. You need a disclaimer. Yeah, he's thinking about it now,
he's calculated. Now it's a problem he's gonna do. You can animate
the fund, Yeah, in a sarcastic way, sarcastic animation. Can't you
tell? We've lost him now? He's just trying to send this problem you
call that animation. It's not a sarcastic animation. Seeing a lot of people
who are saying they want to put their video on Twitter. Now, Tucker
Carlson is going to do his show on Twitter. Right? And that wasn't
like a deal you worked out. You said it wasn't. There's no deal
at all. Um, And I you recommended it to Don Lemon too.
Did he respond, did he say he's going to do it? I don't
know. I actually haven't looked it up, but I in general, I
think it would be cool. Yeah. So um um, I mean he
you know, we did talk and he just asked me, like, if
he does something on Twitter, will we sensor it? And I was like,
well, no, we you know, we believe in like the First
Amendment. And it's like a moment too before protecting the First Amendment. Um
amen, exactly amen. Um. So you just wanted to confirm that,
like, you know, we wouldn't sort of like suspend as account or or
whatever. And I said, well, as slung as it's like your slung
is a it's lawful um and uh, then then we will not just spend
the account. So that was enough for him to say, yeah, just
what you want to confirm. You want to confirm that that you know,
it's the free speech. He wasn't concerned about monetization. We want monetization,
that's how can we make money. I think I think I think that is
actually in a pretty good financial position. I think he's not like, you
know, struggling to pay the mortgage. Um. So um no. So
I mean I did say like that we've got the subscriptions thing and that we
will be also sharing ad revenue with creators. Um, kind of normal stuff
really. Um. You know, in order for someone to put their video
on Twitter as well as say YouTube, then they need to at least,
you know, make money on that, like equivalent amount of money or maybe
more on Twitter ideally, Yeah, because we make we make about twenty seven
dollars a month on Facebook. Video YouTube is only a little bit better.
Are you serious? We don't make much on Facebook. It's very little.
Yeah. Basically it's really bad on the monetization. Yeah, YouTube's a little
bit better, but still not and none of them nowhere near the number of
views you're getting. You know, you'll get millions of millions views, especially
on these shorts videos, and they throw pennies your way. So what is
the plan for Twitter video monetization for users? Um? Well, we have
to have subscriptions, and I subscribe to the video of course. UM,
thank you, welcome. Can you look at the camera and say, subscribe
to the best subscribe to the Babylon Beat you want to regret it? Um?
So the interviews done, We got what we needed. So we have
subscriptions obviously. Um, we're also going to be surfacing tweets that are subscription
tweets where you see the first line and we saw it already. Yeah yeah,
So that that's going to be really a big deal for growing subscriber based
because people want to kind of see like what is the tweet? You know.
Um, so we'll keep like you know, providing penalizing content that that
is for subscribers only, you know. I think it'll take a moment before
users to get used to it. But the the rate of growth of subscriptions
is crazy, like, um yeah, I mean I've never this is the
fastest I've seen anything grow. It's like wildfire. So I think it's gonna
be good. So the subscriptions, and then there's share of advertising revenue,
and we just really need to complete writing the software for figuring out like what
ads were associated with what content and then figure out like, you know,
some reasonable revenue share. And from the date that I said we would you
know, compensate creators, we will backdated to that and said people check.
So with the advertisers, are the advertisers that paused back for the most part,
are you continue to see problems with him being concerned about your free speech
stance and the new hire that you have coming in as CEO. Is she
going to be addressing some of those issues and trying to work with advertisers to
make sure that they feel comfortable on the platform. But then also, how
do you balance that with a commitment to free speech? That's kind of yeah.
So, I mean I think it's reasonable for an advertiser to decide what,
um what what what content they appear next to? You know, um,
we'll make sure that that their ad doesn't appear next to something controversial or
what are they whatever they consider controversial? Um? You know, so I
mean something is fairly obvious, Like you don't want to say, um,
a kid's movie showing up next to some racy content of some kind like you
know and IT'SFW stuff, um so, or or or you know, compassing
disney Land next to dead bodies in Ukraine. You know, it's like that's
that's what it's It's reasonable to have these adjacency controls, um. Just like
you know, advertisers could pick a particular time of day to advertise if they're
going to advertise, you know, up through I don't know where, if
it's eight or nine pm versus like you know, midnight, but it's going
to be different. So yeah, just we have we have those controls in
place for advertisers. UM. And we said like, look, there's freedom
of speech, but not freedom of reach necessarily. So it's like if somebody,
I mean, if you're careful what that that doesn't become d topian.
But um, people can basically say what they want to say. But if
if, if, if a lot of verified accounts blag it as you know,
questionable content, then it will not get amplified. So we're doing so
we need you need to make sure this doesn't have bad effects. It's new
higher though there's been people you made kind of both sides mad about it.
Right, You've got people on the left room mad for their reasons. You
have people on the right room mad for their reasons. You seem satisfied with
that outcome because it means that, you know, if you've got people on
the fringes on both sides upset, then you're doing something right. Right.
Yeah, But when it comes to LGBTQ and Q and on siltaneously upset.
I was thinking that I think you know, things go full circle. I'll
just lt Q and you'd probably get me in trouble if you like, well,
probably will You are saying. You're saying you want to speak your mind
even if it costs you something. You want to be able to say what
you want, even if it costs you something. You said that very emphatically
in that in that interview you just did sure, and so that matters to
you a lot. And that in so in a context where you've got like
a new CEO coming in, there's going to be taking over, and you
want everybody else to have that same freedom to be able to say what they
want, even if it costs them something personally in their lives or whatever to
have that freedom. Um, it would seem to me that the number one
thing you'd be looking for is someone who's going to come in and be as
committed to free speech as you are. Um. That trump's even advertising revenue
in your view, if you're willing to lose money to be able to personally
speak freely, then yeah. It was also lots of money for advertising money
because some advertisers got community noted right, um, and we wouldn't take the
community note down right. So it lost forty million dollars in advertising because of
that, because a big ones pulled out because a community notes and refusing to
pull community notes there was a willingness to lose money. Yes, we literally
just lost forty million dollars. That's it's not out approximation. Will things change
along those lines where there will there be more willingness to compromise to keep the
revenue to keep coming in from these big advertisers. Is that a concern of
yours? Um? No, I think, Um, I think we've actually
largely addressed the concerns the advertisers. Um. A lot of them like weren't
necessarily against me taking over Twitter. They just weren't show what it would look
like. You know, is it you know, is it are the sharks
in the water or what you know? Um? Yeah, is there going
to be rampant disinformation? Um? Is it going to be some like massive
right we takeover? Or so they were just like uncertain, Um, And
I think we're getting to the point here where they're like, you know,
and a lot of them use Twitter every day, and it's like it's actually,
obviously it's obviously not fooled with hate speech, Like anyone who uses it
knows that. Well. The media keeps trying to say that they keep publishing
these articles it's hate speeches on the rise. Hates two thousand totally false.
Yeah, it's completely false. The view counts are um down by a third
maybe half, and that's despite usage of the you know, all time record
usage of Twitter. And how do they define hate speech is a is a
big question mark. Well, it turned out one of the ways that one
of the hate speech tones was literally George Soros his name, it's just saying
it. We count it as a hate speech thing. So I thought,
well, you know, maybe the difference is a little broad. Yeah,
calling him Magneto it's considered hate. You know, it's like it's not it's
the comic book. You know, it's like, let's relaxed to you knows,
not at the end of the world here does that make you professor X?
Or who's professor X in this? Uh? Well, do you know
a lot of small people. I think we'll be fine. I think the
advertisers at this point are comfortable is the fact that Twitter is going to be
you know, fairer and and and not sort of a haven of hate type
of thing. Um. And they've they've used it enough for themselves at this
point too, like they know that from their usage it's it's actually fine.
Um, we've vastly reduced the amount of spam and scam stuff that happens on
Twitter. Um, it's quite rare at this point to see spammers whereas might
be used to be filled with them before. I think we can. We're
not gonna make old advertisers happy, but I think we'll make most of them
happy. And um, they'd be enough that are happy that to support the
you know this platform. But we're not gonna compromise on free speech. Well,
you see Twitter as more than social media. You know, you've got
X and everything, and yeah, what is the future vision for them?
You know, some of that will be fulfillment of the vision I had for
X dot com twenty four years ago, um, which is you know,
to be a normally comes thing financial services provider. Um. And you know
that's actually an important part of free and freedom as well. If if those
doing you know, the money exchange or running the money system can stop people
who disagree with them politically, that's a huge problem. I mean, so
that happened in Canada with the trucker strike, where people are being like basically
financially ostracized from society or for just protect you being a people's striking, Um,
and you know, I saw some some strange things with with with PayPal
where they were like, um, suspending accounts that they for what appeared to
be political reasons. And if you saw any of that, yeah, um
so like yeah, like so that's to freedom of information. That's but money
is a form of information. So I think it's important that we have have
a within the within the bounds the law that we enable freedom of um,
flow of money, which is form of information. And you see that living
on Twitter. Eventually it's part of X. Yeah. Yeah, I think
we need to broaden the branding. Yeah, Like Twitter makes made sense as
a name. Um, you know, if people are standing, you know,
texts basically group text at one hundred forty characters a piece between each other.
That's that's kind of a shoe thing, a tweet, you know,
not a long thing. Um. By the point in which you've got not
just text, but pictures, video, live interaction, um, you know,
the full array of financial services, um, a full array of communications,
encrypted communications, voice, video, everything. Twitter I think is the
wrong branding for that. It was I believe in descripted branding. So whereas
X is is kind of can X commune anything, So X mark. You
know X marks the spot X is where the treasure is xxx is. Why
the point is we're Christians that we wouldn't know um x rated. But I
think, you know, in general, like goal here is like like,
uh, let's just make sure we take the actions that strengthen the pillars of
democracy and further civilization. Um. You know, we want to have a
future we can look forward to that we're excited that we're we're excited about the
future, not that one we were sad about it. So, and the
civilization is more fragile than people realize. If you study the rise and full
of civilizations in history, you know, when they're at the top, they
would think they could have a fall, but they always do eventually. Yeah,
every every civilization has a lifespan. About how many years do you think
we got left? Well, I'm seeing a lot of late stage civilization vibes
these days. Ely um Um, I don't know, man, there's so
many wild cards. I mean, the short term we've got, um,
we're at the financial crisis probably some economic thing, but whatever, those things
happen from time to time. Um. But we've got to you know,
some geological, geopolitical world wild cards with Ukraine and Taiwan and uh and then
AI, which is you know called does think it's called a singularity for a
reason, like because you don't know what's going to happen, Like a black
hole. You go in the black hole, what happens? I don't know.
We're on the we're on the singularity AI singularity event horizon, circling the
black hole. Well, and does AI concern you more than those other things
like geopolitical nuclear war or whatever? And where does that involve on the scale
for you? I know you've you've said some cautionary things about it, but
I don't know if you're like as much of a dumer as some people are
about it. I I mean, the good news about Russian Roulette is five
the barrels on a loaded that's encouraging. Yeah, that's good. Look on
the right side. Yeah. It just seems like a lot of times people
that are in tech are pushing these things forward without any guard rails or consideration,
you know, for what could go wrong, despite all the cautionary tales.
Is that's what sci fi is all about, you know, That's why
there should be regulation and stuff like that, Right, But what does that
look like, how do you regulate AI for example, Well, I think
you start off with an insight committee that has you know, people that are
independent from the leading players, as well as maybe some representatives representatives from the
leading players, and that's an inside committee. The goal is simply to learn
things um and then with industry and proposed rules. That's basically how it's worked
for prudent drug or aircraft or cars. Yeah, so's when when there's something
that is a danger to the public. H there's some regulatory body too,
kind of like a referee make sure companies don't cut corners stuff. When it
comes to just coming back to speech real quick. In Twitter, I've often
wondered in our case with you, you know, we had a situation where
this benevolent billionaire comes in and decides, I'm gonna make sure free speech exists
for people because there's no place where they can speak freely right now. So
I'm gonna I'm gonna buy Twitter and restore free speech on this platform. Great,
we're glad that you did that, Thank you. But should we have
to rely on benevolent billionaires to solve these problems for us? Or should there
be legal changes? Should there be like right now, the law currently protects
us from government censorship obviously, right, Well, the First Amendment does that,
but it does and protect us from private companies that want a muscle our
speech. So should there be legal changes that prevent viewpoint discrimination into you?
Do you support laws like that? Um? Are you aware of some of
the legal the current bills like in different states that are very spills. I
mean, we have to be careful that that the bill that is intended to
good do good does not pave the road to help. So, um,
I think so. Something I think would be very powerful is to say that
that all social media companies have to open source their algorithms. Um, so
that if so, at least it's known what they're suppressing and they can't secretly
suppress things. There's a massive amount of secret suppression going on on Facebook,
Google, Instagram, massive it's just not as off secret suppression. And there
was a Twitter and yeah, absolutely, but not anymore right right in puple
called shadow banning. Directly, it's like there's nothing you can't there's nothing that
says that you're banned or but you're you're, you're, you are effectively you
know, stuck in the basement. Well, that would be a legal change.
That would be a law that requires open source that if you're gonna censor,
you better do it transparently. Yeah. Yeah. The thing is that
people, it really doesn't take much to sort of sense or something. So
there's a lot of sense ship that goes on to Google that people don't realize
because all that needs to happen is just move just move that length to page
five, right, you know. I mean the thing about the little joke
about Google is like, what's the best place to hide a dead body?
Well, the second page of Google Social results, right, nobody ever looks
there. So if you just nudge something to page even page two, it's
going to drop the visibility by one hundred. But if you apply that to
the principle of freedom of speech but not of reach, isn't that the same
thing? Is there a difference? Especially? Yeah, that's why that's where
you're saying, there is you've got to be careful how you handle that.
Yeah. Well, one of the craziest things you do when you took over
Twitter was start releasing the Twitter files, which, yeah, like who takes
over a company and then says, look, how horrible all this stuff?
What's going on We need to have like truth and reconciliation here, you know,
So if we're not going to expose the things that we're done wrong,
why should people believe us in the future. So the you know, that's
why, like we're trying to be as transparent as possible. So it's like,
don't take my word for it. Literally look at the algorithm. You
should be able to recreate the results that you see on Twitter with the you
know, using that algorithm. So and we're trying to try to make sure
that that everything is broad to light not just says no hidden layers or anything.
We just discovered a you know last week hit like some hidden layer of
censorship that was written in twenty twelve, and like censorships maybe the wrong word.
It would it would basically suppress. It had like a list of words
and any of those words some of them were like, uh, like suck.
If you put suck just sc k. Actually even with other words it
um it gets massively de amplified. And that was literally a code from like
twenty twelve. And we found about We found this like where like um of
code last week it wasnting applied to like all tweets. Wow, um so
there's uh, like the guy that's bought a flight on starship in Japan is
um I. His name is his Twitter handles you suck twenty twenty and he
was like, listen, they started wrong with my account, you know,
yeah, and I'm sure enough it's because his Twitter handle had suck in it.
So, um, you know, it turned out there's there was about
a thousand words from some ancient list that was we're twees who are being suppressed,
um, and then we just found a list of URLs that are being
suppressed. Um. You know, some of them aren't like no obviously renowned
scammer URLs, but but some of them aren't like Babylon b dot com.
Um. So this is like it's like an archeological dick. Frankly, Yeah,
you talk a lot about wokeness and the woke mind virus, and all
that was is do you feel like that's what was driving those kinds of decisions
here or yeah? Absolutely, So we're we're it's like, you know,
around here, it's not about whether you had the you know, had some
of the work kool aid. You're swimming in the cool work kool aid.
It's like, you know, it's like if fish doesn't see the water,
it's swimming in it, right, it just seems normal, like if you're
in the cold, it's normal. The things like there's actually so much material,
Like there's a god knows how many lines of slack for example. Yeah,
um, this company ran on ran on slack, So it's like one
massive group text situation. Um, there's a lot of material. Um,
not that many emails, emails mostly before people coming from outside, you know,
outside communications. And then there was that weird government portal that destroyed everything
after two weeks, which it's not illegal. Um, but yeah, I
thought it was amazing how you were from day one basically handling customer service.
Yeah, you were like personally looking at purports from people trying to dig into
things. Yeah, and that was like around the clock for you for a
little I mean yeah. The sheer layers like this is a term termacy of
bullshit basically, Um, so many layers. Um. I mean really the
there needs to be a ground up re right, Um, you know,
otherwise we're like going through like this ghost mansion, you know, trying to
get the ghosts out one at a time. Um, it's still finding ghosts
as recently as last week. Um so. But but we are actually slimming
down the code base. We already writing a lot of it. Um we
we the the main sort of home timeline mixer was seven hundred, one hundred
thousand lines of code. Now it's seventy thousand. So it's down manufactor from
ten um and does a better job and is faster. Um So. And
that's the side of the business you're going to stay involved in and personally invested
in the textile Yeah yeah, I mean I'm setting the overall ground rules um
and like the constitution type of thing, which is very clearly free speech.
Um And and that will that is that is not a revenue optimizing strategy.
So um. But we don't need to make a ton of money with locome
backrupt. So. Um. That's part of the reason for having some amount
of subscription revenue. It's not you know, we respect the advertisers, but
we don't want to be too dependent on them. Not go bankrupt. That's
the business. That's the end goal. Loco banckrupt. You know, hopefully
make at least some reason we'll return for investors. Um. But it's not
like you know, it's it's not like uh, just some sort of mercantile
optimization. So do you think it's possible to run a free speech platform that
is profitable? We're gonna find out, so I think. So, I
mean, like I'm not sure, Like you can definitely sell yourselves to the
devil here and and increase revenue. That's what should Yeah, So that you
know, that's and I think it becomes tough act, especially for a publicly
traded company. Um, you can be sued for not you know, taking
the actions that maximized profitability. So um, you know, you know,
Jack was right that it was impossible to reform as a public company because you
just get excoriated in the market and have a zillion lawsuits. Um. Anyway,
So it's like, I'm hopefully platform can be like I said, the
the least untrue quote closest to close to to closest to true and complete you
know, the it's gonna be, you know, hopefully the whole truth.
Probably not nothing but the truth, because there'll be some things that aren't true,
but but the whole. But but it diversit to be a diversity of
perspectives so and a diversity of narratives, so people you know, can decide
what they want to focus on and be forced bad things. Also recommend that
Twitter. Twitter lists are actually pretty great. You know, so and we're
we're now. Um it made it easy to find, like uh, lists
created by experts on various subjects. Um So, that's another way to stay,
you know, staying formed on on any subject, whether it's sports or
politics or video games or whatever. How worried are you about mastered on in
tribal Um? Well, once I tried using them, I was like,
it's not going to be It's not a threat. That was my conclusion.
Most importantly, you brought up video games. Have you played the new Zelda
game yet? Is it? Is it great? You know I've never played
a Zelda games, haven't. Um? I I only with where I've only
I played just PC games. Um it's held one PC not legally Okay,
but you know Halo was the only game that I ever played on a console.
Okay, what are you playing right now? I'm actually looking for something
good to play. Um So. I finished dead Space, which is the
dead Space remake is really good. Yeah, I heard it was woke as
it woke the dead Space remake, I would not not woke. Okay,
No, I mean it's it's especially trying to make things as scary as possible.
It's like as it's maximizing beer. Yeah, it's gruesome. I played
the original, I haven't played the remake, so now it's a it's it's
gruesome. Yeah, I mean it's it's a it's it's like it's night really
the stuff of nightmares. Um, yet, I prefer doing that than email
more slack. Are you in the slack channels? Do you go in there?
I don't slack because there's just too much, too much, Yeah,
exactly, it's like being in a million group chats. Did space not as
terrifying as a group chat? Yeah? Better than email? The eld Elden
ring was really good. Did you play right? He beat it? I
haven't. I haven't beaten again. Yeah, I got a horse, but
I didn't get very It's a long way to go after the horse. Say
the least. He played first person? You played Halo? See? Did
you ever play multiplayers? You just the campaign? Well there's there's the reason,
one, which is, um, I finished, you know, to
rag a little? I did. I completed the campaign on legendary Wow,
all right, which is hard? Thank you? I mean, you know,
uh, the last battle was really difficult. But you don't go online
and play against random people on the on the internet, just multiplayer like team
death match. Um no, well I did. I did that first,
flit second with with a friend. Um it's it's tough. So actually trying
to ask if you'll be his friend on Xbox, I'm just wondering if every
now and then I'm maybe playing against you under some I used to I used
to play a lot of video games, at a lot of competitive video games,
so way back in the day. Um I, um, it's quite
I was quite competitive at Quake. UM and my sort of team before I
was the second best guy in the team. Um. We came second in
the first I would I think was the first paid e games tournament in the
US. That's where you got your money, your start. Yeah, I
think I think we're like three thousand dollars. We need community notes. It
wasn't the Emerald Minds. It was a Quake tournament. We need community notes
to fact check this this claim. Get on it community. Yeah, it
was so yeah, we we were actually we almost won. But the gay
guy who's the best on the team, Brandon Spikes, he ums, his
computer crashed so we came second. Instead. We still gotta have money and
stuff. I've made money planing video games. That's amazing. Yeah, I
had so. Yeah. Um, these days are kind of like a campaign
with a with a good story. Um, it's it's hard to match reflect
us with like, you know, sixteen year olds. Yeah, there's gotta
be some strategy element to it. They're always saying mean things about your mom
and stuff on there. It's kind of um, yeah, I have some
praise to play Legal Legends. Oh yeah, they're pretty mean. And those
communities, Yeah, there are toxic they called toxic community. Yeah. League
is intense. Yeah. League is a lifestyle Yeah, one of those lifestyle
games. Yeah. I think my son Groffin put more time into League than
it doesn't get into his college applications. I mean, if you if he
was awake at like five in the morning, it's like he's playing League.
So um, yeah, I'm kind of looking for, you know, a
game, So take your mind off thanks for half an hour or whatever.
Well, I'll try to come up with some recommendations for you. The new
Jedi game I'm gonna I'm gonna get that soon. I can't recommend it yet
because I haven't played. Well, what what's the fun game for phones?
Cold Vampire Survivors? Oh, I'll check that out. Yeah, that's good.
My recommendation. Well, what do you do in what do you like
to watch? In terms of comedy and entertainment? I know you share a
lot of memes and you know obviously comments bad on b articles and stuff like
that. You commented what you tweeted one time about how wokeness is destroying comedy
and how it was, how it was, how well you can't write comedy
from a leftist play of wokeness because there's no truth claim or the truth claim
was wrong. I mean, but I mean, you know, hardly needs
to tell you guys. But um, the you know, the essence of
a lot of comedy is a revealed truth, um, like a hidden truth
that people understand intuitively or explicitly. Um. And uh, there's that,
there's that sort of moment of reveal, you know, kernel of truth,
of of of often unacknowledged truth. And in that unacknowledged truth is the humor.
Um. So um, if you're you know, premised on a lie,
you can no longer be funny because there's no revealed truth. Um.
And this is Um, you know why a lot you know, a lot
of people on the left have no sense of human they're not funny. Um.
And if if there, if there's so many no fly zones you know,
um that you have to you have to avoid all the time, then
how do you what what? What is there? What you like? There's
nothing left to make fun about, you know? So um, Well,
Rogan was saying, like wokeness is funny, Like a lot of the woke
ideas are shoutrageous, they are funny. And so when you're not allowed to
make fun of the funniest thing, right, that's why sites like ours do
well. It's because we are willing to do that. There's a lot of
people who are just holding back on the things that are right for comedy.
Well, have you been to the Mothership Club yet in Austin where he's I
know, no, I'd love to go there. And um, he's like
he's trying to make it so that it's you know, comedians can come their
cancel free environment, make the jokes you're not supposed to make. Well,
if you see any comedies from times past, I mean, they're they're so
sort of for important At this point, it's insane. Um. You know,
they're making fun of all sorts of things that would be totally unacceptable these
days. Um. That's why I treat it once like just you know,
legalized comedy. You know. Yeah, um, if you keep you know,
saying that you can't make fun of things, um or something's always punching
down you know, like, well, you're not gonna be anything left to
make humor. I don't think we want to humorists for sure. Um.
This is it means the same thing that you have with speech, where it's
like, you know, if only the popular narrative is being promoted in a
stumber being challenged, then that's a problem. That's a problem for it's a
problem for comedy too. So you can't be funny just propping up the popular
narrative and trying to get people to clap for you, like yeah, like
it's it's applause, it's not laughter. Yes, true clapped somebody called it.
Yeah, yeah, it's spreading seeing some of the snuff it's from the
whose Correspondence Club what dinner you know, um, where finer is getting a
lot of claps. But it was like is it start cheering school or what
you know? A lot of applause, A lot of applause. Um,
you know, yeah, whoever stuff clapping last is out of the You just
want someone normal to be president, you said recently, someone normal, a
normal human being. I mean I think so. Now. Now the thing
is that it just it just it just contrary to my prediction of the most
entertaining outcome is the most likely. Yeah, um, you maybe heard me
say that like this, The simplest explanation is most likely. My friend Jona
has this, you know, his theory is, the most ironic explanation is
most likely, and then my parent is the most entertaining outcome is the most
likely as viewed from a third party who's not in the show. So you
could be watching a World to one movie where people are getting blown to bits
and you're just having a soda on popcorn. You know, it's fine.
Um, it's rough of the people getting blown up by cannon shells. Right.
Um, we're in there getting blown up by cannon shells and whatever the
or or a very good thing happening. Um. But my theory is that
the more often than not, the most entertaining outcome, as as though we
were an alien soap opera, is it's the most likely. So if you
can say what is the most entertaining outcome for the election next year, that's
probably what's going to happen. Is that because God is a jokester? What
or because we're in a simulation, because the simulation, I mean ratings man
just for the God is doing it for the ratings. Well, I'm saying
that that's often the case. Um, the most entertaining outcome as viewed by
a third party, like it like it's a alien soap oarpera is is the
the whole Twitter thing has been very entertaining from the outside. Yeah, on
the inside it's been hell or it hasn't been some hellish moments. Yeah yeah,
I've definitely been some hellish moment of moments. Um. Yeah, so
i's been I say it's a rough it's been a rough six months, but
at this point trending positively. It wasn't easy, some a lot of open
hot surgery. Um, but things seem to be you know, knock on
wood headed in a good direction and your chief twit still right now, but
you hand that off when still figuring that out, um, because Lenda's gotta
exit her obligations at NBC. So, um a month or so, I
suppose, um, but I you know, I'll still be responsible for software
development and the core principles, the you know, the constitution of the company
being um prete speech is Linda understands that she supports that. Good. Yeah,
so she signed something like yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean a
lot of things that they need to get done for a company, are you
know, there's a lot of chores. It's not just things that need to
be done and legal, HR finance, you know, um, yeah,
solving interpersonal arguments that people have. You know, there's a lot of sort
of just general management stuff that takes It takes a lot of time. So
I'm hopefully I can handle that and I will manage the software team. Well,
do you have any questions for us? Um, just you know,
cheers. I suppose cheers, man, cheers, Thank you for taking the
time. This is awesome. Well you're welcome here. Yeah, it's pretty
crazy to go from Twitter jail too, sitting on Twitter HQ the barbarians boast
through the gate and having a drink in the in the enemy palace, drinking
from the skulls of ours. What is best in life? What is best
in life exactly Coudnel, the Barbarian underrated