Speaker 1: I'm my friend.
Speaker 2: I thought X was coming out. I had some extra
questions for him.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, he had changed his mind.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Elon.
Speaker 2: It is such a treat and a special opportunity.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Possible.
Speaker 2: And while Greg was right, okay, let's have a round
of applause. Well, Greg was right, you really need no introduction.
Speaker 1: But in many ways, today is your introduction to.
Speaker 2: The advertising community, right, I think that's a round of applause.
It's widely known that in the morning you run SpaceX,
in the afternoon you head to Tesla, and in the
evening it's Twitter time. And many of you in this
room know me, and you know I pride myself on
my work ethic. But buddy, I met my match. So
we're here today to actually talk.
Speaker 1: About your night job.
Speaker 4: Great sounds good.
Speaker 2: But with Twitter you've switched roles a little bit. You've
you know, your other companies, you move from inventor now
to reinventor. And when you're inventing something, it's all new.
It's a surprise. We don't know what to expect. To reinventor.
You challenge legacy, you challenge habits. With Twitter, many of
us in this room we might even go to bed
with it in our pocket on the night table. You
challenge rituals, and every marketing executive in this room knows
the difficulty of a new formula and the challenge of
the delicate balance of a rebrand.
Speaker 1: And now that's what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to make Twitter fun and
interesting and informative of you know, the optimization for Twitter
is maximize the unregretted user time. So so it's not
like total number of users or anything, it's just total
user minutes unregretted And we actually hit an all time.
Speaker 4: High just yesterday, so gone. Well, it's entertaining.
Speaker 2: So entertaining is one way some people in the room
describe Twitter today.
Speaker 4: Train wrecks arguably are entertaining.
Speaker 1: Happened sometime, they have some time. If you're dedicated, like
a train wreck.
Speaker 2: You got to be dedicated to fixing them. But I
think it's important to start with your vision of Twitter
two point zero, you yourself wrote, I would like to
die knowing that humanity has a bright future. It's actually
been quite apparent in all your other businesses, from the
early days of paper how to Tesla, to SpaceX to
maybe you contemplating a new AI company, but how does
the better humanity for the future fit into your Twitter
two point zero vision?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean, obviously with the goal with with
with Tesla is to advance sustainable energy. With SpaceX, we've
got Starlink, which is providing Internet to the least served
in the world and also hopefully getting humanity to Mars
and back to the Moon. So we have an exciting future.
I mean it's important to bear in mind. Like so
much people say, like why are we send any money
on space? Like don't we have enough problems on Earth?
But you know, the thing is that, like everyone needs
a reason to be inspired, People need a reason to
wake up in the morning.
Speaker 4: It can't just be about solving problems.
Speaker 3: They have to have to be things that really get
you in the heart. I think I just killed the
mic okay, so uh and going to the moon last
century inspire the whole world, and hopefully going to Mars
can do the same thing. So then yeah, it's a
great question why I take some time away from that
for Twitter and Mike. You know what I think is
essentially in order for civilization to advance, we've got to
have freedom of speech. We've got to have a digital Yeah,
so thank you. It's a bigger deal than you'd think.
And it's the kind of thing that you don't know
what you're missing until you don't have it. And in
a lot of places people don't have it. And so
it's important to bear in mind that the nature of
free speech is the acid test for it is are
people you don't like allowed to say things that you
don't like?
Speaker 4: Otherwise it's not free. It can't be.
Speaker 3: It can't be just the things that it can't be
just things that you like, because eventually somebody is not
going to like what you say and they're gonna shut
you up. And that's the essence of free speech. And
that's why it's the first amendment in this country. And
if we lose that, I think we lose the bedrock
of democracy.
Speaker 2: So the bedrock of democracy, I would imagine, is important
to everyone in this room. And you talk about the
importance of freedom of speech. Yesterday you posted a new
policy that was titled.
Speaker 1: Freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. I got my attention, Yes,
tell us about your new policy.
Speaker 4: Right, So, freedom of speech not reach is important in that.
Speaker 3: You know, like if somebody has something hateful to say,
it doesn't mean you should give them a megaphone. They
still be able to say it, but it needs to
be not then pushed on people. So if you know,
you can go like in Times Square in New York
and you can hear people say all kinds of crazy things,
that's fine, but we don't put we don't broadcast that
to earth. So if somebody wants to say something that's
technically legal but that is you know, by most definitions, hateful,
they're not going to get We're not going to promote
that to people.
Speaker 4: We're not going to recommend hateful content to people.
Speaker 3: We will put that behind a warning label saying this
the speech is probably something.
Speaker 4: You you don't want.
Speaker 3: So and now this is something we have to be
very careful that we're all out and that it does
not become what is intended to be good does not
become bad. So so we want to be delicate with the
freedom of reach, not speech, A freedom of speech not reach.
So we're taking it easy, but it's just uh yeah,
if there's if people are saying things that are making
you sad or encouraging negativity, then we're not going to
amplify that, which to Twitter has done in the past.
Speaker 2: So how is this new policy different from the other platforms.
Speaker 4: I don't know the other platforms. I don't use them, So.
Speaker 1: That was not a softball question. I want to go
on record.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the interesting honestly, this is true
before the opposition of Twitter. I just I just didn't
find the other platforms compelling to be just objectively.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's get back to the new policy for
a second, because again, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom
of reach.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to the advertisers in this room?
Speaker 2: Have you de risked the opportunity or chance of their
campaigns landing in these awful, hateful places.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think people may not be aware of this already,
but we have adjacency controls in place that are really
quite effective. So you know, we can just literally turn
on the adjacency control and the ad not appeared next
to anything that is remotely negative.
Speaker 1: Has that gotten better since you arrived?
Speaker 3: Yeah, We've put a lot of effort into it. So
I think that there have been some mistakes that have
been made where in one case, somebody wanted to thought
they were running a control advert that they first did
a test campaign without the controls in place and they
got like thirty percent negativity.
Speaker 4: It's like that should never be done.
Speaker 3: You must put the controls in place because we have
excess inventory on negativity. So the ad engine will naturally say, oh,
I've got lots of spots for the negativity, so I'm
going to give you a very high negativity. You must
put the adjacency controls in place. If you do put
the condition adjacency controls in place, negativity is going to
be almost nothing.
Speaker 2: So this is a good early step of your impact.
Speaker 4: Since you got to Twitter, no, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean it's worth noting that. I mean, Apple is
a remained a major advertiser. Disney has remained a major advertiser.
They literally advertised children's shows on Twitter, and they wouldn't
do that if it was full of tape speech.
Speaker 1: I want to get.
Speaker 2: Back to the labeling and this new policy. Who decides
and how does it get decided that it's labeled as
what I think some people have talked about. If you've
said it this way yourself, if it's awful but lawful.
Speaker 1: It's going to stay up. It just won't see sunlight.
You will amplify it, but who decides that labeling.
Speaker 3: Well, we have a set of words, and so we
open source the recommendation algorithm. We're also going to open
source the words that are associated with the the you know,
freedom of speech, not reach.
Speaker 4: And people can argue over the words.
Speaker 3: I think they're you know, reasonably accurate, and like I said,
it is working, or Disney would have pulled their ads a.
Speaker 4: Long time ago and haven't.
Speaker 3: So Yeah, But I think in order to really build trust,
you have to have transparency. It can't be that here's
this black marks, something's happening here in here, we won't
tell you what it is. Trust us. I think that's bs.
If you want to trust something, you've got to know
how it works. And so that's why we're open sourcing
the algorithm. Now, open sourcing algorithm is kind of embarrassing.
People have found all sorts of things that we're wrong
and foolish and you know, misguided with with the algorithm.
And we've actually fixed i think at this point, over
one hundred issues with the algorithm.
Speaker 4: So it's been it's actually been very helpful to open
source it.
Speaker 3: And we're going to open source the entire thing that
you basically you should be able to recreate the probability
of a tweet being recommended based on the on what
we've open sourced. If you can't recreate it, then we
haven't shown you everything. So it's it's really complete transparency
and that I think that's the only path to trust.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's another path.
Speaker 2: So trust is probably one of the top two or
three words that every marketing executive in this room would
say is table stakes for any company that they invest in,
any company that they can.
Speaker 1: Move forward with.
Speaker 2: You just talked about transparency, open sourcing. I would say
that that's the difference between those other platforms you either
don't use or never heard of. Yeah, and open sourcing
or transparency is again another one of those table steak requirements.
But this labeling, this new policy talking about if it's
awful but not unlawful, does it apply to your tweets?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 4: That yes, it does, Actually it does, it does moreo A.
Speaker 3: My tweets are also subject to community notes, So if
I say something incorrect a community a community notes function
is actually very effective. Applies to advertisers to fy So
there have been a few cases where there's been ads
that were not completely accurate, and Community Notes has corrected them,
and they've corrected me, and they've corrected heads of state
multiple times. So Community Community Notes is sremely effective.
Speaker 2: I think that's in incredible acknowledgment of the progression of
Twitter two point zero and the importance of this new
policy and protection for everyone. Right, And you're talking about
fully democratizing the platform, which leads you to community Notes
because you're actually believing in the people you're able to
often from the front lines, gives their point of view
that clarify what.
Speaker 1: Some people might say is bias.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I said, the important thing is that we're
in an open book, so you can literally see if
there's some line of logic that gives me special privileges.
Literally everything. There's nothing that is hidden, So yeah, it's whatever. Obviously,
people are not going to trust Twitter if there are
different rules for me or other versus the rest of Twitter.
That's that's that's going to diminish trust. So everything that
applies to the rest of Twitter must apply to me.
And I think this is gonna I think it's gonna
be extremely powerful, and I think it will result in
Twitter being the most trusted place on.
Speaker 4: The internet by far, So why would you trust anything else?
Speaker 1: And let's talk about that. Why would you trust anyone else?
Speaker 2: Especially if you the most followed man on Twitter. You've
gone from consumer of a product you loved to now
the owner of a product that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like the hairclub for man.
Speaker 2: It might be a big, careful type of thing, but
you don't what if you're held to the same level
of accountability that everyone else is in the platform.
Speaker 1: There are some this this room.
Speaker 2: I think it's a second just to take a beat
and talk about you've talked about recently.
Speaker 1: You are maybe almost close to cash flow.
Speaker 4: Positive, right, Yeah, we're like one noses.
Speaker 2: Like just so maybe a quarter or two away from profitability.
The people in this room are your accelerated path to profitability.
Speaker 3: Yeah, please have pass on Twitter. That would be much
appreciated things.
Speaker 1: But there's a decent bit of skeptics in the room.
What Yeah, he's never heard of it.
Speaker 2: The guy works in space. You didn't hear what's going on.
There's people who cannot separated. They're challenged by separating the
man his opinions and the microphone that he now owns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean look, before the acquisition, I was
the most interacted with account on Twitter, so it's not like,
you know, it's actually all that different. So before I
even announced that a position, I didn't have the most
number of followers, but I had the highest number of
interactions on the entire platform before in a position offer
was even announced. And that's when they were like, you know,
fair number of people at Twitter who weren't exactly my
best friends.
Speaker 1: So well, you.
Speaker 2: Know, you open yourself up to this transparency. Your tweets
are eligible for this labeling. You've actually unblocked all of
your followers.
Speaker 4: I deleted my blocklist, right, you.
Speaker 1: Delete your blocklist.
Speaker 2: You've also been told that you never want to lose
your feedback loop, specifically your negative feedback loop.
Speaker 3: Yes, thankfully Twitter will always provide you as a negative
feedback loop.
Speaker 2: I have to push you a little because there's a
lot of folks in this room.
Speaker 1: They vote with their pocketbooks and or while it's I
should say I like the nice ones, but they can't
cross that transom.
Speaker 2: They have a challenge with your points of view, your opinions,
and still holding back from unlocking the full power of Twitter.
Speaker 1: What do you say to them in this room.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, first of all, if you want to
know what my opinions are, you should really I guess,
look at my Twitter if you read the and and
you know, take it with a grain of salt, because
it's hard to convey tone with a tweet, So something
may be sarcastic or a joke or something like that may.
Speaker 4: Come across as serious when it isn't.
Speaker 3: But a lot of the issue is negative amplification in
the media. So yeah, you know, I recently had an
interview with an organization called BBC she may have heard of,
and I was entertaining, but you know, the reporter was
saying claiming that there was all this that that that
he'd seen all this hate speech on Twitter. And I'd said, okay, well,
can you give me a single example? And you couldn't,
not even one. So then I say, like, okay, well,
you know, if your personal experience on Twitter, that's how
you should judge the platform as opposed to what is
represented into in sort of the traditional media. And it's
important to bear in mind the traditional media is a
competitor to Twitter, so they compete for your advertising dollars.
They compete against Twitter for your advertising dollars if it
is possible for them to diminish Twitter and reduce the
probability of advertising dollars going to Twitter and at versa.
It's like, basically, you shouldn't take a competitor's word for it,
like it's it's it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Doesn't you think I am anameless.
Speaker 2: Most news organizations, maybe a little, Most news organisms have
a codependent relationship with Twitter, and I can. I could
speak on behalf of the industry, but I'll speak on
behalf of my own company. We have a big partnership
with your company, big distribution partnership. Are there days where
I see some of your tweets and I say, I
wish I could say stop helping the situation.
Speaker 1: But should you be held to.
Speaker 2: A different or a higher standard that you're the owner,
but you also have the most followers and a lot
of people think you might be too provocative.
Speaker 3: No, I think the same standard should apply to me
as applies to everyone on Twitter, just as it does
on positive or negative.
Speaker 4: So what do you do same for everyone? Now?
Speaker 3: Another thing that a lot of traditional journalists don't like
is they don't like being put on the same platform
as the average citizen. They don't like their voice being
that's the same. They're pretty mad about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, there are several news organizations who don't like your
push for democratization and what they believe is the devaluing
of the badges because they were differentiated.
Speaker 1: So is that just a moment? Is that just a
moment in time.
Speaker 4: No, that's deliberate.
Speaker 3: I think it's very important to elevate citizen journalism. I
think it's very important to hear the voice of the people,
the actual voice of the people, not the filter voice
of the people, and let the people choose the narrative
and let the people determine the truth and not five
editors in chiefs of major publications. Do you want to
know what's really going on? Or do you want their opinion?
You know, it's a handful of people.
Speaker 4: I think. I think we want to know the voice
of the people, the true voice of the people.
Speaker 2: So let me kind of pull you back into what's
important to the people in this room, and that's protection
for their ad campaigns. So yesterday was a right start,
protection from any of the provocative speech.
Speaker 1: That is labeled.
Speaker 2: What is your Does it get better from there? What's
your real north star? Where is Where is Twitter a
couple of years from now when I show up on Twitter,
is it just a global town square where I'm talking
in a number of characters or or where does it
evolve to what happens in my town square?
Speaker 1: Commerce?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean what I've said is that Twitter is effectively
an accelerant to an idea I've had for a long time,
which is I call it sort of X the Everything out, Yeah,
which is to have a you know, a sort of
a platform that is so useful that you you find
it it is essential to conduct your life. So that means,
like you know, obviously, payments we provide really really makes
a good, meaningful communication privately as well as publicly. So
that means we need to have a direct message system
that is that offers voice calls, video calls, encrypted communications
so that your communications are private and Twitter and others
cannot spy on them, and.
Speaker 4: Just to be incredibly useful.
Speaker 2: So you've got a massive platform, you have a vision
that is a spectrum of just daily open sourced conversation,
and they can conduct their lives, their business, their commerce,
whatever they can do on your platform. That's a pretty
big vision. But in the middle should be advertising opportunity.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great opportunity.
Speaker 2: I can talk about my brand, I can get my
customers to communicate, and then they.
Speaker 1: Could also buy stuff. It sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3: Right, You'll be able to buy things just directly on Twitter,
one click what I'm done.
Speaker 2: But they need to feel that there is an opportunity
for them to influence what you're building, that vision, what
we're doing here, whether it's me trying to push and
prod you on your tweets. For example, you've said you
probably shouldn't tweet after three am. Well, I've got probably
good advice for all of us.
Speaker 4: I've got myself into trouble a few times.
Speaker 2: I'm very aware of those. So after three am you
travel all over the world. Lord knows how you handle
time zones in space. Will you commit to be a
little more specific and not tweet after three am?
Speaker 1: People in this.
Speaker 2: Room would like to see that. We'll make them feel
more close.
Speaker 3: I will aspire to tweet less after three am. I
mean it is important that you know. I mean, if
I were to say, yes, you can influence me, that
would be wrong, That would be very wrong. That would
be a diminishment of freedom of speech.
Speaker 2: But I want to be specific about influencing. It's more
of an open feedback loop for the advertising experts in
this room to help develop Twitter into a place where
they will be excited about investing more money product development
and sage content moderation.
Speaker 1: That's what the influence is.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think.
Speaker 3: It's totally cool to say that you want to have
your advertising appear in certain places in Twitter and not
in other places. But it is not cool to try
to say what Twitter will do, and if that means
losing advertising dollars, we lose it.
Speaker 4: But freedom of speech is paramount.
Speaker 2: So Twitter one point zero had a very well populated,
much loved influence counsel. I know, I don't. I think
we need to change the name. Elon does not want
to be influenced. But it was really a recurring feedback
loop from your key stakeholders, your advertisers, where they had
recurring access or would have recurring access to you. Would
you commit from this stage today to reinstate that council
to be named later, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Don't think it should be influenced counsel that because you
have to say I would be worried of that creating
a backlash among the public, because if the public thinks
that that, you know, their views of being determined by
you know, a small number of cmos in America, there
will be like I.
Speaker 4: Think up said about that. But feedback I think is appropriate.
Speaker 3: And you know, at the end of the day, if
somebody is spending money for their ad campaign, it needs
to yield results for their organization or or it doesn't
make sense. And you know that that that that that
includes the sort of software perception issues as well as
the more direct does it move the needle on sales?
So you know, there's there's legitimate concerns that advertisers have
that I want to hear. And we're going to move
to live Q and A after the prepared questions and
perhaps you're gonna ask some of those right here, because
I think some of these things should be.
Speaker 4: Discussed in an open forum. You know. Yeah, So.
Speaker 3: I think having you know, getting getting I mean the
reason I'm here is to get feedback that you know,
what what is this but feedback, you know, and and
to be asked questions. And we're trying to achieve here
a sensible you know, middle ground or or or try
to satisfy a range of things, which is how do
we ensure that the public has their voice even if
you don't like the voice at times, but also that
you're able to uh serve your brands and improve improve
the perception of your brands and improve sales as well.
Speaker 4: At the at the end of the day, I mean,
I think there is.
Speaker 3: Where when advertising is relevant to users, and especially if
the message is entertaining and interesting, it's content. And then
the other side of it, if if the if the
if the ad is not relevant to the user, and
it's perhaps strident or something, then then obviously that's that's
not that's that's that's spam. So advertising can go all
away from spam to compelling content.
Speaker 4: And I really want.
Speaker 3: To focus on obviously the compelling content side of things.
Make it relevant, make it interesting, you know, funny, informative.
Speaker 1: And I think I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think that's actually where this room can help with
the feedback. They're experts in knowing with the right consumer
set that they're trying to reach, what is relevant, what
makes good advertising. And since I think I heard that
you committed to continued feedback, it might be a good time.
Like Twitter, which is where it happens in real time,
to open up the room to questions. Elon has suggested
that he's opened Okay, we have a few, so please
ask Elon.
Speaker 5: Do you want to go.
Speaker 3: One of the things that's to say, uh, that that
has been sort of really broken for a long time
and Twitter is is that when you run an ad
campaign you couldn't even do basic things like keywords, like honestly,
this is it blew my mind. So we've not added
to where you can say, uh, what, as as simple
as it sounds, what keywords do you want an ad
to appear next to? So if a tweet has a
certain you know, is about a subject, then you should
be able to put the ad right there. And I'm
sowing to David saslove at you know one is and
he was, he was, he was literally he's saying, look,
I just want to be able to put the trailer
for white Lotus next to where people are talking about
white lotus.
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, that is obviously a good thing
to do. That is the right place to put the ad.
Speaker 3: And so, as mind blowing as it is, Twitter did
not have that functionality until recently, which.
Speaker 4: Is insane, but now it does.
Speaker 3: So, you know, talking about listening to you know, key
advertiser partners.
Speaker 4: Listen to what David said. Well, we're doing it. So
now BINGO.
Speaker 3: Have white lotus ads next to white lotus discussions, which
is exactly where it should be.
Speaker 1: So it's a new beginning.
Speaker 6: All right, all right, we're going to start. Thank you
on your side, Elon, thank you so much. Over to
your left here. My name is Jonathan Barrum from the
Dunhill Family Office and the Earth Trust Fund to focus
on regenerative innovation and exponential technology. I'm absolutely obsessed with
the work that you're doing in the world. Thank you
for incarnating in this lifetime and helping all of us
ascend to the next level of this experience of life.
I'm curious about your thoughts on alignment with AI and
what are the strategies that are currently being implemented. I'm
currently creating my own alignment protocol, which I would love
to submit to your team.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 3: Well, I wasn't expecting an AI discussed right off the bat.
My brother and I have this rule that if we're
at a party, we're not allowed to talk to talk
about either AI or the simulation, because otherwise the conversations
go there so often.
Speaker 4: So I've been thinking about AI safety for a long.
Speaker 3: Time because I think this is a significant existential threat
to humanity. The best thing I can come up with
for AI safety is to make it a maximum truth
seeking AI, maximumly curious. Have its optimization function be to
understand the nature of the universe. If that is its
optimation optimization function, I think it will actually want to
preserve and extend human civilization because we're just much more
interesting than say an asteroid with nothing on it. So
I think, I think, I think my intuition, my biological
neural maan suggests that a maximually curious AI is the
safest AI, and a maximually truth seeking AI is a
safe AI. And if you try to we have to
careful with the alignment stuff, or we have to you know.
And I think we definitely don't want to teach an
AI to lie, because that that is a path through
dystopian future. The I mean, the essence of two thousand
and one in Space Odyssey was that the AI was
given what was basically told to lie. It was it
was it was told to hide the fact that it
was going.
Speaker 4: To see the monolith. Instead it was taking the crew
of the monolith.
Speaker 3: So it was both told to take the crew to
the monolith, and the crew cannot know about the monolith.
The conclusion that I came to was kill the crew
and take them to the monolith. So the problem solved.
So you want to be really careful about any any
kind of deception, and I think an AI, you want
program the I be as truthful as possible, even that
even if that truth is not a politically correct So.
Speaker 5: Thank me, Halen, amazing to be here. My name is Martinez.
I work in news media. And my question is is
you're saying Twitter is where we're going to be getting
our information from now on or social media? Is this
the end of centralized publishers news media and we're going
into decentralized information era?
Speaker 4: Thank you, No, that's that's that's a good observation that that.
Speaker 3: You know, citizen journalism is is essentially decentralized news.
Speaker 4: Now that no, this will will obviously be if somebody
is a great writer.
Speaker 3: For the New York Times or Journal or Post or
whatever newspaper herald, if they're a good, great writer, that
they will still get a significant following as a function
of their excellent writing. So somebody who's a excellent writer
will will still get disproportionate attention. But I think it
is also important for us to to to decentralize uh
the you know, what is written and what the narrative,
what narratives are chosen, Because even if everything in the
newspaper is harpsid correct, they're still choosing what to write about.
Speaker 4: They're choosing the narrative.
Speaker 3: So I think it's important for public to be able
to choose the narrative as well. So it's it's not
really you know that traditional publications go.
Speaker 4: Away, but really that we we we we.
Speaker 3: Give give more weight, we we enable the voice of
the people to rise.
Speaker 7: Hi, Linda Elon, thank you so much for your insightful talk.
My name is Maria. I around PR and marketing company
focused on tech and web three. I live here in Miami,
but originally from Russia. I wanted to ask you two questions,
if you allow me. First one, why did you make
blue teak verification teak on Twitter paid? Is it strictly
for profit or there was some other logic behind it?
And the second question is can I take a selfie
with you?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: I think there might be quite a line on the
selfie front. But honestly, selfie is the vein of my existence.
Speaker 4: So but sure. So the issue with the way.
Speaker 3: That blue checks were handed out historically at Twitter was
was not in a not always in a sensible way
or not always in a a good way.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 3: And the same check was given out whether you were
sort of a government official or.
Speaker 4: You know, a major company or a person.
Speaker 3: So there's noticed there was no really indistinguishment between between
what what does a blue check mean? And and a
lot of blue checks were you know, you could have
been an intern at a small publication ten years ago
and you still have a blue check. And then a
lot of them were for sale and not not for
sale on the dark web I'm talking about you could
google blue check for sale and buy a blue check.
Speaker 4: Anyone could.
Speaker 3: And there was some corruption within Twitter as well in
terms of paying people at Twitter for blue checks that
was not appropriate. So the clean question is, how do
we clear all that out and how do we create,
you know, within recent a level playing field so that
like you said, the average citizen can be a journalist
and and and and that and that we really want
to judge journalism, We want to judge stories based on
the quality of the content, not the publication that is
behind it. And there are some incredibly good individuals who
may who maybe couldn't get a job at at a
major newspaper, but actually they are great writers and they're incredibly.
Speaker 4: Truthful and good. So it was really just to kind
of level the playing field.
Speaker 3: And the thing about the you know, you can get
one for like seven dollars a month if you do
it on the web, which is it's not a lot,
but it it gives us the the the added element
of requiring a credit card and a phone number from
a reputable carrier. And so this this this is a
I mean, we're gonna get kind of technical here, but
it's a it's a necessary defense against bots.
Speaker 4: So today with advanced AI.
Speaker 3: They can pass every kind of test for a human.
So you can actually create on one computer one hundred
thousand accounts. So then that all sound human and pass
every human test. So how do you know which one's real?
So effectively, by charging a small amount of money and
requiring a credit card and a phone number, we increase
the cost of a fake account by literally one thousand,
if not ten thousand, and so and my prediction is
that any social media company that does not require a
small amount of money and does not do verification will
cease to be relevant.
Speaker 4: I mean, I can go to talk forever if you want.
Speaker 1: One more, one more.
Speaker 4: So it's not up to me, it's really up to you, guys.
I'm happy to talk longer if you want.
Speaker 8: My name is Carol christ and I had the great
honor to serve as First Lady of Florida, and it's
an incredible honor to be here with all of you
and this beautiful conference, and this is an extraordinary panel
and this discussion and the great work you do for
humanity or planet, and I'm just so impressed with everything
you're doing at Twitter and how open you are with
everything you're doing. I think it's a great service to
our country in the world, and I really am very
grateful to you for that. And it may be a
little depressing, but we do have an election you're coming up,
and it's an incredibly.
Speaker 1: Important well politics.
Speaker 8: The world is watching and it's an incredibly important time.
A lot is at stake, and I would love to
know what you I'm sure you have a lot going
on and I would love to hear some say and
what we can look forward to hearing from Twitter.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I do think it's very importan for
elections domestically and internationally that we have an open and
transparent platform.
Speaker 4: That's why I think it's the open sourcing of.
Speaker 3: The algorithm and uh, complete transparency is essential so that
people know what's going on, they know that something is
not being artificially suppressed or amplified. And so we and
and as as I mentioned, when we open source uh,
the recommendation algorithm. Now there's still other elements of Twitter
that haven't been open sourced, but will be that. We've
the public found many errors in our recommendation platform that
we fixed, and we'll keep doing that. The what really
matters is does the is there both the reality and
the perception of a platform that the public believes they
can that they can trust, and and and and I,
like you said, if you don't have trans in anything,
that's not any platform that does not have transparency, I
wouldn't trust it with it, damn.
Speaker 2: So I think what we heard today is some really
important and profound things. First of all, Elon has committed
to being accessible to everyone for continual feedback. He's also
opened up himself to also participate in the new transparency
and safety rules that they posted yesterday. Just remember right,
freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach. And if
freedom of speech, as he says, is the bedrock of
this country, I'm not sure there's anyone in this room
who could disagree with that. Could I get a round
of applause for that? But I want to be clear.
The path here today wasn't without.
Speaker 1: A lot of chat. Because this guy is here, there's
always a lot of chatter.
Speaker 2: But I believe if this is a marketing conference for
marketing executives that influence culture in this country, it is
the responsibility of everybody in this room to offer a
helping hand and.
Speaker 1: To say how can we help, how can we make
it better? So I say we're.
Speaker 2: Open for solutions, and you've got a man who's committed
to try his best not to tweet after three am,
but open to your feedback. And I'd like to really
thank everyone who's spending their time here today.
Speaker 4: I am, I'd be you