Will Elon Musk Turn Twitter Into Yahoo Mail? 51:59

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From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Just kidding, I'm Naima Raza. Yeah, I'm Kara Swisher, and I get to be a guest today. Nobody is Kara Swisher but Kara Swisher, just so you're aware. You know what? You keep Kara Swisher. I'm very happy being Naima Raza. And it's wonderful to have you on as a guest today. We're going to talk about Twitter.

And while we're sometimes loathe to cover it, we get the emails and the reviews that are like, stop talking about Elon. And by the way, again, may I stress, he's an important figure in tech right now and across the world, whether it's cars or space or Starlink, Ukraine. He's very important. So I'm sorry if you're tired of him. So are we. But here we are. Alas. And it's critical this week as Elon's supposed free speech absolutist got tangled up with the Turkish elections at the behest of

Turkey's President Erdogan, who's been in power for, I don't know, a mere 20 years. It's similar to actions the company has taken in India, the UAE, Germany. He is complying with governments more than ever before, according to certain reports. And it begs the question, are Twitter's town square days over? Yes. This is a company that really rose to prominence during the Arab Spring, and now that DNA...

seems to be completely gone. Yeah, that's gone. That's gone. It's basically the Elon show now. And sometimes it's a pretty ugly show, whether he's bringing a new home for Tucker Carlson, which is fine as long as he has other people on the platform, whether he's attacking George Soros and playing into all those anti-Semitic tropes, whether it's racism, somehow he's still found time for Pepe memes. Yes. And that's just in the last week or so.

And that's why we thought it would be a perfect time for this panel to discuss where Twitter is at, how far it's kind of fallen from its original vision, and whether the new CEO, Linda Iaccarino, is going to be able to change any of this. We'll be discussing this and all things Twitter with you, Kara Swisher, as well as with two of the best source tech reporters on the beat, Zoe Schiffer, who's the managing editor of Platformer, and Ryan Mack of The New York Times. And just so you know, Linda Iaccarino, this is just for you. We made this podcast just for you. You're going to need it.

This is your manual, your operating manual for how to win at Twitter. That's correct. Anyways, great to see you, Zoe and Ryan. Thanks for being here with us today. Thanks for having us. So I want to start with the global here. On Friday, shortly before the Turkish elections, where the incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to enter yet a third decade of rule.

Twitter announced that the company will comply with some takedown requests, and this caused a bit of fervor from the media. So, Zoe, why don't you explain what happened? Yeah, so, I mean, this isn't the first time that Twitter has blocked links to specific content at the behest of the Turkish government. It's done it before, actually. In 2014, Twitter took the Turkish government to court. It sued because it was blocked in the country.

over a very similar squabble. But I think it's pretty significant because the entire reason that Elon has said repeatedly that he bought Twitter was because he's a free speech absolutist and wants to allow the maximum

amount of speech. And critically, Tesla entered the Turkish market last month. And so I think it wasn't just a concern that he was blocking some links ahead of a very important election. Like you said, it was that people are quite concerned that

Under Elon Musk, Twitter now has other reasons outside of this kind of narrow legal angle to comply with the Turkish government's request, namely that he has an interest in keeping Tesla in the country. And SpaceX. Let's add SpaceX because they have a relationship also. And he's, you know...

Many, right when Twitter was bought, someone very prominent said to me, it's because of his other business interests that you'll see it over time where he can, not in this country, he'll make a lot of noise over here, but elsewhere, if he can do favors for autocrats that he needs to do business with, he will. He's definitely trying to focus the conversation on like, would you rather not have Twitter in the country at all? Like as early as February this year, the Turkish government did block Twitter momentarily after the earthquake, and that is quite significant.

But I think it's distracting from these other concerns that are legitimate that people have about why the company seems to be capitulating so quickly on these requests. Right. And there's a big change because, as you were saying, in 2014, they actually went and sued the Turkish government. In this case, they're complying, which is very different to that. And Twitter could have called the bluff and pushed Erdogan to shut down Twitter in the days before an election, which would cast a long shadow of doubt. But at the same time,

Twitter isn't alone in doing this. And Ryan, you had called this a blueprint for repressive governments everywhere. But Elon defended Twitter's turkey call in this case, saying that, A, he's always held that free speech is defined by what matches local laws. He's always put an asterisk on it. B, that the choice was to have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access in some tweets. And C, that this is par for the course for all internet companies, that everyone was doing it. You know, Twitter was just being transparent.

Does he have a point there? I think there's some semblance of truth in that last point there, that all companies face these issues. I think Facebook is one of them. They have also withheld content within the country at the behest of the Turkish government. But the whole point of this is this kind of seeming hypocrisy with coming into the company saying, you know, I'm acquiring it because I'm a free speech absolutist. If it comes down to it, I'm going to lose money protecting free speech.

But at the same time, having this carve out this very big exception that if a government comes and tells me to do something, you know, I'm going to follow the law of that region. Yeah, I mean, to Ryan's point, he's like set up this scenario. You have every other major tech platform is or is supposed to release transparency reports where they talk about all of the times that they've complied with

government takedown requests. The issue is that those CEOs aren't coming out and saying the entire reason that we are in business right now is because we believe in free speech. And so, you know, it is the hypocrisy, like Ryan said. I think the outcry in Western media is focused on Elon Musk as if he's out on a limb when actually YouTube or others are also complying with requests, as if Twitter is doing this and dangerously slowing the elections when Twitter reaches a particular segment of the Turkish population, which is probably less likely to vote for Erdogan as is. But

But I think the more kind of more intellectually faithful critique is about

What you guys are saying, that Elon's hypocrisy as a free speech absolutist who's been using these Twitter files to shame a previous regime for complying with governments and then coming out and complying in an outsized way. And then two, almost a mourning of old Twitter, Twitter that stood for something, Twitter that would sue Turkey in 2014. So, Kara, I want to talk about that irony here because Twitter 1.0 really had its heyday during the Arab Spring in 2011. It dined out on that for a long time. So did everybody. Well, yes.

revolution, the Twitter revolution. But you were covering the company then. I was working in the Middle East then, seeing what was happening with Arab Spring. But talk about what Twitter and social media was like at that point. Well, it was hopeful. It was the idea, you know, Mark Zuckerberg crowed about it. You know, this idea that it wasn't much, it wasn't so much different than in China, a

in Tiananmen Square when they used the fax machine, right? That was the revolution of the fax machine. It didn't work, of course. The tanks rolled in and everything happened the way we thought it would. But it still was a moment of great. They were using fax machines. In this way, they were using Twitter to organize. They were using Twitter to express themselves. These were populations that didn't have an ability to express themselves. And this was the first time publicly they could do so. Sometimes to their detriment later, of course, because they couldn't, you know, take names, make lists and take names.

And so I think it was a very hopeful idea. And as usual, social media doubled down on that they were the reason it happened. Like, look at us, we did this for them when they were only the communications vehicle at the time. And at the time, I felt it was like, well, you know, I think the people change things, not Twitter. But okay, sure, they use Twitter just like they use a telephone or a fax machine or a broadcast network. Right.

But it was definitely a heady time for sure. Yeah, I agree with you. It would be the people. And also I would say that 10 years on, you know, the Arab Spring hasn't yielded the results that anyone would like. That's right. Like a lot of these countries are worse off. Tiananmen Square, Arab Spring, everything. Yeah. But one Twitter executive was recently describing to me how in the early 2010s this became a defining core of the company, a recruiting alley that was instrumental in attracting young employees, attracting leaders like Vijaya Gade to the company, you

you know, the person who's been credited with the decision to bump Trump after January 6th. So Zoe, I'm curious if you can talk about that, because this seems to be a really important part of the Twitter transition under Elon, taking a bunch of people who believed in one thing, rallied for one thing, and replacing them with quite the other, or in many cases, not replacing them at all. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think about, like, from a

recruiting standpoint, Twitter didn't pay as much as the other big tech platforms. The stock wasn't worth as much. Like the reason that a lot of people went there was twofold. One, the company legitimately did care about work-life balance in a way that like Meta and Amazon didn't.

And two, for idealistic people, and you saw this very strongly on like the research teams in particular, it was, it really felt that under Dorsey, you know, despite all of the problems that people did have with his distracted leadership, that the company really stood for something and that it was invested in fostering civic discourse and democracy across the world. And

And I think that that was a primary reason that a lot of people joined the company in the first place. And it was kind of a motivating factor in a lot of decisions that they made. Twitter was the most—the people that worked there were the most free speech. Besides Reddit, I guess, they were—you know, the others all made compromises from the get-go and cooperated much more or, you know, talked a little bit about free speech. But Twitter really—

talk for a while. And of course, people in this country would say no, the right wing would say no, they shadow banned us, this and that. What about the Twitter files, which of course was a giant bust. They were making mistakes in real time, you know, like with Babylon Bee, I never thought that was a particularly good idea to stifle a comic comedy site. It wasn't a very funny comedy site, but sometimes it is. And so, you know,

So that was the problem, is that this was in the DNA, but then there's someone who does everything by fiat, what he feels that day. If he didn't have a good breakfast or if he had a really party night the night before, whatever he's feeling is how the company expresses itself now.

But I think also, like, we're talking about distinct eras of Twitter. And there was this long period where Dick Costolo said we're the free speech wing of the free speech party and the company had massive problems with harassment. But I do think there was an overcorrection around 2021. And it's because there were real business implications for not moderating enough speech on the platform. Disney was going to buy Twitter and pulled out because the harassment was so rampant and bad there wasn't enough content moderation. And I think...

That there was a big push around 2020 and 2021 to like really crack down on a massive number of accounts that employees saw promoting QAnon conspiracy theories and other things. And I think that we're now kind of seeing the company, you know, go in a...

Too far the other way. The pendulum has swung. Exactly. Well, it's capricious. It's capricious is what it is. Yeah. He's mercurial. It's capricious. We can't kind of glean what's going on. But you're saying that Elon has a bit of an argument that Twitter had overcorrected. It was no longer this neutral trown square. I don't think it's – it has the kind of like –

political bent that he ascribes to it. But I do think if you talk to employees who are making these decisions around 2021, they would say, we just had blunt tools to police content at the time. Like the things that we could do were essentially like ban accounts. And there was a need to bring in other tools, more interstitials, more warnings, more

So that we weren't just like taking off, you know, 70,000 QAnon accounts after the January 6th insurrection. Like I think a lot of people would have said that was too much. Yeah, I think one of the things is January 6th scared the shit out of everybody.

Like they did realize, well, again, it was the people who did it. In this case, social media definitely played a strong role here. And I think all of them didn't want to be, I always call them, they didn't want to be handmaidens to sedition, really. And that's what they felt like for a little bit there. And especially with Donald Trump using that platform, because that's the key part is Donald Trump made Twitter his platform.

his, I'm not going to use the term, but he used it a lot. And so that was what changed is that he took control of the situation and used it for his own devices and quite well, as I've written that number of times. But that's what changed is the Donald Trump being the main character of Twitter and then the insurrection. And I think that really impacted that company rather significantly and gave an opening for Elon. 100%. 100%. And

I think that, you know, obviously there's no rhyme or reason. I think that's part of the challenge. Elon has said that he has certain principles, free speech, openness to debate, equity. But if you look at his actions from, you know, blocking content in India, blocking a BBC documentary in India, blocking content in Turkey, suppressing sub-stack links, or suspending journalists like Ryan Mack back in December, there doesn't seem to be any principle that explains the system, I don't think. Though, Ryan, you've been in the front lines. Do you see a principle? Yeah.

Well, I mean, there are policies that are made within minutes or hours after these things happen. But yeah, not speaking too much about my own incident. But yeah, it's blocking Taylor Lorenz, for example, for...

Supposedly sharing outside links to Facebook or Twitter or sorry Facebook Instagram her other account sub stack that kind of thing these things seem to be made in posts like very quickly and Without rhyme or reason again, whatever he kinds of he thinks up that day He's gonna be a new policy and it is pretty telling, you know I don't think it there is any free speech basis to this and he seems to just I

act on a whim whenever something is not going his way. But yeah, that was a weird experience. Does anyone else want to comment on Ryan's because he doesn't want to comment on his own situation? I mean, I think that that was a moment where the hypocrisy was first really, really revealed. I specifically remember Ryan being banned in December as like, oh, okay, all of the other reasons we think that he has bought Twitter. But I feel like a lot of

What we see Musk saying publicly is an example of him operating with incomplete information. Like sometimes he'll come out and have these explanations for why Twitter is slower in certain countries or a specific policy or something that happened in the past. And you'll see a whole bunch of Twitter employees immediately be like, that's not real. That's not what actually happened. That's not how it works.

But I think it's not in my mind that Elon is like coming out and purposefully lying necessarily. It's that he is getting bad information from the people around him and he has created a situation internally where no one wants to tell him the truth. And I've heard people say again and again, when Elon asks you a question, what goes through your mind is what not

what is the right answer, but what is the least fireable answer? And so you see people giving him these answers and then he's coming out in front saying like, oh, you know, this is the situation. And I think from the outside, you're like, oh, wow, he doesn't seem

seemingly know what he's talking about. See, I think he's being disingenuous a lot of the time. And you noticed that last night in the CNBC thing with the guy in Allen, Texas. David Faber from CNBC asked about the situation in Allen, Texas, these shootings. And he kept insisting

this guy with no proof whatsoever was not a white supremacist when even the Texas government is saying that, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like if you're wearing a swastika tattoo, you're pretty far along in the white supremacist group. And so he keeps saying things. And part of me feels like, is he just lying or does he actually believe it? And I think he certainly has moved forward.

in that he has sort of, I don't want to use the term red-pilled because it's so overused, but he's definitely seemed to believe it, like what he was saying. And it reminds you of your, you know, your drunkle at Thanksgiving, your drunkle from some, you know, from someplace where you're like, that's not true. That's not true. So if you take a look at his Twitter diet, the accounts he follows, the accounts he engages with, I mean, it's many of these accounts that are promoting this kind of conspiracy stuff. So, I mean, it's interesting to watch him

to watch his brain kind of morph over time as he follows these. I mean, going back to the idea of operating on complete information, I mean, going back and looking at the Substack issue, you saw a tweet from Substack saying, we're going to launch this new product. And he worked himself into a frenzy saying, you know, they're a competitor now. We're going to do everything to block them. And so...

It's stuff you see on Twitter. But this is the thing. So just to wrap the Arab Spring of it all, back then in the Arab Spring, Twitter had two things. And for a long time, it has relevance and reliability, right? And when Trump came in, it had maybe even more relevance because it became the president's primary platform for communicating in a lot of ways. I'm curious right now what you guys think. Give it a grade on relevance and then on reliability. Zoe, why don't you go first? I mean, I think both of those...

You would have to say have degraded. Like, I know people like to talk about, oh, well, Twitter is still operating. It's still up, even though it's slash, you know, three quarters of the engineers. But there's no question that during moments of peak traffic, like the site is glitchier and buggier than it used to be. And I think people are tracking that. And we have data now to kind of prove it.

And I also think like there are more prominent people and organizations that are defecting to other platforms. And so to your point, like with relevance, you know, it is important when you see organizations like NPR and

And Twitter power users like going to blue sky and not posting on Twitter at all. And there's the kind of blue tick jungle, the 4U algorithm sucks, all you see is Elon. I mean, there's a lot of problems with the product overall. So I don't know, Carrie, I know you'll give it a grade. Give it a grade on relevance and reliability. I don't use it as much because I only use it to...

To tease Elon, really, pretty much. And every now and then, I'm not even marketing our stuff on it because what's the point? What happens is I've had to turn off comments because if I don't, the name calling and the crazy people are just quantumly. Like, you don't want to deal with it. It's like having a bunch of people who you don't like screaming outside your house and it's not necessary. That's happened. But there's also a jump in porn. Friends of mine have sent me all kinds of porn, which is just like grotesque.

That never happened on Twitter. What kind of friend? Lots of them. Lots of women. Women. You know, but they want to say, what is going on here? They're not even... But if you leave comments on, that's what happens. And then, of course... So give it a grade, Kara. You know, D. A D. It's like my son's... When my son got a D in math, he goes, at least it's not an F. And I'm like, it is an F, Louie. It's an F. So it's an F, but it's a D. It's working and it's going, but it's certainly...

Um, really, um, and for relevance is always exactly right. People are moving the whole, the whole social media ecosystem is exploding in a weird and interesting way, um, where people are going elsewhere. Ryan, you agree with reliability relevance. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I mean, relevance, I mean, I don't want to extrapolate too much of my own use of it, but I, you know, I'm spending less time on it, you know, using things like blue sky more, um,

And looking at the experience now, the recommended feed, especially for recommended followers, I was getting Andrew Tate the other day. I don't know what I'm engaging with that is... Must. Everybody gets must, right? Yeah, I actually took a screenshot the other day on his page where it says the people you should also follow. It was Andrew Tate and Roger Stone. It's not the stuff I necessarily want to see. Can I make one other point? The ads are really bad. The ads are... They feel like late night cable ads.

at 2 a.m. If you look at like Twitter's Slack, you see people continually, like Elon will screenshot an ad that he sees and say, why am I seeing this? And then you see these whole conversations. This has been happening for months where people are like, why is Elon seeing this? We have to tweak the algorithm this way because the ads

are showing up like this. It's like he says again and again, like use me as the example. I'm the user telling you something is wrong. But when you optimize for one person and one person who has an incredibly unique experience because he's the most followed person on the site, like you're going to get a totally wacky experience for everyone else. You know, I love screenshotting those like horrible ads and just like

sharing them you know i think it's like this hobby yeah what's the best ad yesterday one of my friends sent me um an ad for a duck door which is like you know a door for your pet duck and they just had like a which is kind of a cute video you know you had the duck walking in and out of the door and i was like why did you get this like what were you looking at that you know who's who's advertising this there's no advertising left and they weren't good before let me just say

We'll be back in a minute after an ad that's not for duck doors. And when we return, we'll talk about the new chief twit, Linda Iaccarino. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

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Let's move on from content moderation and get into the new hire at Twitter, Linda Iaccarino. Some have called her the adult in the room. That was a callback to Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, who was definitely not 51 at the time. I think, Ryan, you pointed out that Elon is 51. He is 51. That was a factual statement, yeah. But is he, Ryan? Is he 51? I think he doubts that. Physically, 51, yeah.

Elon, in an interview with Dan Faber of CNBC on Tuesday evening, said that Linda Yaccarino is going to be a Gwen Shotwell type, using the SpaceX president and COO analogy. Runs the company. We don't hear from her much, but she runs the company and keeps it moving and grooving. And others have joked, including myself, that she may be Esther Crawford, loyally sleeping on a sleeping bag on Twitter's floor one day and then gone the next. Do we have any indication of which one of these three models or something else entirely will be the right one? Ryan, I'll start with you.

I think probably a mix of some of those models, but you know, the point of

all this is that she's going to be serving at the behest of Elon. And when you're in that position, you are going to be ruled by his whims. You may have the chief executive title and the position, but he's already making it clear that she's not going to be completely overseeing all aspects of the business. He's going to have oversight of product. He'll be overseeing engineering. So it creates this very interesting dynamic. I think everyone is pointing to like Gwynne Shotwell as the example here.

But Gwynne Shotwell has had experience building up a company from almost day one at SpaceX. I think she was an employee in the 20s or something at SpaceX, you know, believed in the mission at SpaceX, learned how to deal with Elon over many years. And, you know, Linda Iaccarino doesn't have that. And, you know, she pursued this job pretty heavily, but now she's going to have to learn how to do that on the fly. And

For most people, that doesn't work out when you're working with Elon Musk. Zoe, anything to add? I think it's relevant to say that Elon was saying very early on in the acquisition of Twitter that the company needed to completely overhaul its business model. It needed to be less dependent on ads and move towards subscriptions. The rollout of Twitter Blue has been nothing short of a dumpster fire, I think we can say pretty confidently. And now we're seeing an overcorrection and they're going back to ads. There's no other way to read the

CEO pick in my mind than the fact that he has seen that the company absolutely needs to woo back advertisers and Linda's the person to do that.

But the other thing that I wanted to say, which to Ryan's point is like, if you talk to employees as other companies, they will say that all of Elon's companies operate like startups, no matter the size. And the people that thrive in those environments are people that are willing to work nights and weekends and be really scrappy. I think that the new CEO has said publicly that like she prides herself on her work ethic and is willing to put in those hours, but whether or not she's able to operate with a kind of scrappy startup mentality is,

That will make her a lasting CEO. I think we have yet to see. - Kara, you know her. - I know her very well.

Let me just say, Gwen Shopwell, do we know what she looks like? No, we don't, because Gwen Shopwell never appears anywhere or does many interviews, first of all. Linda likes the attention. She does, and she's wanted that. She's wanted to be a prominent CEO because she, even though she brought in a lot of the dough at NBC, she never was put up for Jeff Schell's job. You didn't hear her name bandied about. She's told me she's wanted to be a CEO for a long time. Yeah, because she was so good at what she did, no one wanted her to leave. She's great.

But the transition from running ad sales to running a company is rather significant. So that's one thing. Second, she likes the limelight. So does he. So that's going to be...

I don't know how that—I don't see her as a backseat taker the way the others are. As to—she's worked at a modern, regular old media company for years, moving into the chaos of Twitter. She's going to—it reminds me a little bit when Marissa Mayer went from Google to Yahoo. Yahoo was a mess, and I was, you know, I was like, this is not a first-world country. The water doesn't work, you know, kind of thing. And so—

She wasn't used to it because Google had been such a country club for most people who worked there. And NBC, for all its faults, run very well by the Comcast people. And then lastly, she's... Well, she is aligned with him politically, most definitely. Although I don't think she's a fan of white supremacists. I don't think she would tweet crazy things. She's not like that. She's pretty...

regular conservative, a Trump supporter. But is she going to stop him from doing it? That's the question. No, that's the thing is she's going to have to, once he gets into the crazier stuff, she's going to have to either go along with him or she's going to have to spend all her time explaining to advertisers what he's doing. And he's still going to be the attention. Everyone looks at him. And that's what she's got to do with moving white supremacists off the platform. Advertisers don't want to be next to them.

And I can't imagine, I think they'll, because she's so well regarded in the ad industry, and she really is. And she's funny. She's really interesting. She's sort of a Long Island chick. You know what I mean? She's got a real, like, swagger to her. They're going to give her the money at the beginning in small amounts. And then if it doesn't work...

And by the way, I was at a dinner of advertisers the other day and they were like, it never worked before and it really doesn't work now, but they'll give her 10 million bucks or this and that. And then they won't. But Kara, weren't you the one that was saying that, I think this was you, but correct me if I'm wrong, that the way that she's used to wooing advertisers is with really big budgets and be able...

Being able to wine and dine people. And Elon is famously pretty stingy and cheap. And so whether he's going to give her those budgets and allow her to work like she's used to, I think is still an issue. Like Cannes. I'll be interested in this upcoming Cannes event in France. I'll be interested. She was big on the parties, big on the scene. She always loved being on stage. I did several stage events with her, and she's good at it.

we'll see if that's going to, I don't know how, Elon's the draw. And the minute she puts him there and he says something offensive. Maybe she can give him another puff piece interview for the duck door guys. But the analogy is interesting. I'm sure it might be a good one, but she didn't have to manage Jerry Yang, which is I think the very challenging. And Jerry Yang was also not there. So no, he's lovely. One thing, Ryan, that's working against her is that Linda Yaccarino, while she'll be working to make Twitter brand safe and

Magneto. Magneto. Sorry, Cara. Cara's the comic expert. Magneto. Magneto.

I know, I've got to go to X-Men University. You've got to go. This after it came out that Soros Fund had dropped their position in Tesla at a kind of high point last quarter. So again, back to his business interest. So Ryan, you had a great tweet summarizing Elon's movements. Do you mind to kind of summarize how you look at

This man. Sure. As he was going on this Twitter meltdown that included, um, you know, these conspiracy theory tweets and, you know, race baiting tweets. Um, you know, if you looked at it where he was 48 hours before he was in Cabo, um, dancing at a rave, um, some kind of music festival, it's just weird to see how fast he turns. Um, you know, and the rate at which he puts out these very, uh, insane tweets, um, is,

But, you know, I was also thinking of Linda coming in and also what she would have to deal with. It's going to be her job telling people, you know, well, this is actually what he was thinking when he tweeted about George Soros. So this is what he meant when he put out this racist meme.

He had the racist meme about how the media covers white on white crime, black on black, etc. White on black crime. He liked someone's meme. Yeah, he liked it. And he said, accurate. Yeah, that's right. He seeks that stuff out so he doesn't have to post it himself. Yeah. He's a master kind of subtweeter and commenter.

I mean, in November, though, when he did that Twitter spaces with Yoel and Robin, there was an industry, an ad industry exec who asked, like, how should we think about your brand versus Twitter's brand? Like, the two seem so connected. And he had kind of this...

where he rambled on about, well, if I say I'm doing something, then it's me. And if Twitter's doing something, then it's Twitter. And those are distinct and they can't be the same. And I think, you know, it was kind of like... Well, you've said from the Slack instructions, that's not the case. He's saying this, I am the user, I am Twitter. It's not the case. But I do think like that,

But separating those two is going to be Linda's job from the start. Well, the thing is, Linda's way of separating them, I've heard from a dozen people. She's had lots of lunches recently and breakfasts.

you know, they're just tweets. Don't just ignore them. You know, she's sort of down his highway on the woke stuff too. And so she's like, oh, don't worry about them. That's how she's dealing with it right now is like, just ignore them. They're just silly. You know, they're not silly, Linda. Like that to me, when I heard that from half a dozen people, I was like, what? They're not silly. And then of course,

she's literally going to spend all her time doing this when she needs to be doing other things, which she won't have the power to do because she's not going to be able to turn off the white supremacists. She's not going to be able to turn off the porn. She doesn't know how. And she doesn't run product. She doesn't run product. He does. Yeah. And you know,

himself, he's kind of going back and forth. He said to the BBC, oh, I really, you know, shot myself in the foot. I should really stop tweeting after 3 a.m. He clearly doesn't. After Raven Cabo, he's tweeting away. But on Tuesday during the CNBC interview, David Faber asked Musk about his itchy fingers. And

I said something kind of alarming. Let's play a clip and just be forewarned of Elon's awkward pauses here. Do your tweets hurt the company? Are there Tesla owners who say, I don't agree with his political position because, and I know it because he shares so much of it. Or are there advertisers on Twitter that Linda Yaccarino will come and say, you got to stop, man. Or, you know, I can't get these ads because of some of the things you tweet. You know, I'm reminded of the scene in The Princess Bride.

Great movie. Great movie. Where he confronts the person who killed his father. And he says, offer me money. Offer me power. I don't care. So you just don't care. You want to share what you have to say. I'll say what I want to say. And if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.

Gosh, spoken like a badly raised dramatic teenager. That's like ridiculous. Spoken like someone who has a lot of money and a lot of power.

And was badly raised, let me just say. I mean, everyone said this was the most, Ryan, Zoe, you all tweeted this was the most alarming part of the interview. Go ahead, Ryan, what were you going to say? Well, I think if you rewind that clip a little further, like a minute before that, that was in response to a question about why he was sharing, you know, conspiracy... It was actually a minute after, but yes, he does ask him that. Tweets about Allen, Texas, you know, and why he thought the shooter was a psyop, basically. And, you know, David Faber's asking, you know, why?

what do you think the impact is of your tweets, you know? And that's, you know, that's just bizarre. Like, I don't know. It's a very nihilistic view. I didn't, by the way, that silence there, that's his little trick. He does that in interviews. He's silent for a minute to make everyone uncomfortable. Does it make everything seem deeper? No, he's doing it. I'm a genius and I must take a moment to collect my thoughts. It's a total stunt. Jack Dorsey does it too. Mm.

like that. And then comes out with the genius of the princess bride. Right, exactly. It's the genius act. But one of the things, and it's, it's tiresome when he does it. Um,

I think I don't care was the most. I don't care should be the motto for Twitter and the management of Twitter. And that will give Linda, he does not care. And he doesn't. And not just because he's rich, Zoe. He doesn't. He has a very nihilistic view of the world and shared by a lot of people in his group. And so they don't care. And that's really problematic if you want to build a business. Yeah.

And he's not kidding about that. He doesn't care. And yet, you know, so much of what's been done at Facebook, we talked about this with Casey Newton back around the Facebook Files reporting here. I remember when Casey came and said, well, naming and shaming is a power that the world has over Facebook by naming and shaming some of these executives. Someone who's shameless, someone who's so wealthy. I mean, Ryan, you've covered billionaires, tech and power for a long time. What is the path to getting him to care or what he might care about?

Oh, man. I mean, I think the answer to that is, you know, a significant impact on Tesla's share price. I feel like he cares when his pocketbook gets hit, despite what he's saying about money in that clip, you know. His baby is Tesla. And when there was, you know, people arguing he should hire a CEO at Twitter so he can, you know, focus more time on Tesla, like he somewhat paid attention to that. But I don't know. I don't know how you can get this person to stay focused on

And care, that's how he's operated his whole life. Like, I don't know if he's going to change. Yeah. I mean, he's always, he has had elements of this. And that's what's been so disturbing is they were there and they'd pop up stupid memes and dumb juvenile jokes for an adult. Often it was sort of like, that's a little bit juvenile. But it's taken over his personality because the person Linda's dealing with can be very cogent and very smart and interesting and

and then this pops out and that's taken over. And I don't know what the precipitating event here was that caused it, but it's certainly, I mean, Zoe, you've talked to people internally. It's capricious. It's weird. It is. And when you talk to people who work

quite closely with him, what they'll say is he says himself, it's an act. Use me, use the specter of Elon Musk to get out of this contract. Use my personality to do X, Y, Z. Like, I think there is a way in which he's seen that it's advantageous to have a reputation as a very bombastic and, um,

fiery leader and that when people talk to him one-on-one, he tends to be a little more reasonable. You know, he still makes all sorts of decisions spur of the moment that I think people don't

But I do think that there is an aspect of this that is an act. It feels Trumpy. But ultimately, they believe it, right? I think Trump now sort of believes in his act. And it's performative on many levels. I think Zoe's right. But he actually is embracing it and living it now, I guess. And there's a point where it's not play acting. People tweet at me like, how could you spend your time years ago pushing this guy forward? Well, he was reasonable. He was brilliant. He was doing things. Yeah.

And this did not happen. And then it just did. And I don't know if there's some personal problems he's having. I suspect there are. I don't know if he's, you know, being so rich for so long and having everybody lick you up and down all day changes you. But something, it hasn't, can you guys think of anybody else who's turned so dramatically? I don't know. Ryan, can you think of anybody? Yeah.

Not with that much power. Zoe, can you think of anybody? No, no. And I think when you're at that level of money and power, you have to really work to stay grounded and connected with reality. And when you do the opposite, when you estrange everyone who's willing to tell you the truth and you fire anyone who's willing to stand up to you, then you create an echo chamber in your actual life and you create an echo chamber on social media. Yeah.

And they're reinforcing. I can think of people, by the way, because I've lived in a lot of autocratic countries and I could think of people. I think autocrats are actually the model. I mean, even Erdogan after 2016's coup, this is what he did. Or there are journalists. Journalists. I mean, I'm not going to name anyone because I don't want to insult anyone.

Oh, go ahead, Zoe. But I think we can all think of a few people who we looked up to in our early years who have now gone off the deep end. Gone off the deep end. Yes, exactly. Matt Tybee, come back. We loved you. Oh, my God. Did you? Is that what you're saying? Did you love him? Okay, I'll say this, and then I actually am going to, like, get harassed and banned on Twitter because of this. But I wrote, I think, my college admissions essay about Glenn Greenwald. I was going to say Glenn Greenwald. I looked up to him so much. Yes. And that's all I'm going to say. Okay.

We'll be back in a minute to discuss Tucker Carlson's return to Twitter and our favorite part, predictions. Let's talk about some of the ways that Elon intends to make money outside of the ad sphere, which is going to be an uphill battle for Linda, as we discussed. Content media play. So Tucker Carlson has arrived to the building. Ryan, what does that content play look like? Does it become a model for the next kind of YouTube influencer with worse hair, the next conspiracist influencer? Yeah.

I think it's really unclear what he's going to do with Tucker. He's claiming he doesn't know, like, he didn't know that Tucker was going to make that announcement. But the idea is, you know, build this creator side of the business so that people subscribe to Twitter and do these premium subscriptions. You know, and then Twitter will take a cut of that. You know, he's hoped Tucker can be a model for that. And so...

Yeah, that is one aspect of the business he's trying to build. I don't know how big that can be. I don't see it being very big. But, you know, you're thinking of creators like Mr. Beast or Libs of TikTok is another one that is now people can subscribe to. And they're going to be revenue generating and it's YouTube type of play. Yeah.

That's the idea. I think that's what he hopes, yeah. Zoe, what about the value of the subscription itself? You've recently reported on new product features, which aren't really there, smoke and mirrors. So they're heralding encrypted DMs that aren't actually encrypted. Explain what happened there and just give us a couple of other big product bets that Elon is making and where they stand, whether it's TwitterX or encrypted DMs or...

Yeah. So the Encrypted DMs project, Ryan and I were both talking about this publicly, but yeah, I mean, Twitter has been working on this since 2018 under Elon. The company resurrected this project and said, we're going to launch Encrypted DMs. We had Chris Stanley, who's a top Musk lieutenant who joined Twitter in October as part of the transition team leading the project. And when security researchers started tweeting about how Twitter's implementation, how the project was

being implemented and kind of raising questions. Oh, look, it looks like it's vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. It looks like actually, you know, Elon had said the acid test is if you put a gun to my head, could I read your DMs? They were saying, yes, the answer is, it looks like the answer is you could read the DMs. Yeah. Yeah.

And Chris Stanley was saying, we had a third-party firm audit the implementation. Those guys are amazing. It was this company called Trail of Bits. Well, it turns out that when we talked to folks at Twitter, Twitter hadn't even signed the contract with Trail of Bits. So there had been no audit, no assessment. And when the project actually launched, Twitter was forced to kind of say publicly, these DMs are not end-to-end encrypted.

They are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. Oh. They're not encrypted then, right? Like, oh, oops. What about, I mean, Elon has become the everything commentator. What about the everything app? Does that have legs?

They're all shaking their heads now. I would be curious what y'all think about this. But in my mind, like he's been obsessed with the idea of X since the 90s when like his second ever startup that he sold to PayPal was called X.com. Like this has been, I think, a goal of his for a very long time. Now he's bought Twitter and he's kind of putting that dream onto Twitter. That said, like when you talk to people who are in the developer platform space, what they will say is that you need open access to an API for third party developers to be able to build applications

on top of it because you're not going to be able to build all of the functionality for a super app in-house. And you're definitely not going to be able to do that with like 500 engineers or fewer. And so... Unless you're the Chinese government, right? I mean, it works in China. And also, you have to change people's habits. People are used to using different apps here in this country. It's never caught on the super app. Facebook is the closest to it, but...

I also don't know what it means. Like he keeps saying it like it's some provocative thing. And, you know, he hasn't presented any models for it. I mean, I think most people imagine it being something like WeChat, you know, in China, you know, you get payments, you have your food ordering, you have your taxi, all in one app, your social media, etc.,

But he hasn't really laid out what that means. There's no explanation from him. He just keeps saying this phrase over and over and over again until it's singed into our frontal cortex. But no one's asked him, what do you mean by that? What do you exactly envision?

He's talked about payments a little bit. Beyond that, it's not clear what it is. Also, there's PayPal. It exists. Also, there's Uber. Venmo. U.S. consumers, shifting consumer behavior is so hard. And

That's just not how people are going to interact. By the way, you know who's going to do it if they do it? Apple will do it. Payments are the big cornerstone of this project for him, and he's definitely trying to lay the groundwork for that. But to get people to upload credit card information, like we've seen with Twitter Blue that he was not able to get anywhere even remotely close to the number of subscriptions that was needed to shift even a fraction of Twitter's revenue away from advertising and towards subscriptions.

And payments are predicated on trust. You need people to be able to trust the platform. Media is hard. Yes, media is very hard. And media is hard and not lucrative. Let's end with just a few predictions. So first one, will Elon stay committed to Twitter or will he move on to, will he kind of go away to Tesla, to AI, to whatever his next best, you know, girlfriend is?

I think his ego's really wrapped up in Twitter personally, and I've been surprised with how long he's stayed committed to it, but I don't expect his attention to completely shift away. I agree. Will Linda Yaccarino last, or will she go the way of Esther Crawford? Ryan? I think everyone has an expiration date in Elon World, so I don't see her being long for this world. Zoe?

I only know from talking to Tesla and SpaceX folks, what they will say is this job can be great, but every day could be your last. And I think that Linda has to keep that in mind as well. Kara? I think she's very stubborn. So she'll last as long as she can. She wants to make this work because, you know, there's not really a downside for her and she could get rich. Will Twitter still be relevant in two years? No, not the way it's been. Zoe?

I find that one so hard. I mean, the trend to me is that it's getting less relevant over time and there are actually viable alternatives now. So I would say bigger chance than not that it will not have the relevance that it used to have. Ryan?

I think it'll still be around in the way that Yahoo Mail is still around. Oh, God. That's amazing. Oh, sick burn. People still have Yahoo Mail addresses. I know. I think my mom does. I've even got an AOL mail. She didn't go right to AOL mail. Oh, my God. It's not AOL mail. It works. It works most of the time. People use it. And on that note. Yeah, we're going to go the way of Yahoo Mail. I have to say.

Shout out Jerry Yang. I really judge a person when they give me the Yahoo mail address. It's like hotmail. What? Oh my God. So good. Thank you Zoe and Ryan for being with us. Thanks so much. Thanks for having us. Yahoo mail. That felt a little hopeless.

I'm just telling you, Yahoo Mail is cooler than Yahoo Mail. I can't believe it. I mean, I feel like that's a competition I don't even want to be a part of. Yeah, Yahoo Mail. You know, they all go the way of Yahoo Mail. They do. We're laughing, and the whole going the way of Yahoo Mail thing is very funny. But it's also sad for people in places, for example, Turkey, people who know that their state-run media is wrong and therefore are relying on Twitter for news.

They'll still be YouTube and other spots, but it just hits harder there. Yeah, 100%. Do you have any... I mean, it's funny. They have been covering... It's now the 13-month anniversary of when, I guess, Elon announced he'd be buying Twitter. These beat reporters who have been covering him day in, day out...

Do you have any advice for them? People like Zoe and Rob? You know, this is an impossible story in a lot of ways because people are super interested in it and then you get weary of it yourself. You can't get weary, unfortunately. I covered a lot of companies like this, whether it was Yahoo or Travis Kalanick at Uber. That went on forever. And then my very first story that I got

you know, well-known for was the Haft family that went on for years. Yes. It went on for years. This is a rich family in Washington, and I was right in the middle of it. This was for The Post. For The Post. It really made my career in many ways, that story. But persistence and stick-to-it-ness, even though you literally, I didn't want them to call me anymore, the Hafts. I was like, stop calling me. But I was right in the middle of it. And you ride a story like this and try to do your best. And both of them are excellent.

excellent reporters and have broken a lot of stories and have great insight. And as you do it longer, you get better at it. You get better at it. But you do definitely are like, oh, what did this idiot say today? You know, he just did the Soros thing, but let's not forget he did the Paul Pelosi thing and he did the this thing and he did, there's dozens of them. And after a while you become, I'll tell you what, the one thing, don't become, don't

Don't make him exhaust you. It's still terrible what he did about Thoreau's. And it was terrible what he did about Pelosi. And it was many of the terrible things in between. So don't forget that. Don't let him wear you down. See the forest. Yes. They are both, Zoe and Ryan, both excellent reporters. You can follow Zoe at Platformer, Ryan at the New York Times, or you can follow them on their Yahoo Mail accounts. I mean, Twitter accounts. Yes.

Twitter accounts. Twitter accounts. Which is increasingly irrelevant, but you can do it. Find them on Blue Sky where the excitement is happening. They are on Blue Sky. Exactly. I'm there too, but I'm like, oh, I have to remember to sign in. Yeah. Anyways, Cara, can I ask you to read us out? Absolutely. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Hayley Milliken. Rick Kwan engineered this episode. Our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following this show, it's a duck door for you. If not, it's just porn and not porn that you wanted to watch. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.