As the acquisition of Twitter closed, Bryan called an emergency, one-off session of the Oxide Friends to discuss. Make your own predictions to play along at home.
Show Notes
Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 27th, 2022
Let That Sink In! (Whither Twitter?)
We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 27th, 2022.
In this special, breaking news edition of Oxide and Friends, Bryan Cantrill was joined by Joshua M. Clulow, Charity Majors, mick, Rishi Desai, linear cannon, ignaloidas, Craig Traynor, Cargo Occultist, and Aaron David Goldman.
Creators & Guests
What is Oxide and Friends?
Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where we discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form.
Join us live (usually Mondays at 5pm PT) https://discord.gg/gcQxNHAKCB
Subscribe to our calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_318925f4185aa71c4524d0d6127f31058c9e21f29f017d48a0fca6f564969cd0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Hey, everyone. Figured this is gonna be happening a lot, but, a lot of anxiety about their work about what's happened for spaces in the tweets or not. This time I this is very spontaneous. I'd not talk Adam into joining me here. So, anyone that wants to wants to talk Twitter, definitely ask to speak.
Speaker 1:I'm very curious about what's gonna happen to, a platform, honestly, that I feel like I even though, you know, I think we all have such a love hate relationship with this goddamn thing. It it I would be lying if I didn't say that Twitter has has, given me a lot more than it's taken from me, and I I care about it. You know? I I want this not to be not to drive into the goddamn drink. Actually and, actually, here's my actual my real question.
Speaker 1:And, again, I would love to get other folks up here and, I'd, you know, we've I I feel I've been on Twitter for so long, and it, and there we go. My god. I did a speaker. You know, it's been I maybe it is time to just, like, replace this thing. Maybe it is time to actually, I because I kinda feel if this I mean, this is obviously gonna go one of 2 ways.
Speaker 1:But if they let Trump on and, you know, as Casey was saying in the last call, they they release all the super villains into Gotham and we get Milo back, this place is gonna go to to 8 chance so fucking fast. And I feel that there's gonna be a lot of demand for those of us for whom Twitter's like a really important part of of our livelihood, honestly. I mean, you know, I see a lot of folks here, technologists here that for whom, you know, we've built not just a, put built a real community on Twitter. And, you know, I I would assume there's gonna be a lot of people Twitter. And, you know, I I would assume there's gonna be a lot of demand from all of us to go somewhere else, I hope.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. Mick, what do you think?
Speaker 2:I think really the only thing that's swirling around in my head is, like and maybe it's reminiscent to 2016, but, like, what if it isn't bad? Like, what if what if those things don't happen? You know? What if it actually does
Speaker 1:So I am totally cool with that, by the way. I've actually got no problem with that. I would be very happy for this place to improve. And I've got, like, a I mean, in particular, you know, my, I the the and I've just Casey was talking about, what happens to j solvens, the the current I think j solven's been a huge, improvement for Twitter, and I would love to see I would love to see that bolstered, and I would love to see so I got a laundry list of things that, oh, improvements I wanna see that have got nothing to do with you know, I want Twitter spaces improvements. So I'd be happy for that.
Speaker 1:I think so here, I would look to for your consideration, here's, like, the binary decision. It's gonna go one way or the other. They're gonna let Trump back onto the platform or not. And I don't know. I feel that it represents so much to let him on the platform, and it represents so much to keep him off the platform that that's gonna dictate the direction it goes.
Speaker 1:What do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, I I kind of feel like that's the canary in the coal mine of of how it'll go.
Speaker 1:And so how do you and what do you think? Do you think guide me? Do you think he's
Speaker 2:So no. I mean, so my my gut and my heart tells me that we will see him back on the platform, and
Speaker 3:he will go to shit.
Speaker 4:Oh, fuck.
Speaker 2:But as as someone who wants, like, have hope, you know, I I want to see, you know, Trump stay off the platform, Milo off the platform, you know, all these people, staying off the platform, and I and I hope it it turns out that way. I guess, you know, people say that I'm a an optimist. So Okay. So let
Speaker 1:let let's go let's I love I'm I'm an optimist too. Let's go with the most optimistic take, which is so first of all, we're gonna keep the super villains off the platform. The the people who will of and and did, I think, lead to so much discord. What then what would the Elon do to kind of to to move the platform in the right direction, do you think?
Speaker 2:I think getting the bot problem under control would be, you know, step number 1.
Speaker 1:And do you think that is the bot problem is that a real problem?
Speaker 2:I think it is. I I think, you know, when you look at not so much as, like, the leading voices on Twitter, but, you know, every thread that you see that gets started is just rampant with with what I would really see as, like, bots and memes and, you know, like like, the meme warfare. Like, it's just it may not be the leading thing you see, but it really drives down deep into what's what's happening on that thread.
Speaker 1:Is that and maybe I'm just in, like, the wrong places. I just don't see that as much. I mean, I don't know. I mean, what what I see I don't know. I'm not seeing, like, active bots as as ruinous of the platform relative to, like, HPE GreenLake ads.
Speaker 1:Am I the only one getting served, like, nonstop HPE GreenLake and IBM ads? I think I might be. I think this is, like, Charity, you may be as well. I'm not sure. I think this is a a a consequence of of job title.
Speaker 1:But good lord. If if Elon were to pledge to eliminate HPE GreenLake ads, I don't know. And and did that. Like, now my now my my feelings got a lot more nuanced.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just put that out there. Be like, eliminate these ads, and you know what? It's it's great. Welcome in popping
Speaker 4:you up.
Speaker 1:Exactly. That's right. I I just my feelings about it are more complicated. It's like the like, there's an IBM ad that I that is just, like, incessant. I'm gonna have to mute IBM and HPE GreenLake.
Speaker 1:I don't like to mute or block people. I know this makes me very another hey. Another thing that I would appreciate is the ability to just indicate
Speaker 5:Hypothetical. But, like, I don't know. This this discussion just makes me think of truth social. Like, I don't wanna build a left lefty version of truth social.
Speaker 1:For sure not. For sure, I do I do not want a lefty version of truth social either, Charity. I I absolutely agree with you. I I and I I, like, I don't want and I want an environment where where we you've got people having other views, but we'd also can't go full 8 chan.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean, if we've learned anything from the experience with Twitter, it's that the the hard part, the expensive part of running one of these systems isn't the tech. Like, 10, 15 years ago, like, the tech was hard. The tech isn't hard now. What's hard is moderation.
Speaker 5:Like, I don't know even know how I feel about the existing moderation systems. Like, you read those articles about poor folks in third world countries who just spend their days, like, just submerged in, in, like, videos of child porn
Speaker 1:and violence. Right. That's terrible.
Speaker 5:That's the expensive part of these social networks.
Speaker 1:Well, okay. So to your point about the tech though, because you're right. The tech is a lot easier than it was 12 15 years ago. And I remember, I mean, we've talked about, like, being involved in Twitter circa 2007 and being very frustrated because they were acting like it was a very hard technical but it, in fact, had been solved by the Wall Street side of tech. It looks like a ticker plant, and they were not treating it that way.
Speaker 1:But because the tech problem is so much easier to solve, Charity, do you think that that's gonna lend itself to new company formation? Because I I feel like I mean, I again, I don't want, like, Air America for Twitter, but actually
Speaker 5:No. I don't. I don't. I don't because I I don't it's not a technical problem anymore. Like, you know, there was this, like, there was this 5 year period where the social networks were the great big thing, and a 1,000,000,000 flowers bloomed and a 1,000,000,000 minus 5 of them died.
Speaker 5:Right? And it's like I don't know. Like, in order to attract funding, it can't just be one thing. Right? There has to be, like, a competitive batch of things.
Speaker 5:And, like, this feels like if it got any funding to me and I'm just speaking out loud. I spent 0 cycles thinking about this. But it feels to me much more likely to be funded by a philanthropist Okay. Which is lovely and noble, but I've never really seen that build a great product here.
Speaker 1:No? But I like this idea. This is a this is an exciting idea. And
Speaker 5:Write a letter. Yeah. Right. Or
Speaker 1:no. That is or either the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a like, look. We're in tuberculosis Yeah. And we're gonna do next gen Twitter. That's quite an interesting idea.
Speaker 4:Maybe the
Speaker 6:Right.
Speaker 4:Maybe the public library system wants to start
Speaker 3:with the thing.
Speaker 1:That's right. I mean The I I I like that idea of viewing it as a a public good somehow and having I mean, it feels like, it does feel implausible, but, would also be great at some level.
Speaker 7:I mean, that but that's why
Speaker 4:I mean, it doesn't it has to be a public good. The thing that way you the thing that you are using when you use Twitter is different from the thing that they're selling to you as Twitter. Like and all of the parts and all of the friction and all of the awfulness is the part where, like, that leaks in and where you are experiencing what they're selling to you rather than what you all believe that you are using. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And we
Speaker 4:The the difference between the public square and and the service that tries to make money.
Speaker 5:And remember too that we are point of friction. The product is us with Twitter and Facebook. Like, we are still what's being sold. We are not paying for this. And the idea like, in my ideal world, I would love to build something that's, you know, funded from philanthropists and, like, paid for with the revenues of those of us who use it.
Speaker 5:And, like, that is just never going to happen. Right? Not enough of us collectively care and enough to pay for sites instead of, like, free sites. Isn't that one of the lessons we've learned?
Speaker 1:I feel yeah. It was so, Jordy, let me ask you another question. This is, like, a darker darker question. Because, again, for for us, I would say that Twitter is an important part of the way that we talk about our companies, our endeavors, our communities. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What Wouldn't exist without it. Yeah. I feel I totally feel the same way. It it it guts me to say it, but I I totally feel the same way. And in that regard, I owe a lot to Twitter.
Speaker 1:What would under any condition, would you leave Twitter? I'm worried personally that like
Speaker 5:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay. Good. I because I I I am worried in myself. I'm like, god. What like, if this thing I guess if it does go total 8 chan, we'll all know to leave.
Speaker 1:Right? I hope.
Speaker 5:I don't know. I mean, I am not an ideologue when it comes to tools. Right? I don't if I felt like my business still relied on being on Twitter, I would probably stay no matter what horrible things I mean, there was a point in time when I used to tweet about personal stuff, and now I don't anymore because it's become spitting distance of functional.
Speaker 1:Well, so and and that's, I think, is what that's, like, a little glimmer of hope that I have that this will either be, like, okay ish or it will be so bad that new that there will be new company formation or something. And those of us and it especially if there's some way because the thing that is actually most valuable to me about Twitter, honestly, is the community. Is that is the folks that I follow, the folks that follow me. And if I could kind of can I can I just somehow bring that graph with me to some new spot? And I I feel like I mean, what have been examples?
Speaker 1:Have there been examples of, like, social network flips like that? I mean, obviously, there was there was Friendster to then Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 5:Myspace to Facebook.
Speaker 2:The other failure of Google, Google Plus.
Speaker 5:Yes. Google Plus. But
Speaker 1:I don't
Speaker 4:Did anyone really go there to to be able to be able to leave, though? I mean
Speaker 1:I mean, where did we have, like, these big, extant social networks that we all had to, like, take with us? And, I mean, is that even is that even where the the direction that this thing is gonna head? And what so, Charity, do you think that that we're gonna have all the folks that have been booted off the platform are gonna be let back on because I do think that that's gonna be the the canary and the coal mines that I was like.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. That's the best free advertising that I
Speaker 4:can get for a user.
Speaker 7:Oh, man.
Speaker 1:Am I naive and thinking am I naive and thinking that, like, there's a chance that they will not all be left back on the platform? Am I the only one who thinks that?
Speaker 5:No. You're completely right. He's a No. We're we're He's a troll. We he's a troll.
Speaker 5:He wants attention. Like, he's an attention seeking missile. Of course, he's gonna let them back in. He's already said he's
Speaker 4:gonna let them
Speaker 5:back in. Man. But free speech. Oh, no.
Speaker 1:No. No. No. I I he was so much calmer for a while anyway with him off the platform. I just just feel like I I I'm I'm gonna actually, you know, that's gonna be helpful back on the platform because I I do think I was gonna have to, like, close the tab.
Speaker 1:I I'm gonna have to sum the self control. Please, god.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean, I never followed Trump, and I don't understand why anyone ever did. Like, it's just you're you're just injecting to paraphrase, you're just injecting bleach into your eyeballs every day Oh, to by doing that.
Speaker 1:Totally. Totally. I never followed him, but I also well, I I just I couldn't look away. It's like I mean, it's like as you say, it's an attention seeking vessel that is very good at getting attention. And I I mean, I it's gonna be I mean, don't you think I mean, if they let those certainly, like, the darker folks back on the platform who are not gonna behave themselves.
Speaker 5:Well, let's let's look at it from a different perspective. What is the actual real what what about Twitter makes it valuable for us today?
Speaker 4:The network.
Speaker 5:Yeah. What about the network?
Speaker 2:It's the people. Yeah. The people. The network effect.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, like okay. So for example, what comes to mind for me is that, you know, when, Brian, when you were talking about bringing your our tribe or whatever with this, for me, I feel like there's a lot of unacknowledged benefit just in having, unrelated social circles all there because there's just that you know, if it was just tech people, how boring would Twitter be?
Speaker 1:Oh, totally.
Speaker 5:Right? And and but having the accidental, the incidental, and the the, you know, like, that mix is is what because I I I am sure that there will be products that break away. Like, they'll be like the ravelry of social networks. Right? You know, the knitting only social network.
Speaker 5:There'll be more ravelries in the world. But I don't think that that will serve I don't think that that will make it better. I don't think that that will make it work in the ways that it's valuable
Speaker 1:to remove. So do you think that we are more likely to get true open API access under Elon?
Speaker 5:I mean, Elon Musk has shown a lot of curiosity and interest in letting trolls back on. I haven't exactly heard him talking about API specifications. So, like, it probably, honestly, probably depends on who whispers in his ear first the loudest.
Speaker 1:But I mean, I think because if we were to get API access, like, it'd be an API access the the way it used to be, true API access, that would actually be interesting because that would allow for other experiences to be created on top of the network. What would you do? What I would do with that is if and then again, it depends on on what kind of a hellscape the Twitter descends into. But if if Twitter does descend into a total hellscape, I think that you could have something where I could use the good parts of Twitter and just not have to deal with have the the the hellscape muted if I've got API access.
Speaker 3:Bring bring your own bring your own moderation.
Speaker 5:Gotcha. So it'd be like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Basically. Twitter platform.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Twitter would Twitter would provide the thankless infrastructure that sits underneath the curated job.
Speaker 5:The database.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 4:It's the key it's the curated experience that somebody else provides on top by filtering out all the crud.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I mean and I think that but maybe that is do you why Charity, is that do do you feel that that is, that's unrealistic?
Speaker 5:I I I don't like, there's a lot of chaos that's gonna go into making decisions. I don't think it's impossible, but I don't think it's part of any new strategy.
Speaker 6:I don't
Speaker 4:know what the benefit to them how do you get 44 how do you get $44,000,000,000 back by letting people try as hard as possible not to experience your thing?
Speaker 5:Yeah. I don't I don't think so. But, like, would it be value
Speaker 1:Okay. So Yeah. It it do you think that advertisers walk at all? If it because it turns into a hellscape, advertisers will take a hike.
Speaker 5:Will they though? I feel like a couple of
Speaker 2:them Yeah.
Speaker 6:Make a
Speaker 5:lot of noise about it. But, like, you've reason you hear about the advertisers is because it's so
Speaker 1:rare. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Are are they off Facebook or anything else?
Speaker 3:Like They'll make a
Speaker 4:show a lot of it.
Speaker 5:They'll, like, you know, they'll make a show. A couple of them will take their advertising dollars and go elsewhere, and usually they kind of sleep back within a month or 2 anyway. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean, just look at at Adidas and Kanye. I mean, look what it took for them to even be like, oh, we're we're taking a step back in our relationship, but we're gonna sell his shoes without his name on.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. To their I mean, to their credit, I don't know why. Am I I don't know how you're freaking defending Adidas in this conversation. But the to their credit, they are having I mean, today, it's it's an outside financial impact.
Speaker 1:So it's just like understandable, but that would be something that they would wanna I mean, I don't again, I'm I should stop if I need this here. But they you know, they landed on the right spot of that, and you do wonder Yeah. If you will have if that starts to happen, I mean, will that first can that gather momentum? Because I think he ultimately, this is gonna have to be profitable.
Speaker 5:When you're a publicly traded company, you actually have, like, a you have a a fiscal responsibility to not do anything that will impact your profits, basically. So you can only do this kind of thing if you can you can make a plausible argument that it actually hurts you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. But I think that if if you he doesn't deserve us so much debt that advertisers walking is gonna be and they are advertisers ultimately gonna follow the masses.
Speaker 5:I think that So I mean, let's think about the ways that Twitter can and will probably fail. Like, the biggest one from my perspective is, like, if they literally let go of 2 thirds of the company, you know that's, like, a 100% of our content mark moderation team. And it could just become will probably just become utterly it could become utterly unusable, and that might be the best possible outcome.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I've got additional questions for you. Do you think we see the return of the fail whale? Do you think we actually see availability problems?
Speaker 5:I mean, one would hope.
Speaker 1:Okay. So on that, actually
Speaker 5:But I don't know. Like, the text the text deck has gotten so much better, and you can push so much to the edge and cache it and everything. You know? Like, I I don't know.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But yeah. But what happens the first time that the complex engine for caching things close to phones, stops stops doing that? Like, I feel like it is true that the infrastructure paths that we deploy are often more resilient and better and easier to get going because we sort of know what we're doing. But then if you fire everybody that, like, knows how it is currently deployed, who's gonna fix it when there's an outage?
Speaker 5:I don't think that the vulnerabilities are technical resiliency. I think it's unmissibility from a product perspective, especially, you know, if if, you know, you you can no longer effectively block harassers, and it's like the Russian Right. There are ways in which it could become so unpleasant that people just, like, stop logging in.
Speaker 4:Right. It's already pretty pretty unpleasant for logging in.
Speaker 1:I've got a I've got a bit of a dark question for you, Verdi and Josh as well. But the and and next alright. So the, in the war in Iraq, one of the truly the dumbest decisions after the invasion of Iraq was Paul Bremmer dismissing the Iraqi military. Oh, I know. Is firing 75% of Twitter staff effectively is the equivalent, the social media equivalent of disbanding the Iraqi military.
Speaker 1:Which Well, because but but if you take people that are resentful, that know some of the soft underbelly of the platform, And it can then it's like, actually, I'm now incentivized for this thing to actually become the health scape that I'm warning you that it will become, and I know exactly how to avoid it. Again, not to go too dark on you.
Speaker 5:That idea makes me really happy. But, I think that probably the bigger I bet there are senior managers that like, I don't know if you saw that literally the last thing I tweeted was about how almost every company out there has, like, 2 to 10 times as many employees that they actually need. And it it I was retweeting something by, you know, not for even I bet that senior management can make cuts that will not hurt it from a technical reliability standpoint. But the question is, will those people still want to hang around?
Speaker 1:Well, that's it. I mean yeah.
Speaker 5:Because they're they're gonna be the most employable people and the most pissed off, and
Speaker 1:I'm Well, I I would can
Speaker 4:you can you just briefly, as an aside to that, can you out do do do we know on any level, are all of the people, like, the senior people that had presumably stock plans and retention stuff, is this the kind of event that means that they suddenly get all their money straight away?
Speaker 1:I mean, well, Prague is leaving supposedly with $41,000,000. I mean, I think that there that that that they will be and there are plenty of executives that will be made. They will be incentivized to leave.
Speaker 5:Oh, yeah. The execs are gonna be taking a bath in money. That's why you know, what pushed me off so much was learning that the conversation about whether or not to sell the Elon Musk was entirely about the return on investment. There was not even a conversation about it being, you know, the public sphere of the industry.
Speaker 1:I know. Or that they might have a lot of
Speaker 5:responsibility whatsoever. Didn't even come up. How?
Speaker 1:I I know. I don't think that but they're just chickens about their fiduciary duty, which is like, it's like I I it's a milk toast answer, but I think that they're just they
Speaker 5:I mean, it's very revealing of how they've seen their jobs all along.
Speaker 1:Oh, for sure. For sure. And I I think that it does. So but I think that one of the dangers I mean, because Chardet and I well, I've saw Nat's tweet. I don't disagree with it, obviously, that big companies have a bunch of folks that, you know, could be old could be doing a lot more, certainly.
Speaker 1:The problem is that if you go in with those kind of cuts, you create a fear based organization.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and to be clear, my interpretation of it was not, oh, there's a bunch of people who aren't doing their jobs or they're slacking. It's more like making hard decisions is really hard. So people tend to just say yes and.
Speaker 5:And if you could just, like, yes and to get more head count and, you know, build another feature instead of you know? That that's where I think the the the waste comes in, because it you've got infinite money. Why is he building empire?
Speaker 1:Any predictions about the CEO of Twitter? Because I think that will also kind of dictate where this thing goes.
Speaker 8:What meaning what? Well, like, if it's like if David Sacks,
Speaker 1:the CEO of Twitter, we're going full cool. I mean, it's just like it it's over, I feel. Versus I feel like you could have other folks. If you have someone who's more of an operator and maybe a little more tempered
Speaker 5:Oh, you mean are any of them gonna stay around?
Speaker 6:I
Speaker 1:mean, I'm assuming Elon is not gonna be the CEO of Twitter. Maybe that's wrong.
Speaker 5:No. No. No. I believe the plan is for him to be the CEO of Twitter.
Speaker 3:Why would you assume that?
Speaker 1:Because because I'm a dummy. I'm a dummy.
Speaker 7:I mean, he he already said chief twit.
Speaker 4:You you can only you you gotta do things yourself if you want them done properly, Brian.
Speaker 1:But but he has I mean, he does have a history of delegating. And will he so alright. Yeah. Then I'm an idiot. Hey.
Speaker 4:I What I'm excited for next week when he's officially, like, the founder of the setup. I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 1:Well played. Well played. Yeah. For those so yeah. For those, I feel like many people know this, but he is not a founder of Tesla is what I'd like to be referenced with.
Speaker 4:No. Or or PayPal, technically.
Speaker 5:I mean, I do believe he did actual work at PayPal.
Speaker 4:Yeah. He did. He just would have installed Windows on all
Speaker 1:the servers
Speaker 4:That's right. As I recall.
Speaker 1:That's I forgot that. Yes. He was a total, like, Windows extremist.
Speaker 5:Oh my god. This
Speaker 4:Yeah. That's where they that's where they that's where they fired him, isn't it? Because he was like, no. We're absolutely gonna have windows on everything. You're all wrong.
Speaker 4:Wow. And
Speaker 3:then and then there
Speaker 4:was some personality conflicts, and then, suddenly he was not there anymore.
Speaker 1:That's like the last straw. It's like, no. No. Like, I could deal with the you know, letting the all the villains on the platform find. The Windows extremist, no.
Speaker 1:That's that's a pretty smart.
Speaker 6:They they
Speaker 1:You know, maybe That's my that's my line in the sand.
Speaker 5:Twitter over to Windows servers and whenever
Speaker 4:I hope so. Oh, I do. I do hope that would be would that not be terribly exciting to watch?
Speaker 5:Beautiful. It's never gonna happen, but we can we can daydream.
Speaker 4:Well, it wasn't wasn't gonna happen at PayPal either, but he was super excited about it. That's the that's what that's what you want to happen. You want him to be micromanaging technological decisions, like, 400 stories down in the skyscraper that he's purchased.
Speaker 5:Elon is
Speaker 4:gonna go so well.
Speaker 5:Example of how when people grow up in a certain level of, like, wealth and stuff, it's like there are there are skills that you learn by having money that if you grew up poor, you don't have them. I'm not saying everyone who grew up rich has them, but, like, it took me decades to figure out how to use money like a person who has money instead of, like, like, a poor person who's living, like, paycheck to paycheck and barely has a savings account. You know? And I feel like Elon's really he just he just there are just waves of someone like that, right, who just has never really never really done the bottoms up stuff, but just, like, cruises in and
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I I agree with you. And I and so, I mean, I guess another question is, is there a any sort of outcome? Because it feels like the thing that's a lock is that things are not gonna stay the same.
Speaker 1:This is either gonna go get, like, mildly better maybe, Nick, in your optimistic scenario, or it's just gonna get wildly worse.
Speaker 5:Well, so the most likely thing, I I think the most likely so, like, playing out a few steps in the future. Elon does not have infinite money, and furthermore, he doesn't wanna spend even half of his money. And the banks are gonna have requirements. Right? He's taking out 40 odd $1,000,000,000 of loans.
Speaker 5:So Twitter's gonna have to start, you know, making some money. And if that doesn't go well, then it will get very interesting.
Speaker 1:If you
Speaker 4:Presumably, there'll be a runway on, like, beginning to service that debt, like, in an in a fairly noticeable way. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so when you say it doesn't go well, you mean because we're actually gonna know. Right? I mean, it's it's private. So we're not gonna actually, presumably
Speaker 5:We're not going to officially know, but I bet there's gonna be a lot of weaker
Speaker 1:Yes. I do feel that, like, the first couple of days are really, really important, and he may have already figured this out. And you're excited that you must have the same thought that I had in terms of, like because it's, like, it's easy to be a big talker about big complexity of problems about, like, oh, you know, I think 70 or 70 of these people shouldn't belong here. You have to, like, wait into an organization. You're like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's actually harder than I realized.
Speaker 5:I mean, the thing is that, like, Elon's great at making these big outrageous, kind of stupid, but, you know, whatever proclamations. But then he's surrounded by enough smart people who take it seriously and try to do it. And if you're if you've got a lot of really smart, motivated people and a lot of money, like, a lot more things are possible oh, and an infinite seemingly infinite runway. Like, a lot more things are possible than than we might expect. Right?
Speaker 5:Because those of us who are all reality constrained tend not to try those ways.
Speaker 4:But the I mean, the bear is sticky with me, but I feel like the, like, the the I just but how many of those smart people are gonna do, like, totally like, they it's like Elon really wants the building on fire. Like yeah. Okay. Like, green flames or yeah.
Speaker 5:Electric cars to save the planet. A rocket. Those are shiny. Hell, yeah. Is he gonna find those same smart people to come execute on this crazy stupid plan through Twitter?
Speaker 5:Seems way too quickly.
Speaker 4:Did I did I dream this in in a fever dream, or did he start talking about x, the app for everything?
Speaker 2:No. Is that anything that he said out loud?
Speaker 7:Yes.
Speaker 4:Okay. And that was, like, one of the plans. Right? It was, like, Twitter is gonna be the application through which you obtain all interactions with, I don't know, government services, the supermarket stuff, purchasing rock concert tickets and such. I mean, like, you know, ordering milk.
Speaker 4:I
Speaker 5:Alright. So here's a question.
Speaker 2:The wall and everything. Who do you wish
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. Yes. I I was gonna ask you that same question. Actually, so I was in this
Speaker 3:Gov government,
Speaker 4:to be honest.
Speaker 6:I mean
Speaker 1:say this, Joshua, revealing your inner Australian. This is where they ended the Look. If if,
Speaker 4:yeah, Aussie Twitter would be run by the federal government, we would all be pretty cross about it.
Speaker 1:That's gonna
Speaker 4:be fine.
Speaker 5:I agree with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We live in America. We live in America. So
Speaker 4:I look. I'm still getting used to the citizenship. It it fits a little funny.
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 1:so no. That's a great question. And I so I think that, like, the especially if you consider, like, alright. It's already being purchased by him. My kind of thought is what would be the hire that they would make?
Speaker 1:They'd be like, oh, this is kind of interesting. Like, this is not
Speaker 5:Like, honestly, I know this is the boringest dance ever, but, like, someone like Sheryl Sandberg.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a good one.
Speaker 5:Kind of amoral, but ruthlessly competent and
Speaker 1:Oh, that would be a god. Sheryl Sandberg would I think everyone would be like that would kind of, like, pause everybody. Like, I don't know what wait a minute. What do I think about that? I actually don't know what I think about that.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. That and that's a good kind of, like, getting someone who has that kind who carries themselves a little because you gotta get someone who carries themselves With responsibility.
Speaker 5:It it Like, I'm no Sheryl Sandberg fan, but also the lady deserves to be CEO. Like, she's been stuck and fiddle to
Speaker 1:that this dude. For sure. And you actually it's kind of interesting to think, like, maybe it we he can find some folks ex Facebook meta folks.
Speaker 5:Oh, she can for sure, like, hire up a dream team.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's kind of intriguing.
Speaker 5:Also, one of the hard things about these these hard things about these hard problems is that they're so swindegenerous. They're so, like, there isn't a lot to go on. But someone who was actually at Facebook for the past 10 years would probably have more context and learnable, reusable lessons than anyone
Speaker 1:else. Totally. Yeah. I mean and would know kind of like, look. No.
Speaker 1:No. No. We experimented with that. Here's why that's not gonna work. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, no. That's a that's an interesting one.
Speaker 8:I don't know if if he but, you know, this
Speaker 1:is where you do think, like, if he actually can make the pitch for someone like that. I I mean, I personally I was really I mean, I I'm a I Chardan, because you use you use Twitter Spaces as well. So I'm a big Twitter Spaces fan. So, the, Leah Culber and her crew, inside of Twitter, I hope that they get elevated, supported. I hope they do not get gutted because Twitter's I do like Twitter Spaces even though I have a complicated relationship with its reliability.
Speaker 5:Me too. Dust to video. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think there's a lot to be said for social audio. It's been great for I mean, you know, I I I've really enjoyed it. It's been really important for us. It's been great for us. So I I'm kinda hoping that Twitter Spaces doesn't get get the ax in all of this.
Speaker 1:I don't know. We what does you all wanna think about social audio? Do we know?
Speaker 5:I mean, that seems like way below
Speaker 4:the line.
Speaker 1:It is. Yes. Below the line. Yeah. I think you're right.
Speaker 1:So maybe so the things that are kinda below the line, I just don't know if he's just gonna, like, leave alone or if he is going to kill because he doesn't understand them.
Speaker 5:I would guess I would guess that the laser beams are going to be focused in the direction of ads and user acquisition for, like, the 1st year.
Speaker 4:I'm I'm worried about the ads thing particularly because, like, something I do, for instance, is I will block any account that promotes a tweet into my timeline. Any account. Just basically anything. And I need to
Speaker 3:do this.
Speaker 4:And and so, like, that cuts down the frequency of ads for
Speaker 3:a little while while the
Speaker 4:platform is, like, oh, Jesus. What have we got left in the coverage to show this guy? And so, like, my promoted tweets, I don't I don't get that many, and they're all super weird. But what I'm worried about is that, like because this that's all that's left. But, like, what I'm worried about is, like, the ads will stop because they're today, ads are tweets that get, like, shuffled into your thing.
Speaker 4:And if you block, the person who puts out the ads, then you never get to see them anymore. But, like, what if the ads stop being not tweets? They're like banners that pop up at the top of things, and you can't make them go away.
Speaker 5:Assured that that will happen.
Speaker 4:Like yeah. Because because that's gonna make it much shittier.
Speaker 1:So, Charity, one of these you said earlier about the if they remove some of these controls. So, I mean, would it be possible that he would just be like, you know what? We're removing blocking and muting. There actually is no blocking and muting anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Oh, that seems entire that seems a I would put that at 30%. Not negligible, but, like, you know, whatever increases engagement. Right? Catering increases engagement.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. That would be brutal, though. I mean, that would be very bad. Right?
Speaker 2:Terrible. Free speech, man. Free speech.
Speaker 5:We have, like, a 130 people here, and I wonder if any of them are just, like, oh, just pass them up. I wonder if any of them are just, like, die adversity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Anyone, yeah, anyone return they jump up here and, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've I
Speaker 4:Oh, you know you know, I'm leaving if they take away what's the, chronological timeline. If that goes away, I'm I
Speaker 1:well, I'm if they take away muting and blocking, that means that mister Peanut will be unmuted for me. And, oh, like, I I couldn't take it anymore with the mister Peanut ad. I don't know, like, I don't know what was happening where, like,
Speaker 4:I Is that the monocle? The the the monocle
Speaker 1:peanut with the monocle on it was just, like, all over me. And I
Speaker 8:He's a he's a he's a welcome to peanut.
Speaker 5:But I
Speaker 1:know what you're talking about. I understand a problem with mister peanut, but not mister peanut all the time. I was getting nonstop mister peanut ads. I had to mute him. It's mister peanut, and, like, I've I've muted very few things.
Speaker 2:And I've
Speaker 1:I have not muted IBM. I don't know what my problem is. Like, why can't I click on the mute button for IBM HP?
Speaker 5:You know, then again, if they stop doing tweet ads and move to actual, like, promo ads, then ad block would work.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think that they
Speaker 4:Yeah. But then then they'll be in an arms race against that working.
Speaker 6:Like
Speaker 5:I mean, them and everyone else.
Speaker 1:Do you think that Twitter goes public again?
Speaker 5:I mean, in order to go public, you like, I I I mean, he's been talking about taking all of his companies private. Why why endure the scrutiny? Like, I don't think he likes scrutiny and for very good reasons. So, like, no. I don't think he'll and, like, the reason to go public one of the reasons is because you want money.
Speaker 5:Another reason is to raise more money. Another reason is to, you know, give money to your your employees who have been working their asses off for so long. None of them really seem like they'll motivate him.
Speaker 1:I but so I do wonder if it if he ends up in a pickle where he just cannot service debt and needs to raise money to effectively debt, but maybe maybe that's our bet.
Speaker 5:You know, as the 2nd richest person in the world, it would be hard, but I I believe in him, I think he could do it.
Speaker 1:Alright. Well, yeah, I definitely wanna, like, shoot me the offer. Anyone else wants don't want to hop in here? I just wanna get kind of the the the the quick takes. And so, Charity, your conclusion is that Twitter is going to get worse in part because Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I'm just like a naive fool for thinking that it's even possible for for Twitter this.
Speaker 4:No. No. No. Anything seems impossible.
Speaker 1:Okay. I mean,
Speaker 4:also Bro I mean, Broadcom Broadcom could buy it.
Speaker 5:Def defining bad and and good, they're they're very, you know, very subject to personal definition and, you know, could get better in some ways while also getting worse in other ways.
Speaker 1:Okay. So then what is your would I would let's do a quick round of of of, like, your new, like, predictions here. I feel like we could do a a a 1 month and 1 year prediction. Would you be up for that? What is your what is your 1 month prediction and 1 year prediction?
Speaker 5:1 month from now, there's everybody's claiming to be quitting Twitter. There's so much outrage and so many, he did this and he did this, and I'm offended, and this is the end. And, like, everybody's gonna mass exit, and, you know, then that's gonna last for a month or 2. And 1 year 1 year from now, I oh, okay. I'll make a prediction.
Speaker 5:I don't think he actually gets rid of 75%. I I almost think it would be kind of brilliant of him to be like to go out there saying, I'm gonna get rid of 75% of the workforce and then only get rid of 4 Correct. Right.
Speaker 1:And then every He's he's moved the the Overton window for the layoff number. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I that's a good prediction. So so layoffs but much yeah. I mean, there have
Speaker 5:to be.
Speaker 1:So there have to be they're pulling people there.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Of course, it's gonna lay a bunch of people off, but 75% seems like suicidal. So I bet he lays off somewhere in between 2550.
Speaker 4:Is that in a month or a year?
Speaker 1:A year. Year. Okay.
Speaker 5:I mean, I would say first 3 to 6 months, but it's not gonna happen in days.
Speaker 6:I will
Speaker 1:I'm yeah. Go ahead, Josh.
Speaker 4:I I I I think first first month is mandatory return to the office. Oh. And anybody who doesn't come back to anybody who doesn't come back to the office No mask. Fucking mask. Right.
Speaker 1:Unmask, and you're required to be beat done by 20 people.
Speaker 4:And if you yeah. You must cut you must use the special air tube that connects you to 3 other coworkers. The the if if if you don't come back in, you'll be asked to leave. And then if you won't leave, then you'll be pushed out the, I don't know, the 2nd story window of the office that you're supposed to come into.
Speaker 5:Well, and
Speaker 4:if you And that and that will they
Speaker 5:don't have to pay sales. Right.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yes. And so that that will be the reduction force strategy. Will be, stressing people out enough that they wanna quit on their own, and that will make the workforce substantially smaller, I think.
Speaker 6:What do you
Speaker 5:think about pay cuts?
Speaker 8:Oh. Any cuts? Yeah.
Speaker 4:Why not? Why not? Why not? But but by the end of the year so, like like but that'll have been going on from the end of the 1st month, the start of to the end of the year. By the end of the year, there will have been at least one, embarrassing outage that went on longer than anybody thought it should.
Speaker 4:And and by that time, they will have implemented some shitty advertising thing that everybody hates.
Speaker 5:Will it be static?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. So I do think yeah. I think that there so I'm gonna have contradictory predictions. My 1 month prediction, just because I can't help by by predicting my hopes, is that the villains are actually surprising everybody.
Speaker 1:The villains are kept off the platform, but the world is kept in suspense about when they will be released. And the world is kept in in constant so they're they're they're not back yet, but the but Elon is constantly kinda talking about it. And so people are talking about it, but they have the super villains have not been released onto the platform after a month. It's my that's that's I
Speaker 5:think that he would lose a significant portion of his fan base if he did that. Because he'd be, like, oh, you know, mealy mouth and, like, not standing for his principles and, like, something
Speaker 1:like that. Okay. Yeah. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, at a month, you're right. He won't let them back on the platform. At a year, maybe 9 months, they'll be back on the platform to drive engagement.
Speaker 1:So Yeah.
Speaker 5:Engagement's gonna be super key, and the asshole is driving engagement.
Speaker 2:So they Trump will be back on the platform driving engagement.
Speaker 4:So what's your youth?
Speaker 1:So my youth bridge I do think that if if he goes full Bremer and dismisses the Iraqi army, that sabotage actually becomes a, a major issue. There there are that you do have outages and that sabotage something that we and not just outages, but that the the thing gets bad so fast that
Speaker 4:Like like, insist on doing everything through channels
Speaker 1:kinda sabotage? Like, warning no. No. No. No.
Speaker 1:I mean, in, like, actual, like, you got rid of me, but I've been the one warning you about these 4 security holes. And I am going to use them not to I'm gonna use them to create mayhem. I'm gonna use them to
Speaker 3:Oh, like like, for for potentially, like, criminally
Speaker 4:actionable thing?
Speaker 8:I would still call that.
Speaker 1:I don't But I think
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sorry, Cherry. Go ahead.
Speaker 8:Go ahead.
Speaker 5:I I I I can see a lot of people talking about doing that and longing and screaming about doing that, but I have a hard time really seeing it. Like, it's, like, for better it's their baby. It's something they've labored over for, you know, years decades, and, like, I I would find it really, really hard to do something like that to a system of mine. But, like, leaving and, like, not even trying to, leave well or, you know, sort of sabotage through negligence, that sort of thing?
Speaker 1:Well, so the way here's the way the way I would be going down. It's not like a criminal behavior, but more like actually, I know that there is a bit of a loophole in account creation, and it's actually really easy to skirt the account creation limits for bots. And here's, like, an easy legal way to do it that we have talked about that we inside Twitter know. And then using that to create bots that create some sort of of mayhem. I do think there's there is there there is arguably a fine line, certainly, between the criminal mind and the policing mind or the arsonist and the firefighter.
Speaker 1:And I think because I to your point about the the baby charity, I mean, so I definitely had this happen at Sun when my baby was invaded. And you begin to realize that, like, actually, this is actually so in in in this you're never gonna hear me say this again. There's a degree to which I'm actually happy that Oracle acquired Sun because it was so unequivocal in that, like, it sun was sun was ailing.
Speaker 3:No no no rude. No misinterpretation.
Speaker 1:It's like, oh, like, granny is sick and granny is gonna die. And so so Ellison comes in with that baby's Yeah. It's like Ellison comes in at 45 and blows out granny's brains. You're like, Jesus, what the hell was that? Wait.
Speaker 1:Wait. I'll I'll leave it back. Guys. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think that, like, you there may be a sense of, like, no. No. No. It is my duty to the thing that we created to ex There
Speaker 6:are a
Speaker 5:lot of people at Twitter who take who feel a real sense of duty just in general. So that seems plausible. I okay. I have a question. Has everyone got
Speaker 4:their predictions? That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:Again, ask to speak if you got predictions. Definitely, like, hop on the stage here you got predictions.
Speaker 5:But, here's my, here's here's here's my question. Alright. So let's say that our our, like, doom and gloom, like, predictions come true. Say say Elon laid off, you know, 75% of the workers, and no. Thank you.
Speaker 5:And there's, like, all these people just leaving, like, piles of shit behind them. And and say that the platform really does start to melt down to the extent that it becomes that a lot of people start thinking, what maybe we do need a replacement. How would that happen?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I right. How? So I think it's a great question. I feel that you're gonna have someone early and big that begins to throw their weight behind something, and you're gonna have where and I so here's another question for you.
Speaker 1:Will there be a way to live in both of these worlds at once? Like, okay. I am moving to to to new Twitter, and I but my my I keeping I'm not gonna be everything that I tweet on new Twitter is automatically gonna be also tweeted over here on Twitter Twitter. But this is where I intend to do everything, And I'm actually wanna migrate over.
Speaker 5:I mean, surely, you could do that. You could just do that
Speaker 1:as a client.
Speaker 5:Right? Do a right.
Speaker 1:Right. So was that and you wonder if, like, that and then you have you gotta think it's gonna be some maybe it's a group of folks. Maybe, like, weather Twitter. All do you follow weather? I love weather Twitter.
Speaker 1:Weather Twitter's great.
Speaker 5:Maybe, like, Evan Biz or Stone or whatever their names were.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you get, like, the you get some folks that were kind of early and big in social. They kind of decamp, and you start I mean, I I I that would be my and it feels like there's gonna be, like, someone important. I just wanna have to actually question that I've got is how much gen z uses Twitter.
Speaker 1:And my lens for this is generally my own kids, And they do use Twitter. I mean, Twitter is actually so, I mean, my my 18 year old is on Twitter, but uses it effectively professionally. He uses it in a very narrow band for what he's using to kind of, like, a a purely kind of professionally advance himself. So I don't know what he is like, how he would feel about a different new social network. It turns out yes.
Speaker 1:Go for it. Win your canons.
Speaker 8:Yeah. So okay. So, what you were describing, with the whole, you know, I'm I'm going to move here, but I'm going to have all my stuff be on old Twitter 2 already exists for the Thetaverse. It's the biggest biggest, aspect of that is Mastodon, and there's also miss key, what's it called? I don't remember.
Speaker 8:And yeah, so that's already a thing, and there is a group of people migrating there right now as we speak. There's always every time something like hap happens like this, there's an influx. But this one's pretty big.
Speaker 1:Is this so are you on Mastodon? I mean, I think I I got at some point, I got released on Mastodon back in the day, but I didn't but are you on Mastodon?
Speaker 8:Well, I'm on Miski, but that is also part of the same network. Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay. In Miski how do you spell Miski? I don't think I've I I don't
Speaker 8:it's a Japanese one, but it's, like, the word miss, m I s s, and the word key, k e y. So I'm on a miss key instance, but it's interoperable.
Speaker 1:And are used and you're saying you're that that folks on Mastodon instances are seeing an influx of folks? Yes. Interesting. And do you think that that's presumably, that's happened in the past. Presumably, that's happened whenever, the
Speaker 8:It's happened with Facebook doing stupid shit. It's happened with Twitter a few times. It it Yeah. It's grown a lot over the years, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's big yet. But there is a sizable community now.
Speaker 5:Are there any advertisers on Mastodon yet?
Speaker 8:No. Be because every time it happens, someone shuts them down. And the thing is, Mastodon and Misty and such, they're all it's all small instances. It's you you spin up your own site and you might have just you and some friends or it might be 2,000 people, and you're not doing that It's not because you don't want it.
Speaker 5:Not gonna be real until they're advertisers.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. So so get yeah. That's a good point. No.
Speaker 4:The the
Speaker 8:thing is it's it's inherently resistant to that, which is gonna be part of the problem for corporations.
Speaker 5:Right. But but your point about Gen z is, I think, important because I I don't get the feeling that Gen z viscerally hates Twitter the way they
Speaker 1:hate these folks. That's that is definitely right.
Speaker 5:And and they're also they're also way more willing to experiment and jump around and try different different things.
Speaker 6:So
Speaker 1:Well, so that's why I wonder if he is he gonna be a Gen Z er that makes the leap to to new Twitter?
Speaker 5:I mean, I think Gen Zers would argue that they already have, and it's
Speaker 1:No. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. No.
Speaker 1:Totally fair. But TikTok is different. Right? TikTok is really different from Twitter just in terms of, like, what I mean, TikTok really is pure entertainment. And it's
Speaker 8:It's also good
Speaker 4:news. It's not.
Speaker 1:It's not. I know.
Speaker 5:It's not. People build businesses on top of TikTok, big ones. Just not
Speaker 1:good news. It's like whenever my 15 year old offers me an interesting fact, I have to ask is this actual knowledge or TikTok knowledge.
Speaker 4:Also, isn't it all videos?
Speaker 1:It is it is essentially all video. So it's it is not and I think that's part of the reason. So the reason that the Gen Zers use Twitter and, Tert, I think you're totally right. From what I have seen of the Gen Zers, Twitter is not viewed the same way that Facebook is viewed at all, but it is but it's viewed as very different than the and it's we need to know if, like, what their feeling is about how replaceable is this thing, and what what do you see out there. Are you on B Real, Charity?
Speaker 1:Are you on B Real? No.
Speaker 5:I am not.
Speaker 6:I I
Speaker 4:not that bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I I the the kids have tried to convince me to go and be real. It's like, no. Goddamn. When am I gonna be real? But the
Speaker 2:I also wonder about, Blue Sky, the the new, like, web 3 social app by Jack Dorsey. I guess he's backing it.
Speaker 4:I definitely don't wanna be on one of those.
Speaker 1:Well, wait to see what Twitter becomes. I mean, you
Speaker 2:Yeah. You never know.
Speaker 4:I'll just be on nothing. Like, honestly, like, if if one choice is all all videos all videos and the other choice is some kind of fucking proof proof of work nonsense thing from you. From that other clown, then, like, I don't want any communications in it. I'll just
Speaker 1:just email it for you. IRC.
Speaker 5:I don't like video. Well, that's the
Speaker 3:thing. That's the
Speaker 4:I never left.
Speaker 1:I would love
Speaker 6:to be
Speaker 2:back on IRC again.
Speaker 5:There there is a place for a text based communication meeting because stuff is, like, densely it conveys a lot of very dense information. This is why, like, journalists or like, I I don't think anything will truly succeed until there's advertisers, until the journalists switch.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I see.
Speaker 4:There's so much of Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Journalists being on Twitter. It's about talking about Twitter, and therefore, you know, it's kind of the center of gravity for
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 6:So that
Speaker 1:that's an interesting point because I do feel that, like, the my problem is not with centralization. I feel that there there's and this is the problem. Maths Beyond is kinda solving 2 problems at once. And one of those problems, I don't care about as much as the other. Like, I I I I honor it, and I think it's, like, I think it's great for humanity.
Speaker 1:But I think to turn to your point, like, I actually am happy to use a product that I support with my eyeballs minus mister p dot who needs to be muted. I I'm I'm happy to actually support that, but I I'm so I'm happy to support centralization. It's just this centralization that I'm beginning to to intensely question.
Speaker 8:I I will admit. I am also one
Speaker 7:of the That's
Speaker 6:I I
Speaker 8:will admit. I'm also one of those people that blogs every single promoted tweet.
Speaker 4:Yeah. That's a lot of people that I know, I feel like. But the, like, the
Speaker 1:I I used to be blocked. I thought for a moment, you said that you blog every single promoted tweet. I'm like, that is so
Speaker 4:Yeah. No.
Speaker 1:Curious and weird.
Speaker 8:No. No. I block every promoted tweet.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 5:Reese Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Reese Go for it.
Speaker 5:Microphone. It hasn't gotten to speak yet. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I just wanna make a comment on the on the gen z thing. I think, like, a lot of people now just are moving their conversations to these, like Discords or matrix groups or Mastodon's a good example where
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 3:You have smaller communities where you just sit there and talk, and then you still use Twitter because, like, you just wanna be in the, like, town hall. Totally.
Speaker 1:That is that is a very good observation. And my own kids, when they see me on you know, we use Matrix for chat, they they insist on calling it your Discord or whatever. I'm like, it's not we don't don't call my Discord. But, yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 4:Well, I
Speaker 3:mean, it's just like it's like IRC too. Yeah. Right? Like, I mean, even Discord to a certain extent is IRC. It's just, like, younger us younger people are using Discord now because most people aren't using, like, an IRC client on their computer or something.
Speaker 3:Right? But, like, I think that's where most of the conversations are going. I think I'll also, like, I'll just give, like, a maybe a bold case of, like, Elon taking over Twitter where, like, Twitter definitely does have a problem with spam bots. Right? Like, you go into, like, any major person's, like, comments and replies, and it's, like, a bunch of random BTC wallets that are, like, fake Elons or fake Zucks or whatever saying, like, give us money.
Speaker 3:And that that it's it's really annoying for, like, the platform. And I think, like, that sort of spam, like, bot stuff that, like, there may be, like I think there's evidence to show that, like, a lot of Elon's companies have solved some really hard technical problems, and, like, they might solve that problem in a better way than, like, the current Twitter team is working.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's interesting. And so okay. Let me ask you this for you because I feel that, like, that problem, which I definitely see when you're in you know, you've got a a multimillion follower kind of person. You go look in their comments and it's a mess.
Speaker 1:But meanwhile, back here in the in among the peasantry with mere tens of thousands of followers, it's not nearly as bad. Do you think that a lot that Yuan's view of this problem is being distorted by his own very unusual status on the platform?
Speaker 5:Oh, almost certainly. It's it's definitely
Speaker 3:being distorted.
Speaker 5:I I am here at KubeCon.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna
Speaker 5:hop off and see Austin's laptop for a bit.
Speaker 1:It's a security. Thanks.
Speaker 5:Bye.
Speaker 8:I will say I have a lot
Speaker 3:Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Speaker 8:Sorry. Yeah. I will say I have a lot fewer followers than Elon Musk, and I also do see that problem. But also, I definitely don't think the problem is less humans. I think it's more and more moderation.
Speaker 8:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like sorry, Rishi. What were you gonna say?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I was just saying that, like, I think definitely, like, Elon's definitely skewed because he sees
Speaker 6:a lot more bots on
Speaker 3:his content. But I think one thing that you see is, like, a lot of the interesting conversations in, like, Twitter comments are just gone now. Right? It's, like, very, like either they're, like, hyping up, like, whoever the person, like, wrote that tweet, or it's, like, a bunch of bots and spam, or it's people that are just, like, shit posting and trolling on them. And so, like, the most interesting conversations nowadays I see on Twitter are, like, in group DMs or on Twitter spaces.
Speaker 3:And so, like, maybe if you do solve that, like, one vector of that problem, which is the bot issue, then, like, you maybe make those conversations in the public space a little better. The other side of it is also, like, maybe they do work on like, maybe there are some things, like, algorithmically that you can you can do to, like, promote more discussion. You know? Like, there like, I I I don't know. I'm I'm just trying to give a bull case, but, like because it felt like there was mostly just barricades.
Speaker 3:Right? No.
Speaker 1:This is this is great. This is honestly, this is what we need. I'm an optimist. So so is mix. We we we we we were, we're thirsting for the the bull case here.
Speaker 1:I would love to have the bull case.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, like, my only thought is is, like, Elon definitely does, like, crazy things and, like, I I don't agree with a lot of the stuff he does, but, like, at the end of the day, like, a lot of these companies themselves and, like, I mean, SpaceX lands freaking rockets. It's pretty cool. Like, maybe there are some technical things I can improve, and, like, I enjoy Twitter, the app, and, like, there are some also other technical peep like, I mean, you guys talk about it on your Oxide spaces every week with how Twitter spaces just have all these bugs. And it's, like, such a great, like, idea of a product and, like, there's little basic things that they get wrong.
Speaker 3:Right? So, like, maybe the, like, engineering of, like, the actual app and the service improves, is is maybe a good thing.
Speaker 1:That would be great. And I think you made a very good point that I certainly agree with that Twitter Spaces is part of that that it's kind of the some of where some of the best discussion is happening right now on Twitter. I'm obviously very bullish about Twitter spaces, and we've had great discussions there, and I've met terrific folks. And I think they've, so I'm really so what do you think the do you think Elon is gonna have my assets earlier? But do you think that Elon's gonna have a a feeling on Twitter spaces one way or the other?
Speaker 3:I think the product will exist. I think there's, like, probably enough people in his ear too that were, like, part of Clubhouse and other things like that that are gonna be pro this type of audio format. I think I I'd be cure like, I don't know any internal, like, Twitter numbers, but there's probably, like, more evidence of, like people who have, like, used spaces once probably go back
Speaker 4:to it a lot
Speaker 3:more often. So, like, I'm sure, like, they'll look at those metrics and, like like, that's, like, I'm I'm kind of, like, being positive about it, but, like, also at the same time, I don't think Elon really uses spaces a lot. Maybe he thinks it's stupid and he just, like, decide to wake up one day and say, fuck it. It's gone. But, like, hopefully
Speaker 1:Well, this is one thing I actually just don't understand. I just don't know I know him or have known people, worked with him well enough. I get but Ellison I mean, kind of famously, the first thing that Ellison killed inside of Oracle was the cloud effort inside Oracle. 2009 is when that deal closes. And SunCloud was actually pretty interesting, and he shot it right in the brain, like, very first thing, like, in the first week.
Speaker 1:And a bunch of people were just like, oh, come on. And I so Ellison had a predisposition to destroying things that he didn't understand. And I don't know where Elon kinda shakes out on that. I don't know if Elon is is kind of has got a natural destructive tendency. He definitely likes to draw attention to himself.
Speaker 1:But then it's also true that his, like, spoken self and his actions don't always line up.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's where, like, especially if you look at, like, you know I've talked like, I've I've worked with some people who you like, who worked at Tesla. And, like, from an engineering standpoint, like, when he's in the room, like, obviously, he says certain things in a public persona especially, like, that are out there and pretty crazy. And but, like, from an engineering standpoint, it seems like a pretty practical person where, like, you could convince him of, like, that, like, this is the correct way to build something or, like, the, like, the numbers show that this is the correct thing and, like, we should go with that, and he seems pretty practical on that just given his track record. But someone who, like, actually works with them a lot more would have
Speaker 1:Well but to your point, I mean, the note that he had earlier today, that kind of note to advertise is about this not turning into a a hellscape. I mean, that actually that that shows showed some pragmatism for sure, especially because he knows that, like, what? Later today, I'm gonna fire all these people. So let me get ahead of this a little bit and settle advertisers. So yeah.
Speaker 1:To your point, like, I think that there's a, there may be a a case made. I would again, I would personally love the bull case because I think that there's a lot there is a lot of room for improvement. And I just don't know how you make the bull case with the supervillains being released. So I I Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think I think the other I think the other bull case for Twitter is, like, I think you guys had a you guys did the Twitter spaces back, like, talking about the Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And things
Speaker 3:like that. It's like like, Twitter has survived that hellscape of constantly dying and, like Yeah. Never working. And it's just, like, it's such a sticky platform And it just like, unlike any other social media, it just keeps
Speaker 1:It does keep staying around.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. You you're absolutely right. I do think though to there was not a there were not a lot of other options in the fail whale days. And the fail whale was it was bad.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was really materially affecting them. I I think the the I mean, Friendster was fatally killed by its equivalent of the fail whale. Friendster was so pathological that it was unusable. And so you you definitely can't but those are both cases where it's, like, it's actually you can't use the thing. Not like I'm using the thing, but I'm feeling kinda filthy about myself, or I'm I'm engaged with this platform.
Speaker 1:I don't always want to be kind of problems,
Speaker 3:which are very
Speaker 1:different. Rachel, I've invited you to speak. I'm not sure if you if if you're in a position to you can jump in here. But as as I feel like I'm gonna speak for you, I feel like you're one of the most optimistic people I know. I feel like you're very level headed, optimistic person.
Speaker 1:You're probably snorting with laughter over me saying that. But, I would as someone who also who who lives a lot on this platform, I would I would love to get get your take and, indeed, anyone else that wants to hop in here and offer your kind of you your thoughts, about so, Rishi, do you think that do the are the supervillains released? Do you feel that they or am I the only one that thinks that there's a chance that they're not?
Speaker 7:Yeah. I'm pretty
Speaker 8:I think there's a okay. I think there's a small chance that they won't be released, but I think it's pretty small.
Speaker 6:Do you
Speaker 1:think that they release, like, 1 or 2 of the supervillains to see if they can, like, get get past their days of test test villainy to see if they can be better behaved and then, of course, then
Speaker 3:I mean, the most contentious one's gonna be Trump. Right? So that's probably the one that they, like, delay the longest. But, like, at the end of the day, I think, like, part of it is also, like, from the product standpoint and, like, the TikTok and all these other companies are gonna have, like, better engagement numbers. And one of the ways that Google I mean, YouTube can I mean, Twitter, Jesus Christ, can get, better engagement is just having these very chaotic figures on the on the side?
Speaker 1:Oh, god. Yeah. I mean, it's sad, but true.
Speaker 3:Just, like, release release each
Speaker 4:release each kraken and then see if the money graph goes up, I guess.
Speaker 1:So Maybe you do, like, a time release of each super villain. Like, at noon on every day, I'm gonna release one new super villain and really, you know, really stretch it out. Or versus, like, just, like, just jailbreak. Everyone is
Speaker 3:I mean, I like Josh's idea of just, like, the one and then see if the user graph or money graph could Yeah. Break. Like, it's Like It seems like the practical thing to do because that's basically where the incentives are. Right? It's like, how do we raise user growth and how do we like, that's always been Twitter's problem is they kind of ensagment on user growth.
Speaker 3:And then, like, how do we, like, raise a
Speaker 1:But you cannot release all the
Speaker 4:Picture picture like a hot pic picture like a hot air balloon, right, that's going down, and you don't want it you want it to stop going down so you cut, like, a sandbag and see if it stops descending. I feel like it's gonna be Yeah.
Speaker 1:The problem is that we are below the balloon, and the sandbag lands on us, Josh, in this in this metaphor. Well But so I mean, I I mean, I think that, like and obviously, there there are shades of villainy among the supervillains. And, I mean, if, like, I in Alex Jones, you put I mean, Alex Jones has been off of Twitter since 2015. I mean, Rishi, I don't know how old you are, but it's like the I mean, it's I I I'm not even sure how, like, I he's been been off for a very, very, very long time. And, I mean and Alex Jones is is is someone who's not gonna be able to to mind their tongue and is gonna be really toxic to the platform.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But he's a little bit like $600,000,000,000,000 in the hole now. Right? Like, I don't think he has, with the settlement. The tweet.
Speaker 1:I did I Many of
Speaker 8:the people who are the supervillains are off on, like, Gab and and other, like, Fediverse spin offs, and we know what they're tweeting. And you don't want them back here.
Speaker 1:We don't and so honestly and I you know, I've I've spoke about this publicly in past, but Gab gallingly, was a joint customer when we were back at joint. And, it like, the just to, like, the kind of the the the the the seriousness of going completely unmoderated. The the the the Squirrel Hill Synagogue shooting was ginned up a 100% on GAP. And if that shit starts to happen on Twitter and you've got school shooters that are getting ginned up on Twitter, that is gonna affect I mean, I'm sorry, Mr. Peanut is gonna pull.
Speaker 1:I I I think you're gonna have advertisers that are like, this is just too repugnant, and you're gonna have to get better. I mean, I gotta believe, man, I gotta have my baby. Maybe not. I just had 2 new speakers if you wanna hop in here. The, Ignoletus.
Speaker 1:I'm mispronouncing that. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Ignatius.
Speaker 1:I was close.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So, from from my perspective, I I'm staying on Twitter reluctantly because there's, like, 20 people who I follow, or so that I like, but they are not on Fediverse, and so I have to follow them on Twitter. But, basically
Speaker 1:Who are some of those folks out of curiosity? Because if those folks were to move, it would follow that you would also move. So who are some of those folks that you follow and that that keep you on the platform?
Speaker 6:Well, you, for 1, Jeez. Swift on Security, for example, some other
Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 6:Some some bigger folks that basically just stay on Twitter. But if they move to Fediverse, I I wouldn't I would just, remove my Twitter account in in a
Speaker 1:day. Interesting.
Speaker 4:And it it's a
Speaker 6:bit interesting. I'm I'm from Lithuania, and Twitter never got big here. Somehow we met
Speaker 1:So what is big in Lithuania?
Speaker 6:I don't know anyone else who has a Twitter account.
Speaker 1:It it but what takes its place?
Speaker 6:Facebook. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 6:Facebook has the 90% market penetration.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's interesting. And that's true. I mean, there are there are quite a few countries for for which that's the case. I mean, famously, Myanmar.
Speaker 1:Right? That's the, the the part of the reason that they was was used as a vehicle for genocide in Myanmar. Myanmar. Interesting. So for so Twitter, less of an issue.
Speaker 1:So you're obviously less wedded to it as a result, because it's not something that your friends are on necessarily. It's something that you're following because you've got this group, which I'm honored to be 1, but nearly but 1, you've got this group that is active on Twitter.
Speaker 3:I think related to that, I think that's a lot, like, how a lot of people use Twitter. Right? Like, I think Twitter lists, for instance, is, like, the best way to use Twitter where you, like like, I use it for sports and tech and, like, a few other things. And, like like, frankly, like, when Trump was very active on Twitter, it was, like, you blocked that and a lot of keywords, and it would clean up a lot of your Twitter experience. And and, honestly, I wish, like and maybe, like, from, like, an engineering standpoint.
Speaker 3:Maybe they'll build better tools to, like, block more of that crap. So, like, you're just getting the content that you
Speaker 1:really So okay. That's a very good point. And to go back to your bowl case. I I think that I what I personally would love is I would love something that is not blocking or muting, which to me is too it it's too extreme, but a way of indicating, like, I don't like this. Like, just just show me less of this stuff.
Speaker 1:And even if I seek
Speaker 4:it out it's like
Speaker 1:even if I if I seem to you that I want this, I actually don't, and I would love a way to just, like, just downvote it. And I actually do love the fact they added downvotes to replies, and that was really nice to be able to say, like, hey. This, like, this reply is actually not adding anything in the conversation. Oh, do you think those go away, by the way? Any predictions around down votes?
Speaker 1:Do those go away?
Speaker 3:I think down votes maybe stay. I think, like, maybe they copy what YouTube does with YouTube comments where the the the down vote, number isn't there, I think, or something like that. I I don't know. I I don't I don't remember. Now I'm, like, misremembering that.
Speaker 3:But, like, I I still think down votes stay. I think they maybe play around with how it works.
Speaker 7:Does does everybody have those yet?
Speaker 4:I feel like I haven't seen those.
Speaker 1:Oh, they don't
Speaker 6:if I recall correctly
Speaker 3:I've seen them. I don't know.
Speaker 1:It it will be in,
Speaker 6:If I recall correctly, on YouTube, downloads don't influence the show number, but influence the ordering.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think that Dee and Josh, it may I don't think I only see it on replies to my own tweets. So look at a reply to one of your one of your tweets, and you see if you can see a down arrow there.
Speaker 1:It may not be rolled out to everybody. I don't that's, you know, part of the problem with Twitter. So, Rishi, let me ask you if it is there a I mean, it sounds like you identify as Gen z. Is that a fair don't not tell me to put you on the spot.
Speaker 4:I guess. I'm I'm 20
Speaker 1:Yeah. You're Gen z.
Speaker 4:No. Yeah. You're definitely Gen z.
Speaker 1:You're definitely Gen z.
Speaker 5:Yeah. You are.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's so let me just
Speaker 3:I have older siblings and older cousins, so I can, like, relate to some of the Well,
Speaker 1:the the the you're perfect. You're an ambassador. This is exactly what we're looking for. Is be yeah. If you if you don't remember where you were on 911 you don't if you don't remember 911, you're Gen z.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 4:Then then we then and we expect you to speak
Speaker 1:exposed person for all your generation, not to put you on the spot. But is there someone because I think another thing that would be kind of interesting here for the bull case is where Alon stalls someone who is much younger and who can that someone that Gen Zers will look to is like, like, oh, like, I I guess my kids be like, I don't know, like, mister Beast? I'm like, I'm trying to think, like, who would be this kind of, would there be someone that would like what is the Sheryl Sandberg, the kind of the Gen z Sheryl Sandberg equivalent that would really get people's attention? It's like, oh, this is an interesting person joining the leadership team at Twitter. Is there anyone like that?
Speaker 6:So I
Speaker 3:think, like actually, mister Beast is actually an interesting idea. I think that, actually, like, really, it's someone who's probably run an online community before. Right? So, like, someone who's run, like, a pretty big Discord or, like, runs, like, a big channel or something like that. Because, like, to a certain extent, like, people, like, like, the extreme libertarian, anarcho cases, like, oh, like, free speech everywhere, do whatever you want.
Speaker 3:But, like, to a certain extent, like, if you're running a platform like this, you do need a little bit of content moderation to, like, make sure users are having a good time on it because there's just ugly content. And so, like, if you look at, like, the way kind of people have built up, like, Discord moderations or subreddits and stuff like that, like, people who've, like, operated those in the same way where you're not, like, going super hard, like, on content moderation, but you're, like, keeping it in a way that, like, most of the community is happy. Like, I think that, like, those those types of people would be, like, good hires. I don't I can't come up with a specific person off the top of my head, but, like, I think that like, that's an area where, like, I'd like to see, like, some younger people who maybe spent time on more online communities outside of the traditional ones that we Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's just fine.
Speaker 4:And
Speaker 3:that would be a good
Speaker 1:And are there some big Discord communities that are kind of, like, notable that would, I mean, other than, like, my kids setting up their own Discords, which, like, doesn't make sense. But the I I mean, what are some of the are are there ones that are kind of of note that would turn people's heads?
Speaker 3:I think the, like, crypto ones are
Speaker 1:actually, like Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, they're they're they're they're pretty well run. There's, like, a lot of good ones there. I think. Like, I mean, some of the, like, programming language related ones, I think Rust the Rust language Discord server does a pretty good job.
Speaker 8:Yes. It does.
Speaker 3:I I think, like, there's a few, like, Common AI, the Yeah. Yeah. They do actually a really good job on their their, their Discord server.
Speaker 1:Okay. George Hotz as a Twitter hire. Now COO of Twitter.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you'd ever
Speaker 8:do it.
Speaker 4:Like, I don't
Speaker 8:I I'd be okay with that.
Speaker 3:I'm a big fan of George Hot. I think Kameh has pretty sick products and, like, he's a smart guy and comes up with crazy ideas and they tend to work. I I doubt he would wanna do Twitter, but that would be pretty
Speaker 1:That would be interesting. I I think that would be that would be one that would definitely, I I think, get a lot of people be like, alright. Wait a minute. Maybe I don't know what to think of that. Like, that's actually fast.
Speaker 1:I I would be personally very fascinated by that. I think he's in
Speaker 3:well, I think the thing that excites me about Elon is, like, different's gonna happen over there and, like, it's just, like, it just bring it just, like, stirs the pot in an interesting way for, like, a platform that's fun to use, but to be frank has gotten pretty stale. Like, other than Twitter space is coming out, it's like it's like not like, some of the other things in the app just haven't been great.
Speaker 1:Totally agree. So okay. So in your heart, have you been kind of rooting for this because of the change that it would bring?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think I think it was, like, I think it was when I first heard about it. I was, like, oh, yeah. It'll be interesting. It'll be cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I think, like, in my heart, I'm just, like, yeah. This is, like, let's let's see this happen. Right? As opposed to the status quo is, like, whatever.
Speaker 3:Not the most interesting, I guess.
Speaker 1:So truly on brand Twitter Spaces is doing a terrible job when speakers are requesting, and I'm having to, like, I'm so I'm so sorry if I missed you. So, Craig, I I don't know how long you were hanging out there, but, I've just added you as a speaker. So if you're gonna add your thoughts to
Speaker 9:the mix here. Yeah. It's just a couple of seconds. I actually think that we'll see Twitter being run very differently from most social networks. And I think the first thing that will happen is very aggressive focus on, money, like operating margin.
Speaker 9:How do we we turn this into a successful business? And I think you'll probably pretty quickly realize that there's no way to do that with user acquisition. You're not gonna get a 100% growth without, like, marginal cost increases. So it'll be, how do we cut costs? How do we make advertising way more effective?
Speaker 9:I think a lot of that will be driven around the experience for users on the platform. So I'm actually kind of optimistic that the quality of experience in Twitter gets a lot better in the short term.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That is interesting. I that is really interesting that the, because I I I mean, I think you're right that they gotta be they're gonna have to be very and you think they're gonna need to be focused on this, obviously, to service this kind of massive amount of debt. Like, they can't just run this as a a charity to humanity, whom I love. You're gonna have to actually, like, really run it as a pretty pretty numbers focused business.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's, that's definitely interesting. So are you and so where do you net out then on release of supervillains? Are supervillains released or not?
Speaker 9:I think they're not. And I think all of the things that are like typical metrics, that people just have their vanity metrics over like number of screen minutes, number of visitors, all those kinds of things. I think people care way less about that and it'll be more around about quality of experience. Okay. That that's what I'm hopeful for.
Speaker 4:This is a
Speaker 1:good this is a great bulk case. Richie, you thought you were giving the bulk case. This is giving me, like, real hope that this we're gonna have a quality experience now. This is gonna be great. And I also feel like, Craig, thank you for being I someone else who believes supervillains are not gonna be released.
Speaker 1:I I really hope that we're hope that we're right. We can have we can have a Twitter space over drinks at some point when we're wrong to to commiserate. But I think it's that's okay. I mean, I I think that that's a all those are very good points. They're gonna be very focused on kind of the experience and the bottom line.
Speaker 6:Do you
Speaker 3:guys think the YouTube pro or, like, the I mean, the Twitter Twitter pro type of thing that, like, paying for pieces of it will come in. I don't know. Okay. Isn't that already Twitter Blue. Blue?
Speaker 3:Which Twitter blue Terrible. Like, I don't know. Not a lot of people use it. Yeah. It's like I'm not entirely sure what you get out of it right now, but, like, do you think, like, that that's something they'll, like, work on, I guess.
Speaker 1:I think that gets flushed. I I don't think that that I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 7:Maybe you
Speaker 4:just, like, this is where you get I I do I do think I do think celebrities and brands will be offered a, like, sort of, like, standstill so I can measure your wallet sort of tiering system for special flair and access to things that that even more so than they have already. Like
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:Like blue like blue blue check marks, plus plus plus. Like, there'll be there'll be things that that they demand money on a regular basis like a subscription to in in order for, like, big brands to continue to doing what they're already doing in order to try and drum up revenue.
Speaker 6:So so
Speaker 1:this is interesting, Josh, because, like, I mean, the one thing about Alon that is actually interesting is that he is one of these mega celebrities celebrities on Twitter, which, no one else at Twitter really is. And so he does actually have empathy for that. You understands that user pretty well. And it would be interesting. It's like, no.
Speaker 1:No. We are gonna actually focus on the 1,000,000 plus followers. If you have a 1,000,000 followers or more, we are gonna generate this, like, private flying experience. That's amazing experience for you, but you're gonna pay a lot of money
Speaker 6:for it.
Speaker 4:Well, I I think I think in some of his public comments, he has alluded to, like, being effectively flabbergasted that they haven't somehow used it to fleece rich people
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 4:Basically. Like But
Speaker 1:the the problem is that there's not a lot of them. I mean, it's like you actually are much better off getting a buck out of a 1000000 people than you are getting a $100,000 out of 1,000,000 follower person.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But but but are you even getting a dollar?
Speaker 1:Well, that's the thing. I don't I
Speaker 4:can't imagine.
Speaker 1:I mean, I would never buy Twitter blue. There's no fucking way. And the okay. So you mentioned the blue check marks. Another kind of, question would be do blue how are blue check marks changed?
Speaker 1:I I could see, like, blue check marks. I it would and and maybe I'm being ridiculously bullish here, but it would not surprise me if it's like, hey. We're gonna actually return blue check marks to what it's supposed to be. Namely, we have verified that you are who you say you are, and, you know, here's the process for getting your driver's license in, and anybody can get a check mark.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's totally possible that there'll be, like, an onerous and probably on many levels problematic and disrespectful program for, like,
Speaker 3:the like like the do
Speaker 4:you remember the real names thing Yeah. At, like, every other social network? So there'll be something like that, because because he's banged on so much about the bots as well. Yeah. Like, well, like, what would you know, I was like, obviously.
Speaker 4:Right. You know, I am I am a smart man who has spent $44,000,000,000, and I will, just fix that problem straight away. Like, you've gotta, you know, you gotta tell me who you are before you tweet shitty things at me. Like
Speaker 3:Well, so
Speaker 1:do you think And the one
Speaker 3:thing that sucks is, like, the non accounts on Twitter or some of the I've there's some of the most interesting people I've ever talked to. Totally. Yeah. Like, do you lose that? Totally.
Speaker 3:Well, but I don't think
Speaker 4:I don't imagine he experiences that at all. No.
Speaker 7:No. Most likely not. Like, I don't imagine that
Speaker 4:he gets any value out of someone that that's like an anonymous person with 300 followers that that says really insightful things. Because I I don't see that he would hear them above the noise of all the other stuff that's going on. Like, I mean, so many people must tweet things at him that it is effectively impossible to read all the tweets.
Speaker 1:Yes. And that he understands on the one hand this kind of one use case of the massive celebrity use case, but does not understand a use case that's important to a bunch of us, which is where we're actually seeing, like, thoughtful, interesting stuff on Twitter, like, for spaces. Cargo Occultist, do you I I'd I'd use a speaker. What what are your thoughts on all this?
Speaker 6:Well, I
Speaker 10:was just looking at some of the reporting around, Tesla engineers showing up at the, you know, the current offices. And, so I've I've lived through I've lived through mergers, but I've never lived through a merger, you know, like this. Yeah. The singular personality driving the entire mess. And I'm curious to hear from other folks.
Speaker 10:You know, 1, if if anyone has any any insight into this process. Like, what is probably going on here? Is it just a pressure play? You know? Is it a bully tactic?
Speaker 10:Obviously, you're not going to drop someone into a, you know, complex operation and just have them productive on day 1. Are they is he just trying to build an on ramp so he can build, you know, bring in a new team? What what's going on?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I can tell you, I mean, it's certainly what every Twitter employee is trying to ask themselves that same question. And they are I mean, the the closest that I've had to this is there was certainly when Oracle bought Sun, and you did have one single personality. And that you you there definitely was this kind of jockeying for I I can, I can guarantee you there are people that are jockeying to be laid off, maybe a lot of people, who are like, actually, I would, you know, I've seen this movie before, and I wanna volunteer now to be part of a large production in force knowing that I'll get I'll get the biggest possible package if I go now? So I I'm sure there are people that are jockeying in that regard.
Speaker 1:From an executive perspective
Speaker 2:People who
Speaker 4:are not gonna not gonna quit, they're gonna wait to be pushed as soon as human I
Speaker 1:or or they're just gonna be, like, actually, the time the the veterans I mean, the one thing I definitely noticed with the with the the Oracle acquisition of Sun is the people that had been at Sun who had who were kind of furthest in their careers. Like, I've seen this movie before, and, no. You can please lay me off now. So I I I think that, the you will have people that are for sure being jockeyed to be laid off. Executives are absolutely jockeying to figure out who's here, who's not here.
Speaker 1:You I mean, you want this period to be as quick as possible where no one knows anything. I mean, not you. Why am I superimposing any kind of brat? I mean, I don't know. But in the abstract, you when there is so much indecision, you you wanna get through that as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1:And if you got I mean, it is and he is showing that he's doing that. He's like, look. Prag is not gonna be a CEO, getting rid of the CFO. I'm getting I'm I'm getting rid of of the woman who ran safety, which is a little I mean, that's I've got more questions about that. I think you're gonna have a couple of folks in the next couple of days that were gonna be big.
Speaker 1:I mean, one question I definitely have is Jay Sullivan, whether Jay Sullivan stays or goes. And but you're gonna get folks you it is important that you not grip the entire organization with fear. So you are gonna wanna start communicating things, I would imagine, pretty quickly. So I think we're gonna know a lot more in the next couple days. You're gonna wanna move pretty decisively, I would say, but that's one from my experience.
Speaker 1:I'd love to get other folks, perception on that as well. But I I do think that you want in those first couple of days, you want to win hearts and minds in those first couple of days, where because there are people that you absolutely want to keep, and he and even Elon knows that, for sure. And he's gonna wanna allocate those people as quickly as he can and understand from them what needs to be done. Because I can also guarantee you that there are I'm sure there are people for whom this is, like, unequivocally bad. There are plenty of people, just like Rishi and and Craig and and me and and Nick to a degree, where we're talking about the kind of the bull case.
Speaker 1:There are people for sure inside of Twitter who are like, I don't want the supervillains to be released. But there are these other, like, you know, list of 30 things that are pretty broken and are actually, like, pretty easy to fix. So that would be my I mean, that's kind of the things to watch for. I don't know.
Speaker 4:This is increasingly sounding like a metaphor for colonialism.
Speaker 1:No. Everything's a metaphor for colonialism. No. No. I think
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 1:I well, no. I just think that the that you well, so I mean, when I have had leadership changes, people are super unsettled. And if anyone is at Twitter, you know folks at Twitter, their obviously anxiety levels are through the roof. And you if you are not a sociopath, you wanna get ahead of that and get control of it. Right now, he seems to be wanting to deliberately generate panic because he's decapitated the leadership, and he hasn't even called in all hands.
Speaker 1:People are learning about it on, like, on
Speaker 4:In The Washington Post.
Speaker 3:In
Speaker 1:The Washington Post.
Speaker 10:On Twitter.
Speaker 1:On Twitter. On the on a news outlet that someone mentioned, they didn't even recognize, like, Popfresh or something like that. What the hell is that? The, but, yeah, the they are they're not learning about it in any kind of structured capacity. And I don't know.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe that is deliberate. Maybe that that is a a deliberate kind of, terrorism tactic.
Speaker 4:Again, a lot of his, like, public remarks have really, really, like, displayed a lot of contempt for basically everybody that works there. Like
Speaker 1:Oh, man.
Speaker 3:No. And and, like, I mean, like so, like,
Speaker 2:like, do you remember when he retweeted the guy that that famously
Speaker 3:was talking about, like, all the, like, he would acquire companies
Speaker 4:and then sack 14 floors of people 1st day and and, like, just a lot of
Speaker 1:No. I wasn't o manning that. You know? I was o manning that I'd I'd been DM ed from someone who says that Donald Trump is claiming that he's been told that his account will be back on Monday. So Well, I mean, I mean, I believe that you see it.
Speaker 4:Archive this recording with the predictions on some other platform.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Well, I definitely like I mean, I I and I will download the recording to make sure we've got it for posterity's sake because I did wanna There you go. That is why I wanted to record it so we can all look back on this and and weep maybe. I'm not sure what we're,
Speaker 4:As the as the fire burns on the horizon.
Speaker 1:As the fire burns on the horizon, we can at least say or will we be playing this on on the the the new platform that replaces Twitter? Aaron, I've, decided to use speaker. What what are your thoughts?
Speaker 7:Yes. So first, I'm somewhat biased in coming from this because I left Twitter around the time Alon started trying to buy it to go work on Blue Sky project. So that. But the main thing I noticed when I was at Twitter for years is Twitter was a culture where most people at Twitter thought Twitter was not good. And they were like, this platform can be much better, and we are doing a lot to fight spam.
Speaker 7:It's not enough. We are doing a lot to make sure that the timeline is a healthy conversation. We're not doing enough. It was very much this culture of we can do better, therefore we must do better. And particularly Vidya, who was chief legal officer and running trust and safety and stuff, every new feature went through this of, okay.
Speaker 7:How would someone use this feature to get a genocide? What can we do to make sure this feature doesn't cause a genocide? Genocide is bad.
Speaker 1:And Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 7:When you change from this, hey, we are a company that is trying to serve the public conversation, and we are doing amazing amounts of good and amazing amounts of harm. How do we reduce the harm without destroying the good that we are doing? And you turn that from, hey, let's make money so we can serve the public conversation to let's serve the public conversation so we can make money, you are going to radically change the culture. And I suspect we are gonna see particularly new leadership from the top driving a, hey, aren't we all awesome and aren't we all just the smartest people in the room instead of the, we're really not the smartest people in the room and we need to have content reviewers from a 105 different countries to tell us what is dangerous in those countries. Because to a white male tech pro who went to Stanford sitting in San Francisco, you may not
Speaker 1:really be aware of
Speaker 6:who the Russians
Speaker 7:are likely to cause a genocide on the border between India and Pakistan.
Speaker 1:What? Yeah. Interesting. And so, Aaron, what years do
Speaker 2:you really
Speaker 7:need to have humility. And I feel like, particularly, Jack and Vidya pushed humility down from the top. I was very surprised when I got to Twitter, and I was like, oh my god. This is the healthiest work culture I've ever been a part of. That was not my assumption based on the platform because I know none of you have noticed this, but there's a tad bit of toxicity on the Twitter
Speaker 1:platform. It's Aaron, what years were you at Twitter?
Speaker 7:I was there. I left in April 1st, which, by the way, never leave on April 1st because when you send out that email, it's like, hey, guys. I'm leaving on this date. You'll be like, but but are you?
Speaker 1:Let me let me 1 up you. Never shut down on April 1st. Nebula, if you remember them, OpenStack based computer company, shut down on April 1st and had their, like and I remember being in the in the office of of the my CEO at the time being like, is this the sickest April fools joke ever? Or did they actually yeah. So that just the sorry.
Speaker 1:So you you left very recently. You know a ton of people still there, I would assume.
Speaker 7:I mean, I knew a lot more people there in April than I do now.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. So so what you know, just to get we we got the question earlier. Like, what do we think is go what do you think is going on on the on the inside? And, I mean, if you sumo folks there or not, I mean, what of what you know about the organization, what do you think is going on inside there right now?
Speaker 7:From what I've seen, I would say that there's sort of a longer story there of Twitter was growing and adding a lot of new features and then GDPR hit. And it was like, oh my goodness. None of our infrastructure has been designed so we can delete things. How do we solve the problem of deleting things? And then we got years of stagnation at Twitter because essentially all of the effort went to, how do we make these infrastructures that we've been building for decades under the assumption of never losing data, lose data?
Speaker 7:And we were just pulling out of that, of like, okay, now we can launch spaces and fleets and try a whole bunch of new things against the wall because we actually have engineers who are doing something other than trying to dig out of a giant army of bots that are crushing the platform. And a lot of people don't have to be like, hey, Twitter woke up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:And I think that there's gonna be a lot of credit for people who are like, wow. Look how fast they're moving now that Elon took over. And you're, like, well, yes. But I think that change actually happened before Elon took over. I expect the big changes that you're going to see is that sort of, hey, we have this giant spigot here that says behave better on one side and make more money on the other side.
Speaker 7:Let's crank that dial a few notches.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 7:And you get the weird cross effects of Twitter and other companies. So I've known people who say the real threat when you give money to campaigns. It's not that you get a lot of influence over politicians by giving money to their campaigns. You get a lot of influence over politicians by having a large pile of money that you are willing to give to their opponent if you need to. To some extent Yeah.
Speaker 7:There is the, oh, what if terrible people get put back on the platform? Well, Trump had a lot of influence and then he got kicked off Twitter. And while he still has a lot of influence, he has a lot less influence over the party. He can't drive Fox News' day when he doesn't have a Twitter account in the way that he did before. If you go to a bunch of senators and say, hey.
Speaker 7:I know you would like to negotiate your contracts with SpaceX so that you don't pay exorbitant amounts of money and SpaceX doesn't make crazy profits this year. But you totally need Twitter because that's the only way you can drive the news cycle around your campaign, and you can't control the media without Twitter. It'd be a real shame if suddenly your tweets were not being shown to people at high rates. Like
Speaker 1:So okay. So you think that they they're going to go full extortion and No.
Speaker 7:The not. They're going to walk in there and say, I am making this negotiation, and I would never do anything to deliberately harm your party with the platform that I have that is absolutely key to you driving the news cycle. It needs to remain neutral, and you and I both agree how neutral everything needs to be. Right?
Speaker 1:So what what's your take on the supervillains? Were the supervillains released or not?
Speaker 7:I mean By the way,
Speaker 1:the person that the person that DM ed me about Trump said that, like, actually, that may have been a hoax. I'm not sure. So, like, take take all that with a grain of salt. Yeah.
Speaker 7:I think it becomes a revolving door. You need to have that credible threat of I am willing to take people down for what seems like no real policy, and I'm gonna put people back up for what seems like no real policy. Like, if you wanna credibly be perceived as the crazy man who might do anything, then it
Speaker 6:then you
Speaker 4:need a little bit
Speaker 3:of random.
Speaker 7:But you can't go full on free speech wing of the free speech party because then you no longer have influence.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Okay. So you think that, like so the and I I'm gonna watch
Speaker 7:I think he can make back his money just in the ways that people don't negotiate with SpaceX.
Speaker 1:Okay. So you so then you think that he well, so he released some fraction of supervillains and then and then, rebanish them in an attempt to, like, prove to all of us like, look, all supervillains. I am your I'm your arch villain.
Speaker 7:Yeah. It's the classic, why did you put this person back on? Well, Kim Kardashian asked me to, so I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting. And so do you so do you think that they're gonna be, by and large, put back on the platform?
Speaker 7:No idea.
Speaker 1:You can't answer no idea. You have to answer no.
Speaker 4:In essence, though, that this becomes a Murdoch like situation where he uses it not to make money, but to screw up other things.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Maybe. I mean, that would make
Speaker 1:you money. Oh, what? That that would make you money. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Wielding it as as influence, would be Yeah. Would would be interesting. That would definitely be interesting.
Speaker 7:I mean, I think I've had a lot of his career, and it's like, well, he made a lot of money doing credit cards on the Internet, which other people didn't get into because the regulations were murky. But he figured he was good at getting the government to not come after him and made a lot of money at Tesla with cars that wouldn't have been financially viable except there was a bunch government subsidies that were written in such a way that they kind of only applied to the Tesla at the time and no other cars on the road. And then he had SpaceX where he made a lot of money by getting deals only from governments. Like, his entire career has been, I'm going to go into spaces where other people don't compete with me because they're afraid of laws.
Speaker 1:Sorry. We should go ahead. Yeah. I'd just say I
Speaker 3:mean, I mean, to be fair to the Tesla SpaceX example is, like, the actual technology you had to work to. Right? So it's not just
Speaker 1:that. It it did be gray area. It didn't Both of
Speaker 8:those companies worked in spite of him, not because of him.
Speaker 1:I agree with that. They did not work for a long, long time.
Speaker 3:That's like, that's a lot of people have talked about that. Like, it goes goes back and forth, but I'm I'm just saying that, like, you you like, you you can't completely discount that, like, you know, that they're not succeeding just because of some tax breaks that were given. Right? Like, the vehicle works, And it's a pretty nice experience when you get into a Tesla, for instance.
Speaker 1:Totally. Available. Well no. But I I I definitely hear you, but I think that it did take it took a long time to get there, and there were a lot of fits and starts. And, by by the company so much.
Speaker 1:And, ultimately, he ended up, you know, ended ended up, buying another Tesla, after but he he felt as an early customer very very deceived by Tesla. So, I mean, there's definitely a lot of shadiness, but you're also right that he ultimately it kind of tracked towards delivery. I just don't know how much that that's gonna hold up for for Twitter itself here. On, Cargo called us. We got you, we we had lost you, but for for a bit, but, you appeared to be back.
Speaker 1:Do you have other other thoughts?
Speaker 10:There's something I wanted to mention about SpaceX. For all the nightmares you hear about, like, the work issues inside there, one of the cool things that's coming out of it is the people who leave and their perception of what is possible and what isn't normal is completely different. Yeah. Exactly. The the the Yeah.
Speaker 10:It's a completely different culture. It's it's like, I think it it might be the best thing that Elon ever does for humanity. It's just that we're like, woah. You know, stop stop letting Boeing or whoever design all of your, you know, spacecraft. You know?
Speaker 10:But, it's I I mean, I I it's it's just it's totally just, like, upended the whole game board, which is exciting. Yeah. I don't wanna get too deep into Elon himself, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I agree with you. I mean, as as as someone who's a a hard tech startup, I appreciate other hard tech startups solving hard tech problems. And so, no, I I think you're right.
Speaker 1:And I in terms of what you're saying about folks that are come out of SpaceX and their idea of what's possible and the problems that are important, I think I I I definitely agree. I think there's a lot that's good there. The problem is I just don't know what are the kind of the hard tech equivalents inside of Twitter. I mean, I think it would be interesting to take a, you know I'd I obviously, the MLDL has been changing so much even, you know, the last 6 months, a year, 2 years. Can you go back to content moderation?
Speaker 1:Not like, you know, that that folks have really focused on that that domain content moderation, but maybe you can, you know, unleash the, unleash gbt 3 and its equivalent on actually, moderating content. I mean, the things you can go do there. I that that's my question. It's like, what are the hard tech problems that you can really get people excited about? Because the thing about SpaceX, and other people pointed this out too, it's like SpaceX, Tesla, they are they get you excited.
Speaker 1:What is going to be that about Twitter that's going to get people excited, especially if the the if the super villains are are released.
Speaker 3:Super villains interesting technical thing that they could do is the is the tools that you can give, like, the individual to basically control their feed better. I think right now we have, like, as primitive of tools as possible, which is, like, block, mute.
Speaker 6:And I
Speaker 3:think on ads, you can say, like, show less often, not interested, or whatever. Right? So, like, I think It
Speaker 8:would be so easy for them to just steal a couple of the tools that Mastodon, especially Mastodon and Forks have already.
Speaker 3:Well and I think another interesting thing that could potentially happen and, like, Elon tweeted about this, like, open networks and stuff like that. But, like, Brendan Eich had this pretty interesting idea back about, like, adding a feature to Brave, the the browser where, like, every single time you send a tweet or, like, are on any social media, it would just, like, repost it on, like, some federated network like Matt Macedon.
Speaker 6:Yes.
Speaker 3:Because, like, they added something like that to Twitter or, like, someone convinces Elon to do that, like, some engineer, like, that would be pretty interesting too where, like, now you could, like, the cell of the federated thing, right, is, like, Twitter becomes just one client on this network. And so, like, in the Twitter client, you know, the super
Speaker 6:villains are there, but there
Speaker 3:are, like, x other
Speaker 4:What are
Speaker 10:the incentives to not comment at all?
Speaker 3:It does motivate people to, like, get creative about how can I, like, transfer my Twitter network over into areas like, into a into, like, a user experience that I wanna have? Right?
Speaker 1:Totally. And I think this is where you get to, like I mean, one thing that would that we they could throw out there that would be interesting is, like, we are gonna make the API is gonna be a first class citizen. Everything we do at Twitter is gonna be API first. And, like, that I mean, that that's something that would get me excited as a technologist.
Speaker 3:I I just don't
Speaker 4:know how you make any money out of it.
Speaker 1:Well, you make money out of it by but, I mean, you are I mean, it's kind of it's indirect. It's, like, you know, how do you make money by putting rocket by getting people excited about rockets in the space? It's, like, you solve the problem that those people will solve. And I think that you get you get some some north star out there that gets technologists excited, that gets George Hotz excited. I'm kind of intrigued by but get get gets Sheryl Sandberg excited.
Speaker 1:Sheryl Sandberg excited by API access. But something that's gonna get someone excited that can really draw in people to take a big swing. I mean, that would be that would be interesting, I think. But it's it's I just think it's a little more of a struggle than it is with space and cars and computers, honestly. Like, we've got a great luxury oxide where it's like it's very it it it's a hard problem that people can get really excited about because it's right in front of them versus like a filthy hard problem, it's hard to get excited about.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 9:I think the the AI part is probably the place that people get most excited about and it's probably where I
Speaker 6:think a lot of the focus will be. Yeah. But, like,
Speaker 9:the the getting rid of boxes, just cleaning a big dataset, right, that you can then use because it's conversational. So you could do conversational AI and not be the driving force of Twerve.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's kind of interesting, actually. And may yeah. Maybe they can I I hope they can find something like that, honestly, because I I think we will be better serve well, we we we need to be we're gonna be well served by, frankly, an extreme in one direction or another? Like, we either need Twitter to get good or we need to get Twitter to get very bad very quickly.
Speaker 1:Because something will replace it if if Twitter becomes unusable. I mean that I've got total confidence in. I know I I know Charity disagreeing you on your company formation because and she was being much more realistic than I'm being. But, I would like to believe that your company formation or maybe that you have a, and no, we will not be, Michael Decker just just suggested oxide.chat. No, you're not oxide is not divinate, no, thank you.
Speaker 1:It's a gritty hard problem, but it would be it would be interesting. I will I, I I think, this has been great. Thank you very much, everyone, for for jumping in and being willing to to discuss the future of a platform that I I dare say is important to to a bunch of us. I am, I I I'm gonna go with the bullish case for now. So, Rishi and Craig, I, let let's hope the supervillains are not released, and we get a quality experience.
Speaker 1:But thank you very much, everyone. Really appreciate you joining us. And let's let's hope well, let's stay tuned. We'll be able to see what happens. Thanks, everyone.
Speaker 1:Take care. Good night.