Hey, everybody, welcome back to the. Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss. The critical crossroads? That shape? SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. And I'm your host Will Walden. One more thing before we start Google Podcasts is being discontinued by Google. So if you want to continue getting episodes of the Elon Musk podcast, please check us out over at YouTube Music.
Search us out over there and that's where you'll be able to find our podcast through Google Roducts. Thank you so much for understanding. I had no control over this. Google ulled the Google Podcast A off of Android and I want to let you know where to continue finding the show. Over at YouTube Music Search for Elon Musk podcast. Thank you so much. Elon Musk's X, which is formerly Twitter as we all know, is kind of reverting right now to its foundational elements.
According to observations from insiders at Twitter. A project manager from Twitter shows that the efforts to transform X into a significantly different platform have not really materialized yet. It was a Gaber Excel, and it looks like they're sticking with the fundamentals for now. Now, remember when Twitter was just Twitter?
It was just a social media app. You posted it on your wall, posted some photos, posted some news with some hashtags, maybe a video, maybe a vertical video if you're feeling saucy. And then other people commented on it, shared it, liked it, things like that. And it seems like this is still the case. It's mainly used as a social media site where you share news, photos, videos. And it also seems like X is playing catch up to a lot of other social media apps, mainly Facebook.
Facebook has all the things that Twitter X wants to become except for, except for the banking aspect of it. They do have like a Facebook feature where you can send money back and forth and tip, but they don't have like a bank you can't have. It's not a true sense of the says the word bank, which Elon Musk's want. Elon Musk wants to integrate into Twitter X, so that's where Elon is right now. They're kind of stuck in this holding pattern, catching up with everybody else 1st and then
possibly passing them. But one of the other things that they they missed out on is the blue verification checkmarks. Some people that were very relevant and you know, controversial figures or famous people or people with status had blue verification checkmarks just by default because they were influential and people with substantial verified following were very prominent on the platform. So Elon Musk recently reattached high profile users to their
checkmarks. This comes after considerable staff reductions as well, including trust and safety team back in 2022. So back then they took away checkmarks. They took away the trust and safety team. They got rid of everybody. They fired hundreds of people from Twitter. Total reorg of the place. Now to enforce or to enhance. Sorry, Platform Safety X is now reportedly establishing a new Content Moderation center in Texas. It has appointed 2 senior executives to lead moderation
efforts. Now it looks like possibly X is going to move operations to Texas. This is a shift towards advertiser confidence restoration, which waned a lot after the rise in hate speech on X slash Twitter after Elon took over. Now there's a thing called metaphors. David Camp is part of this, and he sees that these developments as efforts to win back advertisers who departed due to the platform's content management issues.
And Musk's initial disregard for conventional business practices aimed at AD revenue stability is seen as contributing to the platform's challenges. Right now, a lot of the advertisers left. I think it was 70. Some odd percent of the high profile advertisers just shut down their accounts, left town, and didn't advertise on X once
Elon took over. Now, despite these changes, Musk's erratic communications and controversial statements have continued to impact XS reputation as a reliable advertising partner, according to Camp. Two, it complicates efforts to stabilize the platform's revenue streams. And if somebody's head of a company and they're making controversial statements, it's difficult for advertisers to get behind that platform because they never know what the CEO is going to say.
Musk has a wild management style, and public statements have been contentious, and they're often undermining efforts to rehabilitate the platform's image right now. And this has led to a persistent loss of ad revenue, millions and millions and millions of dollars, and challenges in attracting and also retaining the advertisers that they have now, the user base. Some are very loyal oil, but reports indicate a significant decline in X's global user base
since Musk took over. Musk himself has acknowledged A substantial drop in advertising revenue under his leadership as well stated that on numerous occasions. And the effectiveness of reinstating traditional verification methods and enhancing content moderation as strategies to regain advertiser trust remains uncertain. We don't know what's going to happen. Elon doesn't know what's going to happen, but maybe there's been meetings behind closed doors of what the advertisers
want. Yakarino may have been talking to advertisers, I'm sure she has, about what the advertisers want and how they want to protect themselves from Elon and his rebel ways. Now the platform's reliance on user habituation rather than new feature implementations points to challenges in innovation and user engagement. I mean, what have we really gotten so far since Elon took over, We had to pay for check marks.
And you? We have Grok of course, but there's other AI chat bots out there that's already been already been done. Abd if you will. We had higher bitrate video, 4K video, streaming video, which they were working on before. Facebook already has it, YouTube already has it all their social media networks already have this and they already have everything.
So there's not much more than Elon has added to this in the time that he's had Twitter. It's been a few years now and he was boasting of an everything app, banking book, an Uber, all the things that you could do, order a pizza, whatever, whatever it is. He wanted this to be the everything app, but it seems like things have just caught up to regular social media sites. Actually, they haven't even
caught up yet. Elon integrated monetization with Twitter with X when you live stream or when you post videos was so that was a that was a pretty decent deal. Hasn't really attracted many high profile users to the platform for that yet. But you know, you never know what's going to happen in the next six months with this platform. So we've done some tests on on the platform and we do get some interactions on X with our videos, but nothing like nothing like on our YouTube channel.
You can check out our YouTube channel at Space News Pod and also at the Elon Musk Podcast. Now, these comparisons aren't just between social media sites here. That's around Musk and his other ventures too, like the cyber
truck. Criticisms of the cyber truck's design and functionality mirror concern concerns about Musk's leadership and its impact on X2. There are a lot of things wrong with the cyber truck when it launched, a lot of things that were promised, never delivered, sort of like full self driving promised, never delivered. It's not fully complete. It's still at a a very, it's in a broad test stages.
But when Elon said something like, yeah, we'll have full self driving in two years, that was 10 years ago. So yeah, things that Elon says, he's very optimistic about those things. And there are financial pressures right now on X as well. You know, problematic launches. Tesla stock is actually going down because of the things that Elon says.
Right now, challenges are exacerbated by Musk's personal brand, which is increasingly seen as detrimental to business interests on X and at Tesla. And Musk's approach to platform management, particularly his handling of verification changes and content moderation, has sparked controversy among the users. Some high profile individuals have publicly disavowed unsolicited verification badges, emphasizing his disagreement with Musk's policies.
Now, the issue of unsolicited verification badges. If you don't ask for one, if you don't buy one and you get one, what? How do you How do you get that? It's up in the air. Nobody really knows. But it's raised questions about Musk's intentions and the criteria for receiving a blue check mark. We played for our check mark because it gives us verification
that we're an actual person. The backlash from users who received verification without consent shows that X has ongoing struggles with user trust and engagement. It shows that they don't have a clear path forward and that management doesn't have a clear road map of the exactly what they want to do with certain features.
Now, efforts to clarify the verification process and the criteria for premium features have done little to alleviate user concerns, though the confusion surrounding these policies shows that there are challenges in strategies from Elon Musk and the leadership there at X Now Musks latest decision to verify accounts based on subscriber count or premium service subscription has been met with mixed reactions.
This approach to verification has been criticized for undermining the original purpose of the blue check mark and also alienating some users. I think Elon doesn't care about alienating users though. I mean, look at some of his posts. He alienates probably half of the platform every time he posts. And legal challenges with Musk includes defamation lawsuits stemming from his social media activity. And this is personal and professional.
It's risky, and it could damage X. These issues show that Musk's personal persona and his business ventures sometimes shouldn't intertwine. He likes freedom of speech, though, and he wants X to be the platform of free speech. Now, the case brought against Musk by Ben Brody, which stems from Musk's unfounded allegations on X, shows that legal and reputational hazards of Musk's impulsive social media behavior could be a detriment to
the platform. It's part of a broader pattern, controversial actions by Musk that have legal and financial implications. Now, Musk also asserts during a deposition that X is the most accurate, timely and truthful place on the Internet. I don't know if I agree with that. I don't know. Have you seen? I've seen a lot of bots, seen a lot of bots. Those bots are not truthful. There are a lot of people saying a lot of things that are not
factually correct. So the way he says it, most accurate, timely and truthful place on the Internet. If the data doesn't back it up, it's not truth. That's all there is to it. I've seen a lot of untruthful people or bots. I'm not sure what they are on Twitter, and I'm not. I'm not here to bash X or Twitter or Elon at all. I'm just telling you what I know. And you know, I'm here to report the I'm here to report for you. That's it.
So the dissonance between Musk's statements in a platform's reality shows that X is under a challenge right now. What are the values of X? What are the practices of X? Something may change, and that's OK You're supposed to move fast in tech, move Fast forward, right? Fail forward as they say. So I think Elon's doing good work. I just wish there was a road map that we could all follow to see when things are going to be enhanced and what new things are going to be added.
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