Elon Musk but Twitter, 445 billion dollars and ever since the purchase it's been kind of shady. There's been things going on behind the scenes and nobody knows about. There's been tweets sent from Elan that are cryptic. There has been things that Elon is done that have really made people mad, like letting controversial figures back onto the platform that have been banned and kicked off for a while.
But now we have the first official statement from Twitter itself from the company, from Twitter to point, Oh, this is from Twitter Inc, blog and I'm going to read you some of it and we're going to talk about it a little bit. I want you to bring up some points if you can in the comments of your podcast app. If you have comments on there, let me know what you think about this stuff because I think it's an important step for Ilan and for the future of Twitter.
So here it is, the title of it is Twitter 2.0, our continued commitment to the public conversation. Okay, so that that alone says, okay, we're going to be helping out the people in the Conversation, we're going to commit to you and this is this is our new statement. So it says Twitter's mission is to promote and protect the public conversation to be the Town Square of the internet. We've always understood that to reach this goal.
We must give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly. Without barriers, today, we are a new company embarking on a new chapter, but our steadfast commitment to this Mission has not changed. In fact, we are better positioned to realize their ambitions. It's than ever before. And they go on to say, we've always understood that our business and revenue are interconnected with our mission.
They rely on each other brand, safety is only possible when human safety is the top priority, all of this remains true today. So let's take a step back and go over what they're seeing here. And we got to this paragraph. In particular just recently, a lot of big-name huge ad Spenders Left the platform. They didn't know what's going on. They don't know what's going to go on with Twitter and the next month, two months, three months, four months, six months a year, possibly.
So they said we're going to step back a little bit. We're going to, we're going to pause our ad spend on Twitter and then we're going to see where this goes. You know, maybe maybe he'll on drives it into the ground, who knows? That's what these people are thinking, you know, the ad Spenders, they don't know what's going to happen. So took all the money away and then Ilan, according to the financial times.
X head called up. And also talked with numerous people in the the large corporations, ask them why they took their money out and then he yelled at them according to the financial times. So of course this is sort of I think this is damage control. I think this is what they're doing. They're like hey we need to have a corporate facing blog post about damage control you know?
Because if Ilan has been doing these things and driving away advertisers, there's no way they're going to make the money that they used to make it if he saw the numbers. Before the buyout. And he's like, okay, we can make some money with this. That sounds great. I'm gonna buy this thing and then he buys it and then immediately all the money like half the money goes away.
Now, he has to play catch-up, yes to do, damage control and I think that's what this second paragraph in the third paragraph are going to pertain to. So let's talk about this, third paragraph, and I'll read it out to you, so, you can get a better understanding of where Twitter is coming from, in the next next phase of Twitter 2.0 and this is where it gets a little bit dicey for Twitter because I think they're doing damage control on this next paragraph. So here it is in.
This is from the Twitter blog. What has changed however is our approach to experimentation. As you've seen over the past several weeks, Twitter is embracing public testing. We believe that this open and transparent approach to Innovation is healthy as it enables us to move faster and gather user feedback in real-time, we believe that a service of this importance will benefit from feedback, Scale that there is value in being open about our experiments and
what we are learning. We do all of this work with one goal in mind to improve Twitter for our customers Partners in the people who use it across the world, okay? Now let's take a step back. This is getting interesting is getting fun so they say what has changed? You know, we're just testing things out in the open.
Now the normal way for software development and testing is to test things in a small group then, In that group, The expand the group more, and then have the engineers in between fix things and tweak things, and then eventually you to release it to the public, right? There's a release schedule for a reason. People have been doing this for
a very long time. Now, if Twitter was actually doing an open testing schedule, they would have said, so in the, in the future, in the beginning of all of this stuff, because if you're doing that to your user base, you have to announce it to them like, Hey, we're going to be doing these certain And please don't get upset by them. We're going to be testing some
things out. We understand that you know there's going to be some things that will break but it's for the better just trust us. It's easy to communicate that it's easy to communicate that and as a web developer myself, I've been developing software apps websites for the last 25,
30 years. And there's been no instance where out a live product like Twitter, especially with millions and millions of daily users that you would ever test anything in an Open environment and I'm not Elon Musk, right? And Elon might be onto something here where you test everything out in the open and it's a new way to develop things which is totally cool. If it works and if it does work,
that would be great. But if you're an Advertiser, the people that Elon relies on, for all of his money coming in to Twitter, you look at this, as some sort of weird experiment, and something that would shake up the platform and something, where people on the platform that are already on there, they're seeing this Disruption. And you might get a little bit spooked by all of this. Now, as a developer myself, I
wouldn't personally do this. I would, of course, test these systems in the background to a small test. Make it bigger, make it bigger, release it to the public. This show is brought to you by backblaze. I use back place to back up my podcast. My video files, all of my writing stuff at all, my photos. And you get unlimited computer backup, for Macs and PCs for
just $7 a month. You can back up your Your own documents photos videos, drawings projects, all of your data and access your backed up data from anywhere in the world using the web app and you can access the files on your mobile to iOS Android apps all covered. And this is the cool part. This is my favorite part. You can restore it by mail, a hard drive will come to your house with all your data shipped
to your door. I could come to your business to and you can restore return refund program so you can buy a hard drive restore, send the hard drive back within 30 days and get a full refund. Basically, they ship you this hard drive and then you ship it back and you don't ever pay for it. Which is the perfect program for somebody who has huge files. You don't want to waste days and days, downloading terabytes and teraflops of data.
And if you're worried about accidentally, deleting your files to bucks extra month, you can increase your retention history to one year, and I use it for all of my video. Files comes in super handy. So seven dollars plus two dollars nine dollars a month and you get everything backed up. He's a mind for up to a year and And if you use the URL back, place.com slash Ilan, you get a fully featured 15-day.
No credit card required. Free trial, check it out, play with it. Start protecting yourself from potential, bad times, back your stuff up. It's recommended by the New York Times ink macworld PC World. Life wire wired, Tom's guide and I defied mac and more and it's recently been listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under be lze. So you know, they're legit back
plays is committed. More than ever to bring an easy and affordable data storage that you can trust don't be that person that forgot to back up their important files. We've got your back sign up for a free 15 day trial no credit card required go there sign up I you with it it's really powerful. It is really easy to use so go to back place.com slash Ilan back plays.com Ilan backblaze.com, Ilan Etc. Same thing.
Normal testing schedule. Cool, it would make sense, but of course, if you're an early phase startup, which Elan thinks Twitter 2.0 is and that's what he's running it. As you move really fast, you try things out and you break things, and then when you break things, you fix him. And I've been part of startups before, I've been part of many successful startups and in that time, when I'm building things in the very beginning of these startups, we try some stuff.
We try some things that have never been tried before. We Try some things that aren't in the industry that we're in and see if they catch on. If they don't, we can them and we change them. So that's what happened with the blue check mark, you know, with the 8 dollar check mark. I think that's what happened is that they were trying something new out and with the millions and millions of daily active users, it got out of hand and they realize real quick.
This is not a good idea, we can't just do this with no way of differentiating, a troll from a regular person. So I think that's where they're at with specially since they're working on it, like a start-up, they're building something completely new. It's a new system, it's Twitter but it's Twitter 2.0 where there's more things that are going to be happening in the future. They're going to be a bank. Basically they're going to be lets you transfer money between people.
You're going to have your your chat. You're going to have your wall. You're going to have all sorts of fun things in Cryptid, chats and Cryptid messages, and also video and audio. We're going. Better podcasting on there is going to be better and also video playback is going to be much better too so they're going to be testing those things out in the wild and I think that's what they're doing right now with this.
Check mark thing. So as a software developer I applaud them for trying new things but it also disrupts things that are already sort of a standard and with Evert izing, those people stepped back a little bit and now they're going to get the idea of what Twitter is doing in the future so they can make a real choice. It's about if they want to be part of this platform still or if they want to move on use
their ad spend someplace else. All right, let's get back into some of the meat of this press release from Twitter. They go on to say, as we carry out this work, we want to assure you of a few things first. None of our policies have changed our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on D, amplification of via violative content. Freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
Our trust in safety, teams continues, its diligent work to keep the platform safe from hateful conduct abusive behavior. And any violation of Twitter's rules the team remains strong and well resource and automated detection plays an increasingly important role in eliminating abuse. The third bullet point. When urgent events manifest on the platform, we ensure that all content moderators have the guidance. They need to find in a dress violative. Tent. And here's the next one.
As we improve our policies and processes bad acts. Actors also will develop new methods of disruption. This is not new. Our team of experts is constantly adapting to identify and diffuse threats and we are proud of our early results Impressions on violative content down over the past month, despite the growth, in overall usage on the platform. Finally, as we embark on this new Journey, we will make mistakes.
We will learn. And we will also, Things right throughout will communicate openly with our users and customers to get and share your feedback as we build. So those are the main five bullet points that Twitter put in this press release. And I want to take a look kind of it. Every one of these in a, in a broader sense and discuss them. Because I think each one of them has its own Merit. And some of them, you can kind of see where the, the ad spend is it is all about.
Damage control in a way. So that's, that's my take on. It is critical thinking, you think, okay? They're doing something good, though. They're open and they're honest about what they're trying to do. So, the first bullet point is that is it, none of their policies have changed. Everything's the same, our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on D, amplification of violative content. Freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. So none of their policies have changed.
How do they enforce those policies? Well, that's the that's up in the air at this point. And they say, The approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on D, amplification as opposed to probably Banning people out, right? Right. So that's number one. Number two, is our safety and Trust team continues to diligent work to keep the platform safe from hateful conduct abusive behavior in any violation of Twitter's rules now their trust in the safety team had been
gutted. So about half of that, Workforce is gone, people have left Twitter, people have quit the company, people have been fired. They say, Say that the team remains strong and well resource, but you know, it's that's objective to who you're talking to and automated detection plays an increasingly important role in eliminating abuse. So they're probably using some AI that they, you know, they may have had before.
But they more than likely haven't built a new AI system in order to capture, you know, some of these wrongdoers. So to speak on the platform, since Ilan took hold of everything. So here we go. This is bullet. 3, when urgent events manifest on the platform, we ensure that all content moderators have the guidance. They need to find an address violative content, basically train them. You know, I'll cut.
They have the guidance and they have the resources available to deescalate things and to kind of steer things into a less violative content creation at that point. So that's basically the same heart. Our team is well, well funded, we have enough people, we have enough resources. Okay, so that's what the last You were all about this next one. As we improve our prophecies and processes. Bad actors will also develop new methods of disruption, this is
not new. So as somebody puts out a new tool, you know, as Twitter puts out a new tool or something, add something to the platform Bad actors in any sort of way, we'll find a way to get around that or disrupted in some way. And they say this is, this is a funny one. So, think about this for a second, it says our team of experts and they didn't have to say experts at that point.
But they use that language for a specific reason because if you're reading this and it just says our team is constantly adapting to identifying diffuse threats. The term experts builds trust with you. Right. That's a simple word to say. And if you say you're an expert at something, you know, cool. Okay. Well, you're an expert astrophysicists. You probably know a lot about the universe or you're an expert, archaeologists.
You probably know a lot about the past, you know, so those terms are used in. A way to kind of reinforce the fact that these aren't just a bunch of people playing games over there, they're adapting to identify and diffuse threats and we are proud of our results. Impressions on violative. Content are down over the past month, despite the growth, in overall usage on the platform and the platform has grown since Elon took charge of it. So if it's down that's it's
pretty good sign. So, I think they're doing well there. And the last one is finally, as we embark on this new Journey, we will make mistakes. So they're admitting like this is the Is putting the cart before the horse, they're saying, hey we're going to mess up and this is a good thing to do because if you're admitting fault to begin with, people can kind of just brush it off and go, okay. You know, we knew this was going to happen and we're going to give you a little bit of slack.
They say we will learn and we will also get things right? So, they'll learn from their mistakes. And of course, they said mistakes first, before they said, we will learn. So it seems like they got to learn from the mistakes. We will also get things right. Meaning, they're going to move forward with the mistakes.
They're going to keep building. In this open way, you keep breaking stuff and fixing stuff and throughout the process they're going to learn from that and then they're going to get it, right? So they're going to make mistakes, they're going to learn from those those mistakes and then get them right in the end throughout will communicate openly with our users and customers to get and share your feedback as we build. So they're leaving it up in the air. They're going to do things
wrong. They're going to learn from it. They're going to fix it and then they're going to communicate what happened with the users which is great or maybe they communicate beforehand. Say hey we're going to try this thing out. We just wanted to let you know because if anything seems weird please let us know.
And then I say we remain committed to provide a safe, inclusive, entertaining and informative experience for everyone will continue to be transparent as we move through this transition period and we will listen to you. The people who make Twitter what it is, the Town Square of the internet. Okay? So that was the wrap up at the end. That could have been the only paragraph they ever said, you know, they could have just wrote that in a tweet.
We were Remain committed to providing a safe inclusive, entertaining and informative experience for everyone will continue to be transparent as we move through this transition period and will listen to you. So, basically saying, hey, we know, we got some stuff going on here. And every time that we do something, we're going to make sure that it's safe inclusive and entertaining. We want you to come here and have fun. We want you to have, you know, conversations with people.
We don't want it to be a horrible place, but we're going to make some mistakes along the way and we're going to tell you about it, you know, but we want you. To tell us about what's wrong to in, they say and we will listen to you. The people who make Twitter what it is, they might listen, right? But at the end of the day, will they change things in order to make Twitter? A more inclusive safer, more entertaining, and informative
experience for everyone. There are some things that could happen in the near term that can make these things, you know, those terms a little bit better in from a content creator. Six standpoint, making podcasting available on Twitter
would be amazed. I think I'm making long form content on Twitter would be amazing, you know, a safer place would be great, you know, as far as I know they have a team in place according to their press release here, they have a team in place to make it a safer experience for everybody
involved. So they want to be transparent about a to. So what they're going to do is tell us about what's going on and that's all we can really take from this press release but it's from the Twitter team, not from Elan himself, so Elon will have these little tidbits and
that's what he does. With all of his companies will have Something safe from SpaceX and they're working on something at say a Starship, you know, say if they're working on something that Starship Saudi posts a picture of something, from a Starships, a raptor engine. And they say, hey, what is this pipe do on the Raptor engine? You know, one might say, oh, that's a pipe that we changed because of this, this and this and it's happened in the past with Starship.
It's happened with the Dragon capsule. It's happened with Falcon 9's. It's happened with everything along the way Elon is posted on Twitter and just said, hey, this is what we're working on, so expect a bunch S'more stuff from Elan in the future because I think there's going to be some interesting things happening at Twitter. And I think what happened was that all the turmoil from Twitter immediately happened because it's a new like somebody
else is in charge. Now at half the people are gone. It's like Elon, snapped, his fingers and half of the people deteriorated, like something from a comic book movie. Possibly, you know, he's like the fan House of Twitter, write F of the people disappeared. So, It's a tumultuous time for Twitter in the beginning, but I think it's going to kind of mellow out over the next month or two things are going to start
going into place. I think the moderation teams are kind of be more robust in the future and I think that the EU has something to say about that too. And that's for a whole other episode. So I want to cue you in on that. The EU in the US are kind of turning up, he Twitter in In sort of the the next coming months, EQ, commissioner warns, billionaire, musk. He must adhere to the rules. So, there we go. It's going to be. It's going to be a wild ride.
So please buckle up and hit the Subscribe button, on, whatever podcast platform that you're listening on. I do appreciate you, staying around hanging up for this whole thing and I'm glad we can have this conversation. Thank you so much for all of your support throughout the time that I've been here doing the show and I can expect great things in the future. Future. I can expect you can extra expect great things future. We're bumping up a little bit over here.
Production values are going to go up a little bit. And we're working hard to make this a better show. So I appreciate all you sticking by me. And thank you so much again. Take care, and I'll see you in the next one.