It was very expensive. Guys, this is a gift. It's a it's an iou worth forty four billion dollars, so well, you know, uh frey, forty four billion would be with that much anyway, that's a good one, so I might want to hang onto that one. Yeah, hang on to that one. Okay, that's a big one. I will treasure this gift. But it's seriously crazy to us. We come into the Twitter Twitter headquarters. We were you know, banned from Twitter in March twenty twenty
two. You restored us on a bunch of other accounts in November twenty twenty two, and then now we're invited and we get to come here and we weren't even allowed to go into our account. You know, absolutely, it's like barbarians storming at the barbarians, not really at the gate there through the gate and pullaging much. That's what we were doing. We're in and we're pillaging the march. You're the bar You're you're the barbarian. Yes, just
making sure two of my barbaria and friends. Okay, I want to ask about that. So the restoring of accounts, Yes, when you came in, so you took over, you closed the deal, There was the lawsuit,
there was all that, There was the drama. We were we were like riding a roller coaster wondering what was actually going to happen, because we had no idea if you would ever actually take over the company, if we would ever actually get out of Twitter jail, because we had vowed to never delete that tweek right, So we were watching and just kind of wondering,
what's really happening. Um. Then you finally take over and you go in on day one, what are the conversations like, take us behind the scenes, Like what happened behind the scenes where you're talking with the team, You're trying to figure out what to do with the advertisers and all of that. What was the conversation behind the scene that around were storing accounts? There are a few questions around wise king of Sinkum, but where is the sink?
Is the sink still here? Um? Security has its do really? Yeah it's here? Um yeah Um. I'm still running into people who didn't don't Actually they asked me, why did you wakens lovely with the sink? Because it us Yeah, thinking a punt let that sink in, Um that couldn't help it. You know, I felt like if I showed up with the sink, they'd have to let me in, right because you can't help but let that sink in. It's impossible. It seems it seems like the perfect
Halloween you know costume. Yeah, if you want to presume you want to get into people's houses, Yeah, that's hysterical. So you came in though, and you said bring back the battle and be you bring back these accounts like and then there was like pushback, right, didn't you get pushed back internally? That's what was reported anyway? Just going off the way was in the news. Yeah. Um, I mean it was chaos in the beginning. Um. I was trying to figure out, you know, how to
run this place, what was going on? Um? And very difficult when the whole company works from home. So you know, it's like who do you even um zoom with, you know, right, Like, I don't know. It's like normally you could walk around, introduce yourself to people and have common stations, but Twitter gone to almost fully work from home, so this building was empty, um and Twitter pulling around the world or empty, So it was just very difficul actually just trying to understand where was going on.
I'd say it like the analogy. It would be like, I mean, teleported into a plane that's in a nose dive with its engines on fire and the control stone work, and you gotta take it out of the nose time. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta connect reconnect the controls, you know, like who do what's what's the old structure, what's the management team? Um? Because unlike literally the hour one of the thing closing, I exited the top old people of the company, um, and then then a whole
much people also quit. So it was like, you know, organizational structure was like Swiss, like Swiss cheese that you put in the microwave. Yeah, you know, it was like full of hells and melted. How is your Twitter feed? You funny to be better these days? What? Well? I only use the following tab because to me, that's what I always wanted social media to be, was just everybody I follow in order exactly the order that it's posted. So the for you is more, you know,
the algorithm driven stuff. Yeah, but I think you try it the for you try it out, Yeah, And I use it predominantly and I might time on the opposite insane because because there's it's feeding me so much stuff, you know, like stuff I'm watching like crazy fight scenes like no context humans or CCC video exactly, yes, uncensored video. I'm getting drawn into these things, you know, CCTV stuff. Um, yeah, I think it's it's good. I mean, I'm not. I'm seeing a mix of opinions
too. I'm seeing people that I disagree with pop up that I don't follow, which a lot of people object to. They don't want to see that. They only want to see people that they that they agree with. Yeah, well, well, the system actually does take into account your interactions. So it basically if somebody, if you argue with someone else, it'll seem that you want you want, you like arguing, which probably maybe someone secretly
does actually like arguing. They don't want to admit it, but they actually like it. Um it's like that Monty Plathon sketch, you know, have you ever seen that one where for an argument here, for an argument, you accidentally goes into the insults room abuse. Um so if if if if if, well, if one account argument with another account, but augument will assume that that's what you want. You want you want more of more arguments or more of that, you know, because you chose your time to spend
your time that way. So it will actually then show you content that that other content you might want to interact with. UM. But I think that over time, the recommended for you tweets should be extremely compelling. UM. I suspect um that you'd probably want eighty twenty recommended versus following. It'll also put it, it'll the most compelling tweets from your followers are also in for you. So so skip the boring ones that people pretty much yeah, you
can go right to the good stuff. I mean there's some casts that I follow that tweet twenty times a day or more. UM, So it tends to fell up the following. UM. But at you know, you if you'd want, like say, the best of the people that you follow should be in for you or something's wrong. Um. But the intend is to maximize unregretted user time. So that's that's a that's I think the metric, that's the metric I've got the whole organization focused on, is um unregretted user
time. I mean so because I mean frequently here someone said, tell me they spent a lot of time on TikTok, but they kind of hate themselves afterwards. Um. And so that's un called up you know, regretted user time. Um. And you know, so if we can, we wanted to be that you spent the time on on x slash Twitter and you're glad you did, like you were informed and entertained. Um. And I do
I think get more laughs from Twitter per day than everything else combined. Frankly, yeah, because everybody's moving turns algorithm, Facebook's algorithm, and YouTube's all algorithms driven TikTok, So what's Twitter doing differently that's getting you that unregretted user time compared with these other apps. Well, I guess it matters what content is on a system to be recommended in the first place. Okay, so you know TikTok has a lot of teen dance videos. Um. So classically
it's a populous popula topic. Um. Twitter is more of you know, intellectual debates and you know, learning things, humors and and and humors. It's it's a much more a variety of a variety show, but but includes you know, serious information um and brand breaking news. UM. So you know it's what it matters that even if you had identical. There are identical
algorithms between Facebook and Twitter. Twitter content is better or interesting in that way, you still prefer Twitter and and as as you've seen, we've open sourced the algorithm and made at this point, I think well over one hundred changes based on user feedback. Um. But how will we stay informed if NPR isn't there anymore? You know, at any given point, I'm not sure if NPR is there or not. Um. I wasn't aware that they were there until they said they were not going to do that. Um. That's
I was with Jim Carrey when I foundut Jim Carrey was leaving Twitter. I'm like, I didn't know Jim Carrey was on Twitter. Yeah, and maybe it's back. I don't know to find out. I mean, we we're trying to apply the rule is consistently at Twitter, so that you know. The NPR thing is like, well, UM, if we're going to call some media state affiliated, well, there's plenty of meat organizations in the in the US that are or in the West that are state affiliated. UM,
so then we should apply the label equally. UM. And then they get prey upset about that UM and said that there will state affiliated implies that the state has editorial authority of an influence over the content, and like, so you're saying you don't have that, how self? Where are you? Um, you know, it's on their website. Well yeah, I mean there's there's they well, NPR are literally on their own exactly on their own websites.
Said, I felt, you know, comment funding is essential to their operation, right, and so we even changed it from state affiliated to state funded. So that's just literally a statement of fact, right. I mean we could actually just look the same text from their website and put it at the label. But they're still they're unhappy with that. Yeah, they're unhappy
with that. It gives the wrong impression, the true impression. Well, I mean I think they got to pull their punches and critiquing the government at NPR. It's just a gas, you know, based on their extreme dependence on government funding. I mean, you don't generally buy the band that fees you. Let's real quick though, back to the when you came into Twitter. Okay, so the plane is going down and you and you're at the controls and trying to save it. So you're doing all these things, but
you also did want to restore banded accounts. Yeah, and so like the trust and safety team and everybody was where they were arguing with you about that, pushing back on that. Or was it primarily advertisers who were giving you the most pressure and saying, if you restore all these accounts, we're pulling our ads. What was happening there with pressure you we're getting well, I mean it was just a totally coowdic situation because they're still gonna run tells on
SpaceX M while trying to figure out anything about how Twitter runs. Um, uh you know where you know, I actually exited the top four people in the first hour, and then there were a ton of others that either got exited or quit yea. So I was really just trying to keep the wheels in the bus. Is the top priority? Um. That Twitter codebase's very It's actually much more complex than you think, and it's not something that just
works, you know, it requires a lot of carapeating. Um. And there were many people who are predicted that the service would go down and would Twitter Twitter is not going to exist after this weekend. There was a whole World Cup was going to kill it, right, because yeah, it was. It was gonna get crushed by the World Cup. Number. Predictions that
Twitter is about to die were ridiculous. I mean, well, can just go like almost particle right, Yeah, it's like but but it was still they didn't have They did kind of have a point in that it wasn't too easy to keep things running. Um. There there were so many estary corners of the Twitter software and the system operations that make it hard to you know, it's hard. It's hard to keep running. It's not it's not I can ephasize that enough. It's not a so like some app on the phone
that just works. It's a super complicated thing. Financially, it was a very tough situation because Twitter in a normal year would do probably four and a half billion dollars in revenue four and a half billion in cost. So it's a you know, it's they'd probably lose a little bit of money because I you know, so I called a really expensive nonprofit because Twitter is of its lifetime. I believe negative on profitability, like it's lost more money than it's
made. Um. But with because the high price the acquisition um which is very foolish, foolishly high on my pob um, there's twelve and a half billion dollars a debt and debt so I was saying, it's a billion and a half So. And then there's a cyclic decline in advertising that seems to start maybe around May of this year, but it was pretty significant. That's what you saw. Facebook and Google and others also do some layoffs as a
result. Um. So there's a cyclic decline in advertising, and then um, a pretty major pause in advertising where advertisers weren't they just put their their campaigns on pause. Um. They didn't definitively say no. I mean if in a few cases they did, but mostly in a response to you taking over and passing free speech, they're like, oh, we don't want free speech. Yes. Uh. Well, it's more like they are worried about
something that would affect their brand. I suppose, um, although it seems like sometimes they worry about the wrong things, the things they should be worried. They should be worried about some things, and they aren't and aren't worried about other things and should be. Um. But nonetheless, there were a lot of the advertisers put put the advertising on pause, kind of like see where things go. Um. And that causes about a it's almost affective set
of reduction in revenue immediately um so. So in rough terms, we're um during about negative three billion dollars a year in cash flow and possibly trending to do worse than that, possibly four or five. So how hard to tell where the bottom was? Um and a billion dollars in the bank, so called roughly four months to live. What were the options if you go? If you ran out like you would have to continue to fund it, you'd
have to seek funding from outside. Yeah, I mean it's a limited you know, how much tells the stock I can sell and I can't sell it all the time. I mean the reason I saw stock in December last year was which I regret at this point, was because I wasn't sure how much money Twitter would need. I've thought, you know, I might just the you know, in October it was six million, six billion dollar cash burne
and we don't know where revenue is going to bottom out. I had to get the company to financial stability, which we I think more we're close to natural stability, roughly not quite break even, but close to it. And I think training positively, you know, I think I think it's it's at least the planes in level flight. The engine of engineering, software and sharing
is in much better shape. Um. I think we've played more futures and capabilities in the last six months than Twitter is down in the last six years. So with us twenty percent of the team, that's crazy. Yeah. Do you do you feel like it was worse it? I mean, do you ever regret it and go, why did I do this thing just to make a stand for free speech? Or Um? I think it was necessary and I think I wouldn't say that there's anything that's in retrospect has caused me
to um. Like, I think it was still the right move to acquire Twitter, even at the outrageously high price. Um. Yeah, I think it's gonna turn out to be important. Well, the price wasn't just financial either. It's like, no, I mean this is a I mean I should say, like you know, I do there there were there are other investors beside me and Twitter. Um, and I'm the majority on it. But I have to. I want to make sure that those who invested with
me do not suffer loss. So I'll make sure that the ultimate outcome is better than their original investment. But it's so I want to became of us, you know, so it's it's it's but but certainly get this will be this is a hard way to get richer, that's for sure. Um this
is thought. This is the mega pain way to make money. Um that this uh a lot of pressure on whoever's running Twitter, who you know to do this with that on the platform, as you might imagine at any given point, someone you know, someone powerful is unhappy basically um So anyway, but I think it was it was still important to do UM and I because they know pretty much all of the social media companies and the search companies were
acting in unison and along with your legsy media. So it was just where do you find you know, actually, where do you find the truth? And you know, if everyone is in lockstep with a lie? Well you just did you see Obama's comments recently in a CBS interview I think it was CBS where he was talking about how the thing that keeps him up at night
is how the media. There's like diversity in the media now and there didn't used to be, and so now you have different narratives and people basically in having different realities and that's the thing that's like keeping him up at night. Is like the big problem that we faced right now. We wanted to go back to the glory days. Yeah, there was one narrative. The media was unified, three different channels. I'll telling you this. So you disagree,
you're telling us you disagree. Well, I haven't seen the full video, so it's possible there maybe some contextual elements that mitigate community notes will help us with that one. Yeah, cur notes is being pretty good. Um yeah, I'm watching it closely to make sure. Because the as community notes gains credibility, the the value of gaming it increases. So um, we're
going to make sure that it is as ungamable as possible. I mean, the you may notice, but the I mean, the essential idea behind community notes is that a note is only shown if it is rated highly by people who historically have different opinions. So where to people who would normally disagree agree? Yeah? Um, And so even if there's a lot of people from say like one political point of view, it doesn't have to be political, but one point of view, and it's only a small amount of number from
another political point of view, they still have to agree. You can't just brigade the thing with with one ideology. I think the value and community notes goes so far beyond just like fact checking notes. It's actually entertaining when somebody gets noted. It's like it's bit's better than getting ratioed. It's it's it's awesome. It is awesome. Yeah, the human value of some of the notes, yeah, um. And I think it's when fact checkers get noted,
it's like it's so ironic, you know, it's beautiful. Well, we have so much experience with fact checking because we were getting fact checked by Snopes all the time for our jokes, you know, but that was just one blue haired lady or something getting mad at one of our jokes. And it's so much more powerful when it's, like you said, people that just agree, the community coming coming together to fact checks something. And yeah, I mean the ones that I see are there, they're solid. It's like
rare to see a wrong one. So um, and anyone can I can get community noted, UM clearing me obviously, UM, as well as advertisers and and presidents of countries and whatnot. So I think once you get noted a few times here, it's an honesty amplifier, you know, so well they're not used to it. People they're not used to it. Yeah, people that are on the left or just in their own echo chamber government leaders,
they're not used to that kind of accountability or not. I think it definitely comes as a surprise when they get a community notables the first time. Have you been noted? How many times have you been noted on? I'm not sure, maybe three times. I don't know. Um, I've never been community noted. I don't think BABILMB hasn't been community not yet. I
was wondering about that. If if we're gonna get like marked like this was satire, if people believed it was true or something like that and hasn't happened, Well, we don't make any truth clims really, right, I mean, so, I don't know. That was the weird thing about the fact chicks people believe it. Sometimes they can't tell if it's real. I can't blame them, so I can't or some of these articles are I can't tell it. I mean, I can tell that that doesn't have a bee logo
on it. But but but the actual text of the headline is indistinguishable from a ya you know piece. So it's very very common at this point. Um, it's a crazy world reliving. Yeah, that's why I don't blame people when when when someone says that they you know, they make fun of people who think that satire is true. I'm like, I don't, you know, it's the real. The real headlines are so satirical in nature they seem like a parody. So if you believe it be article, it's just
yeah, the naturally is going to happen. So you want to say, you know, like you see some of these things where it's like free speech is bad from free speech or so you know, if there was like one headline to that effect, yeah, yeah, it's very it's as a sentire, real real. It's like, um, you know what you New York Times had like critical thinking is bad for our democracy or something. I remember that, Like, what are you talking about that in saying there's a lot
of those. There's a lot of them. But you want to see Twitter be a place where truth prevails through debate, right, where people actually go back and forth, rather than you having somebody from the top down deciding this is what's true and this is what everybody needs to believe, and in lockstep unison putting that out there and silencing and stamping out everybody else. Yes, we definitely want devotion narratives. That doesn't mean they have to be um you
know that that people need to get get violent about it or anything. But I think you want to have marketplace of ideas where um, people you know, have different viewpoints, they argue the viewpoints and maybe some minds are changed along the way. Um, so you know there's this, there's both isn't it's also is the it's the narrative true? And who's choosing an narrative? Who's choosing a narrative is a bigger deal than you know? Is the article?
Is everything? The article accurate? Because there's a lot of things you can write about on Earth, Why I write about that thing? Yeah? So yeah, So the aspiration here for X slash Twitter is to be I would call it the least the least untruthful place on the Internet. Like we should acknowledge that there will be things that are on true on the platform, but we'd like to be the least untrue of any place. And people have
a right to be wrong anyway. Um, you know, but I think we're succeeding if if it's if Twitter is the place where you can get the most accurate, the closest to the truth, um, and different perspectives on the truth, to degree that to agree that it's subjective, that's the that's the goal, pretty straightforward. And Elon even thinks that he has the right to share his opinion. Yeah, it has the audacity, which we found the audacity to share your own opinions. I was thinking the opposite in this.
This is a reference to the interview that you had recently with CNBC and and you were asked why you tweet certain things? Why do you why do you share that publicly? Why do you share widely? Why don't you why don't you keep it in the question? The sources Magneto. Yeah, sorry, Magneto. I should undersaid that it's unfair to Magnetos. Unfair to Magneto exactly. My mind goes the opposite direction. I'm like, what's in your unsent drafts? I want to I want to know what you're holding back.
We promise we won't publish this, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll turn the cameras on. Yeah, I probably. There have been a few cases where you know, if this tweet, if I still want to send this tweet in the morning, yeah, I will do so. Um. And there've been a few cases where I should have done so. That would have
saved a lot of grief. Um. So there was some truth that I, like a good friend of mine said, you know, it's not gonna suggest out of stuff tweeting, but but you might want to consider saving it as a draft and seeing if you want to tweet it in the morning. Yeah, that's good advice. That should be a bible first. Yeah.
I think like Lincoln did something where he used to write these like angry letters to people, and then he came to the conclusion that he really wasn't doing any good and so you'd write the angry, angry letter and then see if you wanted to mail it the next day. I believe that was and then he almost never mailed it. But you don't write angry tweets, UM, angry once in a while, you know, Well then sometimes that might tweets
are seen as angry when they're not. Um. So it's difficult to convey tone, you know, sarcasm and a Tweetum, we need that sarcasm font. That's a feature there. Yeah, on Twitter, you see what is a sarcasm point? I don't know. We gotta we gotta make it up. It's like the SpongeBob. It's the you know, the capital letters and the capital yet letter eything. Yea make a sarcasm fun on Twitter and we
can see. Okay, you seem taken back by that question though, Like I'm just starting like, how would you visually show that some of a sarcasm? Oh? Yeah, I don't know. Um, there's no way to do that. You need a disclaimer. Yeah, he's thinking about it now, he's calculated. Now it's a problem he's gonna do. You can animate the fund, Yeah, in a sarcastic way, sarcastic animation. Can't you tell? We've lost him now? He's just trying to send this problem you
call that animation. It's not a sarcastic animation. Seeing a lot of people who are saying they want to put their video on Twitter. Now, Tucker Carlson is going to do his show on Twitter. Right? And that wasn't like a deal you worked out. You said it wasn't. There's no deal at all. Um, And I you recommended it to Don Lemon too. Did he respond, did he say he's going to do it? I don't know. I actually haven't looked it up, but I in general, I
think it would be cool. Yeah. So um um, I mean he you know, we did talk and he just asked me, like, if he does something on Twitter, will we sensor it? And I was like, well, no, we you know, we believe in like the First Amendment. And it's like a moment too before protecting the First Amendment. Um amen, exactly amen. Um. So you just wanted to confirm that, like, you know, we wouldn't sort of like suspend as account or or
whatever. And I said, well, as slung as it's like your slung is a it's lawful um and uh, then then we will not just spend the account. So that was enough for him to say, yeah, just what you want to confirm. You want to confirm that that you know, it's the free speech. He wasn't concerned about monetization. We want monetization, that's how can we make money. I think I think I think that is actually in a pretty good financial position. I think he's not like, you
know, struggling to pay the mortgage. Um. So um no. So I mean I did say like that we've got the subscriptions thing and that we will be also sharing ad revenue with creators. Um, kind of normal stuff really. Um. You know, in order for someone to put their video on Twitter as well as say YouTube, then they need to at least, you know, make money on that, like equivalent amount of money or maybe more on Twitter ideally, Yeah, because we make we make about twenty seven
dollars a month on Facebook. Video YouTube is only a little bit better. Are you serious? We don't make much on Facebook. It's very little. Yeah. Basically it's really bad on the monetization. Yeah, YouTube's a little bit better, but still not and none of them nowhere near the number of views you're getting. You know, you'll get millions of millions views, especially on these shorts videos, and they throw pennies your way. So what is
the plan for Twitter video monetization for users? Um? Well, we have to have subscriptions, and I subscribe to the video of course. UM, thank you, welcome. Can you look at the camera and say, subscribe to the best subscribe to the Babylon Beat you want to regret it? Um? So the interviews done, We got what we needed. So we have subscriptions obviously. Um, we're also going to be surfacing tweets that are subscription
tweets where you see the first line and we saw it already. Yeah yeah, So that that's going to be really a big deal for growing subscriber based because people want to kind of see like what is the tweet? You know. Um, so we'll keep like you know, providing penalizing content that that is for subscribers only, you know. I think it'll take a moment before users to get used to it. But the the rate of growth of subscriptions is crazy, like, um yeah, I mean I've never this is the
fastest I've seen anything grow. It's like wildfire. So I think it's gonna be good. So the subscriptions, and then there's share of advertising revenue, and we just really need to complete writing the software for figuring out like what ads were associated with what content and then figure out like, you know, some reasonable revenue share. And from the date that I said we would you know, compensate creators, we will backdated to that and said people check.
So with the advertisers, are the advertisers that paused back for the most part, are you continue to see problems with him being concerned about your free speech stance and the new hire that you have coming in as CEO. Is she going to be addressing some of those issues and trying to work with advertisers to make sure that they feel comfortable on the platform. But then also, how do you balance that with a commitment to free speech? That's kind of yeah.
So, I mean I think it's reasonable for an advertiser to decide what, um what what what content they appear next to? You know, um, we'll make sure that that their ad doesn't appear next to something controversial or what are they whatever they consider controversial? Um? You know, so I mean something is fairly obvious, Like you don't want to say, um, a kid's movie showing up next to some racy content of some kind like you know and IT'SFW stuff, um so, or or or you know, compassing
disney Land next to dead bodies in Ukraine. You know, it's like that's that's what it's It's reasonable to have these adjacency controls, um. Just like you know, advertisers could pick a particular time of day to advertise if they're going to advertise, you know, up through I don't know where, if it's eight or nine pm versus like you know, midnight, but it's going to be different. So yeah, just we have we have those controls in place for advertisers. UM. And we said like, look, there's freedom
of speech, but not freedom of reach necessarily. So it's like if somebody, I mean, if you're careful what that that doesn't become d topian. But um, people can basically say what they want to say. But if if, if, if a lot of verified accounts blag it as you know, questionable content, then it will not get amplified. So we're doing so we need you need to make sure this doesn't have bad effects. It's new higher though there's been people you made kind of both sides mad about it.
Right, You've got people on the left room mad for their reasons. You have people on the right room mad for their reasons. You seem satisfied with that outcome because it means that, you know, if you've got people on the fringes on both sides upset, then you're doing something right. Right. Yeah, But when it comes to LGBTQ and Q and on siltaneously upset. I was thinking that I think you know, things go full circle. I'll just lt Q and you'd probably get me in trouble if you like, well,
probably will You are saying. You're saying you want to speak your mind even if it costs you something. You want to be able to say what you want, even if it costs you something. You said that very emphatically in that in that interview you just did sure, and so that matters to
you a lot. And that in so in a context where you've got like a new CEO coming in, there's going to be taking over, and you want everybody else to have that same freedom to be able to say what they want, even if it costs them something personally in their lives or whatever to have that freedom. Um, it would seem to me that the number one thing you'd be looking for is someone who's going to come in and be as
committed to free speech as you are. Um. That trump's even advertising revenue in your view, if you're willing to lose money to be able to personally speak freely, then yeah. It was also lots of money for advertising money because some advertisers got community noted right, um, and we wouldn't take the community note down right. So it lost forty million dollars in advertising because of that, because a big ones pulled out because a community notes and refusing to
pull community notes there was a willingness to lose money. Yes, we literally just lost forty million dollars. That's it's not out approximation. Will things change along those lines where there will there be more willingness to compromise to keep the revenue to keep coming in from these big advertisers. Is that a concern of yours? Um? No, I think, Um, I think we've actually
largely addressed the concerns the advertisers. Um. A lot of them like weren't necessarily against me taking over Twitter. They just weren't show what it would look like. You know, is it you know, is it are the sharks in the water or what you know? Um? Yeah, is there going to be rampant disinformation? Um? Is it going to be some like massive
right we takeover? Or so they were just like uncertain, Um, And I think we're getting to the point here where they're like, you know, and a lot of them use Twitter every day, and it's like it's actually, obviously it's obviously not fooled with hate speech, Like anyone who uses it knows that. Well. The media keeps trying to say that they keep publishing these articles it's hate speeches on the rise. Hates two thousand totally false.
Yeah, it's completely false. The view counts are um down by a third maybe half, and that's despite usage of the you know, all time record usage of Twitter. And how do they define hate speech is a is a big question mark. Well, it turned out one of the ways that one of the hate speech tones was literally George Soros his name, it's just saying it. We count it as a hate speech thing. So I thought, well, you know, maybe the difference is a little broad. Yeah,
calling him Magneto it's considered hate. You know, it's like it's not it's the comic book. You know, it's like, let's relaxed to you knows, not at the end of the world here does that make you professor X? Or who's professor X in this? Uh? Well, do you know a lot of small people. I think we'll be fine. I think the advertisers at this point are comfortable is the fact that Twitter is going to be you know, fairer and and and not sort of a haven of hate type
of thing. Um. And they've they've used it enough for themselves at this point too, like they know that from their usage it's it's actually fine. Um, we've vastly reduced the amount of spam and scam stuff that happens on Twitter. Um, it's quite rare at this point to see spammers whereas might be used to be filled with them before. I think we can. We're not gonna make old advertisers happy, but I think we'll make most of them happy. And um, they'd be enough that are happy that to support the
you know this platform. But we're not gonna compromise on free speech. Well, you see Twitter as more than social media. You know, you've got X and everything, and yeah, what is the future vision for them? You know, some of that will be fulfillment of the vision I had for X dot com twenty four years ago, um, which is you know, to be a normally comes thing financial services provider. Um. And you know
that's actually an important part of free and freedom as well. If if those doing you know, the money exchange or running the money system can stop people
who disagree with them politically, that's a huge problem. I mean, so that happened in Canada with the trucker strike, where people are being like basically financially ostracized from society or for just protect you being a people's striking, Um, and you know, I saw some some strange things with with with PayPal where they were like, um, suspending accounts that they for what appeared to be political reasons. And if you saw any of that, yeah, um
so like yeah, like so that's to freedom of information. That's but money is a form of information. So I think it's important that we have have a within the within the bounds the law that we enable freedom of um, flow of money, which is form of information. And you see that living on Twitter. Eventually it's part of X. Yeah. Yeah, I think we need to broaden the branding. Yeah, Like Twitter makes made sense as
a name. Um, you know, if people are standing, you know, texts basically group text at one hundred forty characters a piece between each other. That's that's kind of a shoe thing, a tweet, you know, not a long thing. Um. By the point in which you've got not just text, but pictures, video, live interaction, um, you know, the full array of financial services, um, a full array of communications, encrypted communications, voice, video, everything. Twitter I think is the
wrong branding for that. It was I believe in descripted branding. So whereas X is is kind of can X commune anything, So X mark. You know X marks the spot X is where the treasure is xxx is. Why the point is we're Christians that we wouldn't know um x rated. But I think, you know, in general, like goal here is like like, uh, let's just make sure we take the actions that strengthen the pillars of
democracy and further civilization. Um. You know, we want to have a future we can look forward to that we're excited that we're we're excited about the future, not that one we were sad about it. So, and the civilization is more fragile than people realize. If you study the rise and full of civilizations in history, you know, when they're at the top, they would think they could have a fall, but they always do eventually. Yeah,
every every civilization has a lifespan. About how many years do you think we got left? Well, I'm seeing a lot of late stage civilization vibes these days. Ely um Um, I don't know, man, there's so many wild cards. I mean, the short term we've got, um, we're at the financial crisis probably some economic thing, but whatever, those things
happen from time to time. Um. But we've got to you know, some geological, geopolitical world wild cards with Ukraine and Taiwan and uh and then AI, which is you know called does think it's called a singularity for a reason, like because you don't know what's going to happen, Like a black hole. You go in the black hole, what happens? I don't know. We're on the we're on the singularity AI singularity event horizon, circling the black hole. Well, and does AI concern you more than those other things
like geopolitical nuclear war or whatever? And where does that involve on the scale for you? I know you've you've said some cautionary things about it, but I don't know if you're like as much of a dumer as some people are about it. I I mean, the good news about Russian Roulette is five the barrels on a loaded that's encouraging. Yeah, that's good. Look on
the right side. Yeah. It just seems like a lot of times people that are in tech are pushing these things forward without any guard rails or consideration, you know, for what could go wrong, despite all the cautionary tales.
Is that's what sci fi is all about, you know, That's why there should be regulation and stuff like that, Right, But what does that look like, how do you regulate AI for example, Well, I think you start off with an insight committee that has you know, people that are independent from the leading players, as well as maybe some representatives representatives from the leading players, and that's an inside committee. The goal is simply to learn
things um and then with industry and proposed rules. That's basically how it's worked for prudent drug or aircraft or cars. Yeah, so's when when there's something that is a danger to the public. H there's some regulatory body too, kind of like a referee make sure companies don't cut corners stuff. When it
comes to just coming back to speech real quick. In Twitter, I've often wondered in our case with you, you know, we had a situation where this benevolent billionaire comes in and decides, I'm gonna make sure free speech exists for people because there's no place where they can speak freely right now. So I'm gonna I'm gonna buy Twitter and restore free speech on this platform. Great, we're glad that you did that, Thank you. But should we have
to rely on benevolent billionaires to solve these problems for us? Or should there be legal changes? Should there be like right now, the law currently protects us from government censorship obviously, right, Well, the First Amendment does that, but it does and protect us from private companies that want a muscle our speech. So should there be legal changes that prevent viewpoint discrimination into you? Do you support laws like that? Um? Are you aware of some of
the legal the current bills like in different states that are very spills. I mean, we have to be careful that that the bill that is intended to good do good does not pave the road to help. So, um, I think so. Something I think would be very powerful is to say that that all social media companies have to open source their algorithms. Um, so that if so, at least it's known what they're suppressing and they can't secretly
suppress things. There's a massive amount of secret suppression going on on Facebook, Google, Instagram, massive it's just not as off secret suppression. And there was a Twitter and yeah, absolutely, but not anymore right right in puple called shadow banning. Directly, it's like there's nothing you can't there's nothing that says that you're banned or but you're you're, you're, you are effectively you know, stuck in the basement. Well, that would be a legal change.
That would be a law that requires open source that if you're gonna censor, you better do it transparently. Yeah. Yeah. The thing is that people, it really doesn't take much to sort of sense or something. So there's a lot of sense ship that goes on to Google that people don't realize because all that needs to happen is just move just move that length to page five, right, you know. I mean the thing about the little joke about Google is like, what's the best place to hide a dead body?
Well, the second page of Google Social results, right, nobody ever looks there. So if you just nudge something to page even page two, it's going to drop the visibility by one hundred. But if you apply that to the principle of freedom of speech but not of reach, isn't that the same thing? Is there a difference? Especially? Yeah, that's why that's where you're saying, there is you've got to be careful how you handle that.
Yeah. Well, one of the craziest things you do when you took over Twitter was start releasing the Twitter files, which, yeah, like who takes over a company and then says, look, how horrible all this stuff? What's going on We need to have like truth and reconciliation here, you know, So if we're not going to expose the things that we're done wrong, why should people believe us in the future. So the you know, that's why, like we're trying to be as transparent as possible. So it's like,
don't take my word for it. Literally look at the algorithm. You should be able to recreate the results that you see on Twitter with the you know, using that algorithm. So and we're trying to try to make sure that that everything is broad to light not just says no hidden layers or anything. We just discovered a you know last week hit like some hidden layer of censorship that was written in twenty twelve, and like censorships maybe the wrong word.
It would it would basically suppress. It had like a list of words and any of those words some of them were like, uh, like suck. If you put suck just sc k. Actually even with other words it um it gets massively de amplified. And that was literally a code from like twenty twelve. And we found about We found this like where like um of
code last week it wasnting applied to like all tweets. Wow, um so there's uh, like the guy that's bought a flight on starship in Japan is um I. His name is his Twitter handles you suck twenty twenty and he was like, listen, they started wrong with my account, you know, yeah, and I'm sure enough it's because his Twitter handle had suck in it.
So, um, you know, it turned out there's there was about a thousand words from some ancient list that was we're twees who are being suppressed, um, and then we just found a list of URLs that are being suppressed. Um. You know, some of them aren't like no obviously renowned scammer URLs, but but some of them aren't like Babylon b dot com.
Um. So this is like it's like an archeological dick. Frankly, Yeah, you talk a lot about wokeness and the woke mind virus, and all that was is do you feel like that's what was driving those kinds of decisions here or yeah? Absolutely, So we're we're it's like, you know, around here, it's not about whether you had the you know, had some of the work kool aid. You're swimming in the cool work kool aid.
It's like, you know, it's like if fish doesn't see the water, it's swimming in it, right, it just seems normal, like if you're in the cold, it's normal. The things like there's actually so much material, Like there's a god knows how many lines of slack for example. Yeah, um, this company ran on ran on slack, So it's like one massive group text situation. Um, there's a lot of material. Um, not that many emails, emails mostly before people coming from outside, you know,
outside communications. And then there was that weird government portal that destroyed everything after two weeks, which it's not illegal. Um, but yeah, I thought it was amazing how you were from day one basically handling customer service. Yeah, you were like personally looking at purports from people trying to dig into things. Yeah, and that was like around the clock for you for a little I mean yeah. The sheer layers like this is a term termacy of
bullshit basically, Um, so many layers. Um. I mean really the there needs to be a ground up re right, Um, you know, otherwise we're like going through like this ghost mansion, you know, trying to get the ghosts out one at a time. Um, it's still finding ghosts as recently as last week. Um so. But but we are actually slimming down the code base. We already writing a lot of it. Um we we the the main sort of home timeline mixer was seven hundred, one hundred
thousand lines of code. Now it's seventy thousand. So it's down manufactor from ten um and does a better job and is faster. Um So. And that's the side of the business you're going to stay involved in and personally invested in the textile Yeah yeah, I mean I'm setting the overall ground rules um and like the constitution type of thing, which is very clearly free speech. Um And and that will that is that is not a revenue optimizing strategy.
So um. But we don't need to make a ton of money with locome backrupt. So. Um. That's part of the reason for having some amount of subscription revenue. It's not you know, we respect the advertisers, but we don't want to be too dependent on them. Not go bankrupt. That's the business. That's the end goal. Loco banckrupt. You know, hopefully make at least some reason we'll return for investors. Um. But it's not like you know, it's it's not like uh, just some sort of mercantile
optimization. So do you think it's possible to run a free speech platform that is profitable? We're gonna find out, so I think. So, I mean, like I'm not sure, Like you can definitely sell yourselves to the devil here and and increase revenue. That's what should Yeah, So that you know, that's and I think it becomes tough act, especially for a publicly traded company. Um, you can be sued for not you know, taking
the actions that maximized profitability. So um, you know, you know, Jack was right that it was impossible to reform as a public company because you just get excoriated in the market and have a zillion lawsuits. Um. Anyway, So it's like, I'm hopefully platform can be like I said, the the least untrue quote closest to close to to closest to true and complete you know, the it's gonna be, you know, hopefully the whole truth.
Probably not nothing but the truth, because there'll be some things that aren't true, but but the whole. But but it diversit to be a diversity of perspectives so and a diversity of narratives, so people you know, can decide what they want to focus on and be forced bad things. Also recommend that Twitter. Twitter lists are actually pretty great. You know, so and we're we're now. Um it made it easy to find, like uh, lists
created by experts on various subjects. Um So, that's another way to stay, you know, staying formed on on any subject, whether it's sports or politics or video games or whatever. How worried are you about mastered on in tribal Um? Well, once I tried using them, I was like, it's not going to be It's not a threat. That was my conclusion. Most importantly, you brought up video games. Have you played the new Zelda game yet? Is it? Is it great? You know I've never played
a Zelda games, haven't. Um? I I only with where I've only I played just PC games. Um it's held one PC not legally Okay, but you know Halo was the only game that I ever played on a console. Okay, what are you playing right now? I'm actually looking for something good to play. Um So. I finished dead Space, which is the dead Space remake is really good. Yeah, I heard it was woke as
it woke the dead Space remake, I would not not woke. Okay, No, I mean it's it's especially trying to make things as scary as possible. It's like as it's maximizing beer. Yeah, it's gruesome. I played the original, I haven't played the remake, so now it's a it's it's gruesome. Yeah, I mean it's it's a it's it's like it's night really the stuff of nightmares. Um, yet, I prefer doing that than email more slack. Are you in the slack channels? Do you go in there?
I don't slack because there's just too much, too much, Yeah, exactly, it's like being in a million group chats. Did space not as terrifying as a group chat? Yeah? Better than email? The eld Elden ring was really good. Did you play right? He beat it? I haven't. I haven't beaten again. Yeah, I got a horse, but I didn't get very It's a long way to go after the horse. Say the least. He played first person? You played Halo? See? Did
you ever play multiplayers? You just the campaign? Well there's there's the reason, one, which is, um, I finished, you know, to rag a little? I did. I completed the campaign on legendary Wow, all right, which is hard? Thank you? I mean, you know, uh, the last battle was really difficult. But you don't go online and play against random people on the on the internet, just multiplayer like team death match. Um no, well I did. I did that first,
flit second with with a friend. Um it's it's tough. So actually trying to ask if you'll be his friend on Xbox, I'm just wondering if every now and then I'm maybe playing against you under some I used to I used to play a lot of video games, at a lot of competitive video games, so way back in the day. Um I, um, it's quite I was quite competitive at Quake. UM and my sort of team before I
was the second best guy in the team. Um. We came second in the first I would I think was the first paid e games tournament in the US. That's where you got your money, your start. Yeah, I think I think we're like three thousand dollars. We need community notes. It wasn't the Emerald Minds. It was a Quake tournament. We need community notes to fact check this this claim. Get on it community. Yeah, it
was so yeah, we we were actually we almost won. But the gay guy who's the best on the team, Brandon Spikes, he ums, his computer crashed so we came second. Instead. We still gotta have money and stuff. I've made money planing video games. That's amazing. Yeah, I had so. Yeah. Um, these days are kind of like a campaign with a with a good story. Um, it's it's hard to match reflect
us with like, you know, sixteen year olds. Yeah, there's gotta be some strategy element to it. They're always saying mean things about your mom and stuff on there. It's kind of um, yeah, I have some praise to play Legal Legends. Oh yeah, they're pretty mean. And those communities, Yeah, there are toxic they called toxic community. Yeah. League is intense. Yeah. League is a lifestyle Yeah, one of those lifestyle games. Yeah. I think my son Groffin put more time into League than
it doesn't get into his college applications. I mean, if you if he was awake at like five in the morning, it's like he's playing League. So um, yeah, I'm kind of looking for, you know, a game, So take your mind off thanks for half an hour or whatever. Well, I'll try to come up with some recommendations for you. The new Jedi game I'm gonna I'm gonna get that soon. I can't recommend it yet because I haven't played. Well, what what's the fun game for phones?
Cold Vampire Survivors? Oh, I'll check that out. Yeah, that's good. My recommendation. Well, what do you do in what do you like to watch? In terms of comedy and entertainment? I know you share a lot of memes and you know obviously comments bad on b articles and stuff like that. You commented what you tweeted one time about how wokeness is destroying comedy and how it was, how it was, how well you can't write comedy from a leftist play of wokeness because there's no truth claim or the truth claim
was wrong. I mean, but I mean, you know, hardly needs to tell you guys. But um, the you know, the essence of a lot of comedy is a revealed truth, um, like a hidden truth that people understand intuitively or explicitly. Um. And uh, there's that, there's that sort of moment of reveal, you know, kernel of truth, of of of often unacknowledged truth. And in that unacknowledged truth is the humor. Um. So um, if you're you know, premised on a lie,
you can no longer be funny because there's no revealed truth. Um. And this is Um, you know why a lot you know, a lot of people on the left have no sense of human they're not funny. Um. And if if there, if there's so many no fly zones you know, um that you have to you have to avoid all the time, then how do you what what? What is there? What you like? There's nothing left to make fun about, you know? So um, Well, Rogan was saying, like wokeness is funny, Like a lot of the woke
ideas are shoutrageous, they are funny. And so when you're not allowed to make fun of the funniest thing, right, that's why sites like ours do well. It's because we are willing to do that. There's a lot of people who are just holding back on the things that are right for comedy. Well, have you been to the Mothership Club yet in Austin where he's I know, no, I'd love to go there. And um, he's like he's trying to make it so that it's you know, comedians can come their
cancel free environment, make the jokes you're not supposed to make. Well, if you see any comedies from times past, I mean, they're they're so sort of for important At this point, it's insane. Um. You know, they're making fun of all sorts of things that would be totally unacceptable these days. Um. That's why I treat it once like just you know,
legalized comedy. You know. Yeah, um, if you keep you know, saying that you can't make fun of things, um or something's always punching down you know, like, well, you're not gonna be anything left to make humor. I don't think we want to humorists for sure. Um. This is it means the same thing that you have with speech, where it's like, you know, if only the popular narrative is being promoted in a stumber being challenged, then that's a problem. That's a problem for it's a
problem for comedy too. So you can't be funny just propping up the popular narrative and trying to get people to clap for you, like yeah, like it's it's applause, it's not laughter. Yes, true clapped somebody called it. Yeah, yeah, it's spreading seeing some of the snuff it's from the whose Correspondence Club what dinner you know, um, where finer is getting a lot of claps. But it was like is it start cheering school or what
you know? A lot of applause, A lot of applause. Um, you know, yeah, whoever stuff clapping last is out of the You just want someone normal to be president, you said recently, someone normal, a normal human being. I mean I think so. Now. Now the thing is that it just it just it just contrary to my prediction of the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. Yeah, um, you maybe heard me
say that like this, The simplest explanation is most likely. My friend Jona has this, you know, his theory is, the most ironic explanation is most likely, and then my parent is the most entertaining outcome is the most likely as viewed from a third party who's not in the show. So you could be watching a World to one movie where people are getting blown to bits and you're just having a soda on popcorn. You know, it's fine. Um, it's rough of the people getting blown up by cannon shells. Right.
Um, we're in there getting blown up by cannon shells and whatever the or or a very good thing happening. Um. But my theory is that the more often than not, the most entertaining outcome, as as though we were an alien soap opera, is it's the most likely. So if you can say what is the most entertaining outcome for the election next year, that's probably what's going to happen. Is that because God is a jokester? What or because we're in a simulation, because the simulation, I mean ratings man
just for the God is doing it for the ratings. Well, I'm saying that that's often the case. Um, the most entertaining outcome as viewed by a third party, like it like it's a alien soap oarpera is is the the whole Twitter thing has been very entertaining from the outside. Yeah, on the inside it's been hell or it hasn't been some hellish moments. Yeah yeah, I've definitely been some hellish moment of moments. Um. Yeah, so i's been I say it's a rough it's been a rough six months, but
at this point trending positively. It wasn't easy, some a lot of open hot surgery. Um, but things seem to be you know, knock on wood headed in a good direction and your chief twit still right now, but you hand that off when still figuring that out, um, because Lenda's gotta exit her obligations at NBC. So, um a month or so, I suppose, um, but I you know, I'll still be responsible for software development and the core principles, the you know, the constitution of the company
being um prete speech is Linda understands that she supports that. Good. Yeah, so she signed something like yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean a lot of things that they need to get done for a company, are you know, there's a lot of chores. It's not just things that need to be done and legal, HR finance, you know, um, yeah, solving interpersonal arguments that people have. You know, there's a lot of sort of just general management stuff that takes It takes a lot of time. So
I'm hopefully I can handle that and I will manage the software team. Well, do you have any questions for us? Um, just you know, cheers. I suppose cheers, man, cheers, Thank you for taking the time. This is awesome. Well you're welcome here. Yeah, it's pretty crazy to go from Twitter jail too, sitting on Twitter HQ the barbarians boast through the gate and having a drink in the in the enemy palace, drinking
from the skulls of ours. What is best in life? What is best in life exactly Coudnel, the Barbarian underrated