Interview Twitter Spaces (animée par Mario Nawfal) 4 décembre 2022 Enregistrement en direct de deux heures sur Twitter Spaces, où Musk répond à des questions sur les finances de Twitter, la modération des contenus et ses plans plus larges.
Enregistrement en direct de deux heures sur Twitter Spaces, où Musk répond à des questions sur les finances de Twitter, la modération des contenus et ses plans plus larges.
Transcription Elon Musk
Kanye. So that was definitely inciting me to violence. So anyway, that's not cool.
Host
Ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk has just hopped off a two hour Twitter spaces discussion interview where he shared his thoughts and opinions on all kinds of stuff. Super juicy, very spicy topics. Everything from big tech, collusion with government, censorship, freedom of speech, his true intentions with Twitter, his workload. I mean, literally everything you can imagine, including a lot of very controversial and spicy takes right in this video. I've cut out nearly half an hour, literally over 27 minutes of silence just trying to condense this. It's going to be all over the place. There's interruptions, there's some audio challenges along the way, but I thought I'd post this unfiltered so you guys and girls can take the time to watch it. YouTube gives you the option of playing back at a higher playback speed than one time, so it might save a few of you a little bit of time. Not going to add any commentary along the way. I just wanted to put this up because I'm not sure if people will be able to replay these Twitter spaces. It was so incredibly important. Really listen through the entire thing. You'll learn a ton. The best part about this, despite people talking over each other a little bit, unlike the sound bites in the media, this is a deep and nuanced discussion, including Elon's true intentions for the purchase of Twitter and some of his plans for the turnaround. Of course, if you appreciate this video and want loads more content, head over to Patreon with the card in the corner or the link at the pinned comment. You definitely won't be disappointed.
Elon Musk
Actually, that's a lie.
Host
If you're a snowflake, you get easily butthurt. You probably won't be disappointed, but you will be mad and you'll probably rage quit within a few days. Otherwise, see you over on Patreon.
Elon Musk
Enjoy the show, Kanye. So that would. That was definitely inciting me to violence. So anyway, that's not cool. Hang on. But you mentioned in a good way. Well, it's just that like, it just makes sense be like an analysis of the second World War or something. You know, that's a historic. That's a history drama. Whatever, you know, it's context. Yeah, it's like, it's like, okay, you know, like let's a battlefield or something. And that's got, you know, this, this, you know, some sort of, you know, war history thing. I don't know. Yeah, something like that. Then that, that would be okay. But it has to be conceptual. I mean, if he's posting it in a way that is trying to rally people to anti Semitic views, then yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like, it can also, like, say, like, okay, well, let's look for added context outside of Twitter to say. To say, like, well, what's this meant in a. In a friendly way? And it's like, okay, well, no, he's saying that he likes Hitler and other things. And look at the point at which Alex Jones is like, telling Kanye to calm down. And, you know, please, please stop. You have to say, okay, you know, Alex Jones is pretty edgy. So Alex Jones is saying, Kanye wants Kanye to stop. That's a big deal. So anyway, but I want to get into some sort of huge. Like, this could easily get derailed into. You know, we should talk more about the file. So you mentioned that you gave it to Bari Weiss, Right? So she has full access. Does this mean that we are going to see multiple exposes, not just once from Matt Taibbi? Yeah, the point is to just have everything come clean. So the thing is that, like, it's not that people would necessarily agree with everything that Twitter has done in the past or in the future, but they should at least know that it is occurring and there's no shady stuff that is happening that they aren't aware of. So at least if Twitter is explicit about its actions and. And transparent, you can then appropriately calibrate your interpretation of what you learn on Twitter as opposed to thinking Twitter pretending to be unbiased and even handed a way to get everyone to agree with all the actions that Twitter will take. That's impossible. That is a null set. But what it is possible to do is to be fully transparent about all. Give me a break.
Host
You dropped out for a bit. Yeah. Can you hear me? Can you hear us, Elon? Or it's not. You're still glitching a bit. Can you hear me? Yeah.
Co-host
Yeah. This just turned into a Verizon commercial. Really quick. I just wanted to ask Elon really quick if there's any way to combine Twitter's efforts with people who have gone, you know, as far as filing constitutional challenges. Is there any way to get them in touch with Matt and combine the efforts there?
Elon Musk
Possibly. I'd reached out to Matt and I mentioned, like, I've also asked Barry Weiss to, you know, also, you know, active Interact. I just gave Barry Wise access to the Twitter files like, an hour ago. You know, I think at some point it might make sense to just have them publicly available, you know, so that anyone can look at them. A quick side question. Generally, thing we're aiming for is, you know, anything bad that Twitter's done in the past that it resurfaced so as to instill trust about Twitter in the future. And what I may have blanked out a moment ago is that it is impossible for Twitter to take the set of actions that will satisfy all people, or probably even 90% of people. But what you can do that is unquote, is be completely transparent about what is it doing, what is it not doing, how does the algorithm work, and if an account is suspended, why is it suspended? If an account is deboosted, just showing that it's been deboosted or search banned and giving a reason for that so that there's maximum transparency in the system. So that even if you disagree with what's going on on Twitter, you at least can count what you learn on Twitter based on what Twitter's doing and not have a situation where Twitter is claiming to be fair and even handed and then actually is not being so, at least from your perspective.
Co-host
Do you have plans, Elon, to take Twitter public again in the future?
Host
So Tara's asking, by the way, James Wood, I've sent you an invite. Real James Wood, I've sent you an invite. Check your DMs. Tara's asking if you have any plans to take Twitter public again. And my question, I'll give you another question as well. My question is, what type of pressure, if any, have you faced since releasing the files? Did you hear me, Elon?
Co-host
It sounds like he is testing the new semi truck himself.
Elon Musk
Oh, you're back.
Elon Musk
You're back to everyone right now. So I'm on, actually. So we'll see how well Starlink works.
Host
It's working well now. It's working well now.
Co-host
I moved a couple of people down so we have. We can have a more civil conversation without too many speakers on stage. Because there are a couple of important questions that I want to ask you. The first one is, you know, obviously with your move of full transparency, you are putting the groundworks in place to justify why free speech on Twitter is so important and why you are making the decisions of, for example, a great amnesty for all users. And by showing that abuse has happened in the past and that Twitter, before it was under your control, was abusing their power, you're basically setting the stage to say, okay, people should all have their their rights unless they Broke the law, restored to be on Twitter. Is that right?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I mean, yes, that is the intent. Now, to be clear, we're all going to be doing this sort of slowly and deliberately. This can't be like, you know, let's open all the jails simultaneously and have it at it, guys. So it's going to be, you know, slower than people would like. It's more deliberate. I do have a lot of shit going on right now, so I can imagine I'm trying to do the most, that I'm plugging my human brain as hard as the most amount of work done. But like, this week alone, you know, we had a meeting with some national security.
Co-host
Starlink is also failing.
Elon Musk
Damn. It takes two months instead of one month. Two months instead of one month. That's a good timeline. And also I got to make sure Twitter is like stable from a financial standpoint and it's not losing tons of money and goes bankrupt, in which case we'll be. There's, you know, juggling a lot of things here, to say the least. But I think over time, not that long of a time iteratively, we can move Twitter to be a more broadly inclusive. So as many people as possible can participate and want to participate and as trusted and transparent as possible. And the proof will be in the pudding over time. And we're not going to please everyone. Obviously that's important, possible because, you know, if you say, like, what are the requests of everyone? You have a Venn diagram intersection of zero. But what can be done is maximum transparency. What can be done is making it clear when something has been deboosted or search banned, when your accounts can be search banned and why an account has been suspended, to be clear about why and whether it's temporary or what the path is to restore the account. And just I think that's something that can be done and will massively help with trust. In addition to. There's obviously a challenge that Twitter has had over time and I think this is generally an issue with social media, which is that it is digital technologies that require a lot of software to be written. And they've sort of come out of Silicon Valley. Almost all of them are still in Silicon Valley, except for Snap is in la, but it's based in California. But effectively what is happening is an export of the moral framework of San Francisco to Earth. Kind of a big deal and problematic because previously San Francisco just pretty far left. The influence would be limited to San Francisco, but now it affects the whole world because of the centralization of Information with social media companies. And that's, I think, not good. It's, you know, we need to establish something that is fair and takes into account a wide range of views and doesn't have a tilted playing field towards far left. Far, far left, San Francisco. I think there should be a place for the. You know, they can be on Twitter, too, but there should be a wide range of political views and sentiments and as much as reasonably possible, aim for freedom of speech.
Elon Musk
And generally, I want Twitter to be a force for good, for the future of civilization. So that's okay.
Co-host
Elon, can you tell us approximately how much time you have so that we can get an idea how many questions
Elon Musk
we can get in, I don't know, like, maybe half an hour or so.
Co-host
That's fantastic. That's very good. Hey, what I also see happening here is that the mainstream media that was part of covering up this Hunter Biden
Co-host
is now calling this, you know, some kind of fizzer, that they don't think that there's enough. You know, obviously they are acting in that way because they themselves are now on fire because you have exposed what they have done. What do you have to say to them?
Elon Musk
I'm sorry, could you repeat the question again? I'm in the air. So this is the. Like, it's not super optimal from an audience. So he asks you, what do you have to say to the media that's sort of downplaying what the Twitter files represent? Yeah, yeah. So he's asking you, what do you have to say to the media that's downplaying the Twitter files revelations, you know, because they're basically saying it's not a big deal, that it's nonsense, you know, that it's just crap, that you're just doing this for pr. What's your response to this?
Co-host
He may be having connection issues with you specifically? Ian, There are certain people up here that I can't hear either. So maybe Kim asked again.
Host
Yeah, Kim. Jon, ask your question again first. Elon, can you hear us? No, I think you can't hear anybody.
Elon Musk
I don't. I don't know if it's me.
Co-host
So he's either in a semi truck or he is on his plane.
Host
He said. He said he's on his plane.
Elon Musk
I'm in the air right now. I can hear you.
Co-host
I can hear. Okay, fantastic. So let me just repeat my question. The media, you know, especially the media that downplayed and censored the whole Hunter Biden story is now trying to downplay your Release, obviously, because they are under fire as well. Right. Because they have been exposed by this. By this release. What do you want to say to them? What do you want to say to the media that is trying to turn this into a nothing burger?
Elon Musk
Well, they're trying to turn it into a nothing burger because they were complicit in deceiving the American public. And so rather than admit that they lied to the public, they're trying to pretend that this is a nothing burger. Obviously, that's clearly what happened. Yeah. I mean, shame on them.
Co-host
Yeah, I agree with that. And then the other important thing here is that you are basically exposing collusion between a political party. And in one file that was released, it was even called the Biden team contacting Twitter. I mean, that is election interference, isn't it?
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, clearly, if Twitter is doing once before an election, shutting down dissenting voices on a pivotal election, that is the very definition of election interference. And what the hell else would you. Of course, it's like, yes, frankly, Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Commission. It was absurd.
Co-host
Well, and you know, that's fantastic that you're releasing that. But isn't Twitter just the tip of the iceberg? Can't we admit now that this would have happened and all big tech companies that are being used to stifle free speech and censor people and try to destroy stories that are dangerous to their political goals?
Elon Musk
I mean, the level of collusion is insane. Twitter is the one company that isn't. Is. That is no longer colluding and is no longer just going with the sort of NPC group thing. I don't know. You know, I should probably increase my security or something. Absolutely. I mean, this is why I hate you so much.
Co-host
What I find most interesting. And please, something here. Just a second. That would have been my next question. How worried are you personally? I mean, you're putting a lot on the line. You have all these businesses going. You are out there fighting the good fight for free speech. But there's also certainly a concern on your mind about what the response to
Elon Musk
this is going to be.
Co-host
Do you feel threatened? Do you feel worried?
Elon Musk
How do you feel personally about this?
Host
Yeah, and I'll add on to a question I asked as well, Elon, like, what type of pressure have you faced so far?
Elon Musk
Maybe I should be worried than I am. But I don't know. I think generally, if you do right by the people, then you have the people on your side. Elon, if you want, you can come to.
Host
Oh, you dropped out. Terry, can you hear me first, Elon, before I give the mic back to Kim. Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah, he dropped out. Can you hear me or not? Just so. No, if you can't hear me, I'll give the mic back to Kim. No, you can't hear me. Kim, take the mic.
Co-host
I was going to ask really quick of Senator Warren's response that one person, him should not have control over the narrative. Elon, I was saying you can come to Switzerland by.
Elon Musk
Well, yeah, I mean, obviously it's not one person has control of the narrative because there's the entire mainstream media establishment who all Talk like GroupThink, NPC, Facebook, there's Google, there's TikTok. No, the actual problem is there's one person who isn't toeing the line. That's the real problem.
Co-host
Thank you. That's the exact response that we needed.
Host
Yeah, I mean, that's Ian. Can you ask him a quick question as well? Because I don't think he can hear me.
Elon Musk
One person doesn't tow the line. Now everyone else is looking like, you
Co-host
know, well, now we're allowed to. Elon. And that's the issue is before we were at risk of being suspended or deplatformed.
Elon Musk
You're allowing. I mean, you're showing people that it's possible to do it. Competition does keep companies honest, or should. It is a force for keeping companies honest. So if there's a competition for the truth and Twitter wins the competition for the truth, then it will win over the readership and the attention of the public and everyone else will be forced to tell the truth too. Do you think that you run the risk of like the EU commission or any of these other big political bodies trying to take you down when you're doing this? I do not think this is a risk free endeavor, but I also think that as long as there's the support of the people, then you have to say, like any organization, at least in the US that is going to go against the will of the people, I think will be in big trouble themselves.
Co-host
You know, Elon, you're doing this at such an important time in history because I think people can sense that the censorship is becoming more. That the media is spilling more and more propaganda that we are heading into a future where free speech isn't really acceptable anymore. And for you with your audience, you know, to go out there and put this transparency out there, I think a lot of people appreciate that this is a fight that you are taking center stage in order to fix some of these issues?
Elon Musk
No, I mean, frankly, the risk of something bad happening to me, of even literally being shot is quite significant. I'm definitely not going to be doing any open air car parades, let me put it that way. But it's also not that hard to kill me if somebody wanted to. So hopefully they don't. And the fate smiles upon. It's hard security that does not happen. I'm not taking reasonable precautions, I guess, but there's definitely some risk here. But I mean, at the end of the day, I think we all just want to have a future where, you know, we're not oppressed or our speech is not suppressed and we can say what we want to say without fear of reprisals. And, you know, as long as you're not like really causing harm to somebody else, then you should be able to say what you want. And that's quite a rare thing. You know, I think people just take that for granted sometimes. But really, throughout history, free speech has been highly unusual. And so we have to fight very hard to keep that because it's such a rare thing. And it's by no means something that's default. It's a controlled speech default, not free speech. And yeah, it does seem incredibly ironic. So many reporters in the media and prominent politicians are calling for strains on free speech. This is crazy. It feels like we're in bizarro world here. Do you think that that comes from the way that journalism is taught now in today's schools and what we call postmodern journalism? Or where do you think that's really coming from? I mean, I haven't been, I haven't been to journalism school, but it does seem as though that the, the elite educational institution have been some infected virus which is sort of a set of the world virus, you know, so like, how much actual intellectual freedom and how much actual intellectual freedom is there at elite educational institution where you don't get completely shunned unless you abide by what everyone else thinks. And then what everyone else thinks is you're told what to think, not ask. You're sort of, you must think this. It's not like you have freedom to think and talk as you wish.
Elon Musk
What's the solution for this? I mean, like, obviously this is somehow, I think both the work mind virus and have truth be what matters more than anything. I mean, I think it's funny that, you know, Harvard's motto and the Harvard standard is Veritas. And the founders of Harvard were right to have that on their field. The Shield of truth. But is Harvard the shield of truth today? Maybe not.
Co-host
Well, you know, we're all on this date because of our belief in freedom to transact.
Elon Musk
And obviously Jack was a big bitcoin lightning guy.
Co-host
Can you comment on freedom to transact bitcoin lightning?
Elon Musk
Twitter, Anything we could, we can look forward to. Well, you know, I think that's actually more powerful even than, I think, controlling than censorship, which is control of the monetary system. If you have control of the monetary system and control of transaction, you can literally stop someone from, you can starve people to death, you know, can throw them out of their homes. So we have to be very careful about, like, who's controlling the money system here and what, what rules and regulations are they going to put on, on transactions. It seems like PayPal has strayed pretty far from the path of that. Like, they're, I've been banned from PayPal, seems to be moving in the direction of social credit and restricting transactions. And, you know, so that's, that's, that's concerning. So, and I do think there is a role for crypto in the future, without speaking to any particular crypto coin, as a means of ensuring that the monetary system does not get completely corrupted. It essentially is, it provides competition to the fiat system so that if the fiat system becomes overly restrictive, then crypto will grow. Like, basically, the better that the fiat works, the less prominent crypto will be, and the worse the fiat system becomes, the more crypto will grow. Are you concerned about the moves towards central bank digital currencies? I don't think they know what they're talking about. No, not really.
Co-host
A lot of people, A lot of people that FTX and the fallout there was a ploy to push us toward that centralization.
Elon Musk
And the digital dollar fallen flat in its face now.
Elon Musk
Well, well, this. I think they're complaining a few things. First of all, all money is almost, almost all money is digital already. The, the, the fiat monitoring system, for practical purposes, consists of a series of heterogeneous mainframes running antiquated cobol. That's the actual money system, by the way. It's kind of embarrassing. It's not like some rickety mainframes running ancient cobalt empty and running and doing everything in batch mode. That's the actual monetaries, the fiat monetaries.
Host
Elon, I've got. Can you hear me first? Is it working now or.
Elon Musk
No, but it is digital, but not in a very good way. Whether banks create their own cryptocurrencies, I think people will use the cryptocurrencies that they think will accrue value over time and not use the ones that don't.
Elon Musk
Hey, Elon, could you shed some spill
Co-host
the beans on the whole SBF Binance and Twitter fundraise?
Elon Musk
I think there's not much. Not many beans to spill here. I had one conversation with SBF in May. It was like half an hour, and he was just talking like a mile a minute. I think he was clearly on some stimulants. And he kept talking about himself and ftx, which is weird because the call was supposed to be about Twitter. And I was like, should you want to ask me some questions about Twitter instead of talking about yourself? The vibe I got there was like my bullshit meter, like, was redlining. So I'm like. But I. But everyone kept saying, you know, Morgan Stanley and lots of other people kept saying, oh, SPF is the best and he's got tons of money. And so that's why I agreed to speak to him. But then I, like I said, he set up my bullshit meter and which, frankly, I don't think this was like, deeply deep, deep insight wasn't necessary. If someone's calling you to talk about investing in big transaction, they should be asking questions about the transaction, not talking about. About themselves and talking at the speed of an auctioneer. So that didn't require deep insight to figure out that the bullshit factor is high.
Co-host
You didn't end up with any client funds accidentally. Yeah, so unfortunately, Mario is having connection issues, so you're unable to hear them. And Mario, I was going to say my DMs are open if you want to relay comments or questions for Elon there, and I can try to help field those. And also, Alex is one of the accounts that was wrongfully suspended by Twitter and you fortunately brought back. I wanted to give him the opportunity to ask you a question because he's had his hand up, if that's okay.
Elon Musk
Sure. Hey, so I was under also cover requests by the Biden campaign and the DNC to censor.
Host
Yeah, we can't. We can't hear you, Alex. We can't hear you.
Elon Musk
I can barely hear Alex.
Host
Yeah, tell Elon to mute his mic and unmute.
Elon Musk
Probably, but I cannot hear him.
Host
Yeah, tell Elon to mute and unmute just so we can hear Alex, because I think Elon's background noise is muting. Alex. Someone tell Elon. Elon can't hear me, so you have to tell him. Kimotaro.
Co-host
Yeah, I'm telling him that he can't hear you. That's okay. Just give me one second here real quick. Elon, you said something, you know, really important, and that is that truth matters. And, you know, this is really what this is all about, because without truth, free speech, we don't have truth. And I would like to ask you, what is your opinion about Julian Assange and Edward Snowden? Shouldn't those guys be center stage when it comes to free speech and truth? You know, shouldn't the US Government leave Julian Assange alone and let him be a journalist?
Elon Musk
You know, I don't know enough about the Assange situation to give an accurate answer. I mean, there are things where, you know, that where national security stuff is involved, you know, I think do need to be kept secret. And just because, you know, there's like nuclear secrets that there are, you know, the things where bad actors, if they had access to that information, could do bad things. So.
Co-host
Yeah, but when, when a journalist exposes war crimes, right? When a government just goes and invades a country and kills people, you know, against international law, like when exposures like this are being made, isn't that important so people see the reality of wars and understand how some of that stuff is really bad?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I mean, I generally think that people should, like I said, that people should have be able to know what's going on in order to make sensible decisions. And I just don't know enough about the Assange situation to say whether, you know, it should be punished or not punished. But I do think that I'm generally in favor of freedom of information. And like, if there's any doubt, we should lean on the side of freedom of information.
Co-host
And how about, how about Eckwood Snowden, who has revealed these mass surveillance program where the government is spying on everyone and storing all their data in these massive spy clouds, also against the law, you know, where the five eyes are working together to undermine their local laws and their local restrictions on spying. And they just spy on each other and then share the data so that they know everything about everyone. How do you feel about that?
Elon Musk
Probably the best thing would be a jury of the public, you know, so if Snowden were to be, I don't know. Look, I power in this situation, but ultimately the people of the United States should be the ones who judge Snowden, not, not, you know, select people in the government. If a jury of peers, of citizens were to review Snowden and make a judgment as to whether he's guilty or not, I think that would probably be the appropriate course of action.
Co-host
Yeah, the only Problem is that if he were to be in a US Court, he wouldn't get a fair trial because under Espionage act laws, you cannot even make a public interest defense. He wouldn't even be able to say, I've done that because it's the right thing for Americans to know about that. So that would be a defense that is not available to him. So to say, you know, a jury of your peers should decide about that, it's a problem.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's no easy answer to the Snowden situation. And I. But yeah.
Co-host
Can I make a suggestion, Elon? Why don't you do a poll to your millions of users and ask them if they think Julian Assange and Edward Snowden should be given their piece for the service that they have provided to humanity.
Elon Musk
Okay, that's a good idea. Sure. I like that idea.
Co-host
I'm going to ask a question on Mario's behalf really quick. Since he's unable to speak to Elon, which has to be extremely frustrating. As the host, he was just curious if you've faced any pressure so far since releasing the Twitter files.
Elon Musk
I mean, I face pressure all the time, so it's kind of. It would say, like, what's the differential in pressure before and after? Because I don't. But I'm not. I haven't seen it yet. I don't know, maybe there's pressure, but I. I might not be feeling it because I just. Every day is high pressure, situation, situation. But I don't know. Like I said, we're just gonna put all the information out there, try to get a clean slate, and then work iteratively in the future to provide the most truthful, accurate and timely information to people. That will be the goal of Twitter. And we won't be perfect in that regard, but I think we will be iteratively better. And if that turns out, if we're successful in doing so, then I think Twitter will compete more effectively than any other source of information. And then more and more people will use Twitter, and then that competitive pressure will force other social media companies and other media companies to also be more truthful, because otherwise they will simply lose their readership. And that, I think, is extremely powerful and good vision. Could you say a little bit perhaps about what Twitter is expected to maintain as an API to, say, the Department of Homeland Security in general, the FBI, maybe CISA in particular? Is there an expected way in which
Co-host
the government can jack in to social
Elon Musk
media that's expected on behalf of each of the big media platforms and Is that sort of different? I don't know how to say this
Co-host
exactly, but the issue of left versus
Elon Musk
right is complicated by the fact that
Co-host
Trump is a non player to the
Elon Musk
game, just the way Bernie might have been considered a non player to the game. And the secondary question is how much of this isn't about left versus right, but about targeting anyone who isn't a party to all of the tacit agreements inside D.C.
Co-host
Can you still hear us, Elon? Elon, you still there?
Host
He's disconnected. It says disconnected for me at least. I'll invite him. I'll invite him again.
Host
Oh, he's back. He's back.
Co-host
Such a pity that he couldn't hear you, man. That is just crazy.
Host
No, it's fine, man. It's fine. Like, you know me. I'm listening. I'm happy listening. Can you guys hear me at least?
Elon Musk
Yeah, we can hear you.
Co-host
Yeah, Loud and clear.
Host
Dara, thanks for asking the question. I really, I was really curious about it, but it says for me, he's still a speaker. Can anyone see him as a speaker?
Elon Musk
I can see him as a speaker. He's not speaking.
Host
Last time. Last time he was here, Kim, you were there as I think Kim, you commented. And he joined he. When we co hosted him. Remember, Kim? We co hosted him and it froze.
Co-host
I think he's dropped off now.
Host
Yeah, I'll send him. I'll send him an invite. A few people got kicked off stage, not even by you, came just by themselves, but just guys, give you a heads up. Twitter's glitching. What's your take while waiting for Elon? Guys, guys, what's your take so far on what Elon has said? Because there's a few pretty big things you mentioned, such as the fear, the worry that he has.
Co-host
Just to summarize what he said.
Co-host
I mean, his main goal clearly is that the truth is out there, that it has value again and that Twitter needs to make a stand for free speech, which he is doing now. And he is aware of the risk to him personally and his businesses. So it's a very courageous thing for him to do. And I think, you know, anyone who had any doubt about what his intentions are when he bought Twitter, I think it's pretty clear that what he's doing is in the interest of the people and not necessarily in his own best interest. So I find that amazing and I applaud him for that.
Host
Yeah. And while waiting. While waiting, I've DM'd him. I've DM'd him another invite. What do you guys think of his. I know he was. I'm not sure he's saying it as a joke, but his sick. Security. Fear. Fear on his. On his security, I think.
Elon Musk
I don't think he has anything really to worry about. I mean, I don't think anyone's really gonna come at him right now because it'd be too obvious why they'll be going after him. So I think he's quite safe and he does have security. So personally, I'm not concerned. Although at the same time, you know, there's. He does have security for a reason, right? He is the world's richest man, so there's that. But I'm not really. I don't think it's going to be different than any other day. There's nothing that he's revealing now that is, you know, that damaging to, you know, any specific person. Right. It's like he's. He's more or less just giving people the platform for free speech. And the people who are most affected by this are journalists to, you know, what do they have to lose? Well, their reputations, for one. But they've already thrown it away. So I don't think it's. You know, I don't think he really has this to worry about, his personal safety. I don't think it's going to be that dire.
Host
Elon. Just to let you know, Elon is listening now. I've sent you through an invite. You should see it via dm. So I sent you through the invite to come back on stage, so hopefully it works. It might take a bit of time because space is glitching like crazy. It is everyone else, Mario. Everyone else.
Elon Musk
Yeah, go ahead, Mario.
Co-host
There's some back feed coming from you. I'm not sure if you have your audio playing in the background, but there I can hear you twice. I don't know if anyone else is having that issue.
Elon Musk
Oh, I can hear him twice.
Host
Okay, I'll try to fix it. By the way, everyone, I'm just going to tweet the next space link now to set your reminders for the next space. I'll fix my audio. Kim?
Co-host
Yeah. Let's hope that Elon comes back, if he has a chance. I mean, first of all, how amazing is that, that he joins us from his private chat? You know, to be part of this space? That's just typical Elon.
Elon Musk
It's so cool. I mean, it's a historical moment, right? I mean, he's a part of it. I mean, he's he's the part of it. So, I mean, thank you.
Host
He's back, guys. Just FYI, Elon, let me see if he can hear me this time. Elon, can you hear me or still. No.
Elon Musk
Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you.
Host
Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad you can hear me. I'm glad you can hear me again. So I think, Kim, you were asking a question now.
Co-host
I was just saying how cool it is that you talk to us from your private chat. You know, we really appreciate it. It's like a typical Elon moment, and we're just all in awe about you, you know, taking these risks to your business and to yourself to fight for free speech. So I said to everyone who had doubts about your intentions when you bought Twitter, you are making your intentions very clear, and I think it's very courageous of you, and I want to thank you for that.
Elon Musk
No, you're most welcome. I mean, like I said, the proof will be in the pudding. Over time, there will be many mistakes made, but iteratively, I think the net vector should be towards truth. If sort of new Twitter is successful in that, then the results will be that people will turn to Twitter to understand what is true, what is real, what narratives matter. Twitter will gain a lot of readership and attention and will put a lot of competitive pressure on mainstream media and on other social media companies to also be more truthful, because otherwise they will simply keep losing people to Twitter. And that's where the competition can be a very good thing. But it's not going to be perfect, and there's going to be decisions that people disagree with. But if, on balance, the overall decisions are ones that people do agree with, then they will gravitate towards Twitter, and Twitter will be successful and will gain share from other sources of media, and it will cause those other sources of media to then stop toeing the line and to sort of be more truthful.
Host
Just a quick question, Elon. What's the biggest risk in your opinion, from the steps you've taken in terms of releasing the files? Do you see any risks for Twitter?
Elon Musk
I mean, I guess there'll probably be some. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if some lawsuits or something, you know. Yeah, I would expect there to be some legal risk. What's important that's less of a concern than, you know, clearing the air and making sure that people of Earth know what really happened.
Host
The Twitter metrics show that it seems like it's the right decision by far, not only ethically, but from a business perspective. As well that you keep hitting new records.
Elon Musk
Yeah, exactly. So like I said, it's the point, as it becomes clear that Twitter is the place actually figure out what's going on and get the unfiltered narrative, the unfiltered truth. Also for the people of Twitter to be able to digest narratives and steer them and emphasize narratives themselves and have things not be controlled like it is with the so called mainstream media where the narrative is controlled by a handful of editors in chief, effectively the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post and maybe a few others decide what the narrative is. And so even if what they say is completely truthful, the people don't really get a choice in what topics are covered, whereas on Twitter they do. And, and you know, like there could be something really important going on in the world and then the big news organizations aren't covering it, but on Twitter the people can decide what narratives are important and what should be emphasized and what should, you know. Yeah. So that's on that note.
Co-host
Can I mention something really quick that. Can I just mention something really quick? I can hear you.
Elon Musk
I just want to ask a quick question. Twitter is doing or what you are doing, what you're planning to allow people to have more ability to publish their own stories on Twitter? Because right now we just have tweets. Right, but what are your plans for say video publication or article publication? Things to incentivize creators and journalists, independent journalists, to be able to have their voices heard for more than just tweets? Yeah, absolutely. These are all very obvious moves. One needs to be able to obviously post long form written content on Twitter. One needs to be able to post long, long videos and long audio on Twitter natively. And there obviously needs to be a means of monetizing that so that creators can make a living. Those are, I feel like I'm saying that the sky is blue and the grass is green. That's pretty obvious stuff. In order to implement those things, Twitter needs to have a strong software engineering organization that is focused on serving grade code and was quite a minute before. And net Registered will have a strong engineering team and be able to implement those basic features that even if there are lots of limitations, well then they can post it on Twitter and then Twitter can be an effective competitor to YouTube. And then like I said, what happens with. When there is competition for the truth and everyone and one company steps out of line and actually really does allow truth to flourish, it's going to put a lot of competitive pressure on other organizations to do the same thing.
Co-host
Can you talk about whether or not the effort to supposedly pre bunk mal
Elon Musk
information, which is to take real information and then if it's imaging to a narrative to put fear, uncertainty and doubt around it, is there an attempt through the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or CISA or any of these groups to tell Twitter that it has to maintain a port so that information can come from the government to say
Co-host
we need this information pre bunked?
Elon Musk
Well, I mean if there is any sort of request from the US government that is not in accordance with the law or can be legally fought, Twitter will refuse legal. And if something should not be legally conquered such that it can be, but we cannot gag the voice of the people. This is not good. And like I said earlier, it's like you look at, look at. I read a lot of history. I love, love history and I love history podcasts and stuff. Hardcore history is the best one. Hardcore history. Dan Collin is so awesome. It's fantastic. Start with the Mongols. Start with the Mongols. Yeah, but it's like you look through history, man, and it's like we're just, we have this pressure. We're in this precious situation where like it's rare unusual situation where there's actually, you know, I mean within boundaries there's, there is actually freedom of speech, but it's in history and usually it's like been some king or whatever that's just. They were just by default. And now we have this like rare moment in history where the boys, the people is mostly not suppressed, but now there are people trying to suppress it and we just find really hard for freedom of speech. This is very, I think essential future of civilization. I absolutely agree with you. I mean this is why you're fighting, right? This is why, you know, you're fighting for free speech so that we can have it in the future. Because we don't have control of the present, we do not have control of the future. It will be in the control of somebody else. Someone that we absolutely do not want to be in control of anything. Yeah, exactly.
Co-host
Just to chime in there, you know, there are a lot of people in the last decade that have lost hope because what's happening in politics, what's happening in the media, there's so much frustration. And I think the most important thing that you've done here, Elon, with your steps that, that you are taking, is to give people hope again.
Elon Musk
Well, great. I mean, I'm really glad to hear that. And like I said, I'll do my best here. You Know, I'm definitely going to make some mistakes along the way and won't be perfect, but I'll also then do my best to correct those mistakes and to be, you know, the least dumb possible. As I say, vox populi, vox dei man. It's like. Yeah, I mean, it's a very white pilling moment to have you fight this fight. You know, I mean, a lot of us have been fighting this culture war for free speech basically. And you know, I think a lot of people have lost hope because they didn't see anyone caring about it. Right. It's like the majority of people obviously do care, but they just don't know what to do. And yeah, it's true what, what Kim said. Just to echo what he said, thank you for fighting this fight. I mean, this is very, very important. It's not just you, it's not just me, it's all of us. Absolutely. I totally agree.
Elon Musk
I mean, I'm like, I mean, I feel like sort of, you know, worried about the future of civilization. You know, like, are we headed in a good, good, good direction? Like if you study history, you sort of see like the, the arc, the arc of civilizations, the rise and fall. You know, there's the Sumerians, the ancient Egyptian, and in India and China there have been many sort of rises and falls of civilizations within India and China. And it's just like people sometimes take for granted that because they've been in an upcycle, things just get better in the future. And they don't just automatically get better. They actually civilizations tend to have an arc. We want to make sure that we do not find ourselves on the downslope of that arc. Yeah, good times make weak men. Right? And we are in the good times right now and we're seeing a lot of weak men. Right. Like that's where we are in this arc and it sucks. So let's try not to repeat the same cycle. We need to fight the cycle. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, not to sort of get like too philosophical about things here, but there is, there is like sort of a. You know, I've had these discussions with like a lot of people and feel like I'm wondering like, what's the meaning of life? Like, what should we do? Like, why, why do anything? You know? And you know, for some people that answer is religious. But then if you're not sort of very religious, then what, what is the answer? Actually, my theory on that is that I sort of believe in Douglas Adams philosophy, the universe is the answer. And we should strive through greater understanding, to expand the scope and scale of consciousness, to better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. You know, it's basically a religion of curiosity. Like, let's grow into the future, expand in the future, expand consciousness, expand our understanding, and figure out what the heck's going on. And it's the number 42. Number 42 as well. And also, you know, don't panic and make sure you grab a towel. Elon, thanks for.
Co-host
Without giving away too much, really quick, Elon, is there any way to get a sneak peek of what we can expect with the next Twitter files drop?
Elon Musk
Well, I'm somewhat leaving this up to Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss, but I think the natural thing would be to say, like, okay, what happened after the election? The Hunter Biden laptop stuff. And by the way, I actually don't. This may sound bizarre, but Hunter Biden seems kind of fun, to be honest. I know, right? Yeah. He's an artist. Do you know that? He seems like he knows how to have a good time. I mean, he has a sense of humor about himself, so. But just beyond the, you know, what happens, what happened after the election? You know, how much government influence was there? You know, like, there's this whole sort of move to create a disinformation ministry, which was insane. And, like, George Orwell is turning in his grave. Did you hear such things? But, like, what happened with, you know, with that, you know, I think there was a public outcry about disinformation. Yeah. Jack Krasovic started that one. He basically stopped it in its tracks because before that, nobody knew that this was even a thing. Right. And he exposed it, and suddenly everybody was talking about it, and they had to shut it down because it was very Orwellian. It was like they used 1984 as an instruction manual. Exactly. Totally. Exactly. 1984 is George Orwell's. 1984 is supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. Yep. And that's what they seem to be doing. They take every single, you know, dystopian fiction, whether it's dsx. I love that game. And. And they're like, yeah, this world looks awesome. Let's impress the hell out of people. It's like, no, let's not do that. Exactly. Totally. Hey, Elon, speaking of progress, you've accomplished so much. You started the first successful American car company in 100 years. You brought payments to the Internet. There's a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners that look at what
Co-host
you do and sort of try to,
Elon Musk
you know, follow that example and see how can they create some of that progress too. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about the layoffs, because it appeared to me with the $4 million loss per day and just doing the math on the billion dollars of interest expense, that $3 million of that may have been interest expense added. And I myself, running a small business, have been in a situation where, you know, the business was going to go under in a number of months if expenses weren't cut, you know, and what we found is communicating to employees, giving
Co-host
them time to process, getting their feedback
Elon Musk
and then, you know, creating a shared vision to evolve the product, to evolve the company to it, to a greater future was, was really successful. And it appears here that the typical, like, leverage buyout KKR approach was basically
Co-host
applied from a financial standpoint, you know,
Elon Musk
for a small business owner. Like, you know, is that approach wrong? Like, did you think about taking that approach? You know, was that ever under consideration? I apologize. Like, like the audio is not, not perfect. So I'm not fully hearing the questions. But you know, with respect to Twitter, you know, the company basically tripled headcount in about two years, a little over two years, but revenue is flat to declining. So that there's just no way that that is going to be a healthy situation. So the first order of business with Twitter was like, okay, we got to make sure Twitter doesn't die, that doesn't go bankrupt. There is quite a lot of debt on the steel, 12 and a half billion of debt. And Fed is being extremely unwise in its very giant rate increases. I think these will go down as some of the most foolish Fed decisions ever. But anyway, so the debt's got to be serviced and, but you know, KKR has been loading up businesses like that for years. How's this different? KKR and other private equity companies that, you know, do any, anything from a
Co-host
hostile takeover, you know, or any sort
Elon Musk
of takeover where they, where they bid over the current price using leverage, using debt. You know, I've been following that for years and it always results in massive layoffs. And so as somebody who's, by the
Co-host
way, I don't think anybody cares about that. I don't think that matters. Right. And I was going to say, as
Elon Musk
long as they keep moving the bar
Co-host
and changing the definition of a recession,
Elon Musk
we are where we are.
Co-host
Right. Back on topic here, you know, I mean, we have Elon. We don't need to talk about, you know, his investments and things like that. Elon, we should send a shout out to the Twitter Spaces team because you're about to break the all time record with this space. We're almost at 100,000 listeners right now.
Host
And it's talking about, talking about Spaces. What's the strategy moving forward?
Elon Musk
Look, I have to tell you, there are really some amazing people at Twitter and there's actually some amazing people who actually left Twitter in recent years and I hope they come back because I think there's a potential to just build some amazing things here. So, you know, I don't want to just, I want to be exactly complimentary of some of the great work that is being done on Twitter. So, you know, it's sort of, you know, like, I mean there's a lot to criticize about Twitter and say like, okay, Twitter, we're wasting money in a lot of really subnet ways, but to also spare talented people who really care about the truth of Twitter. And I'm doing my best to elevate their capabilities and give them all the resources they need. I'm very excited about Community Notes, this feature. You know, Keith Fulman's running it and there's like some really first rate engineers that are writing the code on that, on that product that is I think going to be very powerful for fighting, for actually fighting disinformation. Not. Not can we actually see that if we're not. If we're not enrolled in Community Notes. Right. Like right now the rest of the world isn't. Right. It's just the United States and I think Canada to my knowledge. But can you at least make it visible to other people? So even if we're not able to, to contribute, we can at least view it because yeah, I feel kind of left out. I'm in Malaysia, so, you know, it's kind of hard to see it. Yeah, actually I actually I asked that. I sent a note to Keith almost saying like, hey, shouldn't we just at least make this visible everywhere? And then he said we needed to talk in person about that. But I'm not sure what. Hey, Elon, we did, we did want to say on the Twitter spaces, during the blowout of SBF and ftx, all the other companies in crypto, there's been
Co-host
massive financial losses for many people, obviously. But Twitter Spaces actually became the place
Elon Musk
that drove the community together. And we've been sharing lots of stories. There were people that were suicidal because
Co-host
of the financial loss and because of
Elon Musk
the community in Twitter Spaces. It prevented them taking their life.
Host
There's lots. And to add to it as well, Elon last time, if you remember, when you joined the space about Sam, that space ended up going for 16 hours and for three, four days the media was in our space getting the news from the space for four days, five days straight, and then writing stories on it day after day. And I think Simon was there, Kim was there. So I think it's the first time it happens to that extent on Twitter Spaces, and we're probably doing it again today.
Co-host
Yeah, and this type of citizen journalism that you are enabling is so powerful, you know, because we are the news now. If people want to learn the truth, they go to Twitter and join these spaces. You know, it's like real time with experts. It's fantastic. And then we have people like you joining in and sharing their opinions and their thoughts. What is more powerful than that? The traditional media can pack and it's game over for them. Elon, would you ever consider holding a space for Earth earnings for Tesla right here live on Twitter?
Elon Musk
Oh, man. I have to say, Tesla being a poly company, it just creates such a gigantic attack surface for all for legal firms in the U.S. especially these class action firms. Yeah, that seems like a bad idea.
Co-host
I've been to spaces that other CEOs held and they did their earnings live right on Twitter and I thought it was quite amazing.
Elon Musk
Okay, well, yes, sure, I'm happy to do it. Yeah. You've made, you've made.
Host
Eli, you just made two promises. You've made two promises, man. Now you've made this one and you've made one to Kim about the. You made a promise to Kim about the poll and now you made a promise to hold the Tesla meeting here on Spaces. So just, I'll remind you afterwards about it as well.
Elon Musk
I've been getting a lot of pressure. I will do those things. Yeah.
Host
So I've been getting a lot of
Elon Musk
questions from people who are just bombarding me just to ask you, right, because you know, we're in the space, they're asking, what are you going to do about the shadow banning situation? Because, like, I'm personally search banned. I'm not shadow banned, but I am search banned. And I'm not sure what's even up with that. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I've only been on the job like a month, guys, so just, there's definitely. I've got a long list of things to do. A general we need to say, like your account could actually just tell you you are search banned or you are deboosted or whatever it is and why and what the process is. For fixing that. Now this week I should tell you that we did, we were probably a little overzealous and that's, if anything that's my fault because I'm just trying to get rid of the damn scams and spam and bots and stuff. And so in trying to stamp out or reduce the bot spam scam stuff, there will be some false positives. So that's just this week. But it's going to be an iterative journey towards truth and towards a healthier system. Just to be patient. At any given point it will be broken, but it will be moving as quickly as possible towards a good place. And I encourage people to, you know, complain about it and whatnot. But it's just, it will, it will move iterately, iteratively towards a good place. That's the goal. And I generally move pretty fast. So on the net, the net to some of those to say over time.
Host
By the way. Kim, check my DMs. Kim, check my DMs. Jim, check my DMs because I'm having glitches. So I might need your help with a few things. Elon, you're back.
Elon Musk
Elon. Yep, yep, he's there.
Host
Oh, you're back. Another, another question. I think you've made a reference once to WeChat. I think that was a while ago and I don't recall it correctly. Does that reference still stand today? Is that a potential vision for Twitter?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I was just using WeChat as an example. It's not like you would copy WeChat exactly, but it's just WeChat does a lot of, has a lot of functionality that Twitter should have. Like it's kind of a no brainer for Twitter to have payments, both fiat currency and crypto and to make that that and simple for people to use. As we talked about earlier, adding the ability to post long form written content and video content and to be able to monetize that easily. Nice to have a playlist, you know, like YouTube does. Yeah. My focus in the first month and also will be the case in December is just making sure that Twitter is operating efficiently as a company. That it is not that it's not wasting money because it faces challenges on the revenue front with an over dependence on advertising that is not targeted like brand advertising and in a market where advertising revenue in general is dropping. And then also when you start questioning the status quo, then various pressure groups start pressuring advertisers to not advertise with you. So that's another, you know, challenge on the revenue front. And then you got the debt, and the debt has. Now has a very high interest rate. So it's like, these are a lot of challenges simultaneously to that. I think we'll, you know, we'll solve these challenges, but these are a lot of things to solve. So the first order of business is just get Twitter healthy, make sure its expenditures are reasonable. That, you know, Twitter is, like, primarily a software company. There are obviously design elements, but it's primarily software and servers. And so, like, is the software team organized? Well, those that are committing code, committing good code, and just making the engine of engineering work at Twitter. Because if you look at, say, like, what is Twitter's evolution? Technology evolution over time, excluding acquisitions, it's been very low technology. Twitter has been very slow. Ten years of an edit button. Yeah, exactly, the edit button. Look, I mean, if it takes a year to do an edit button and the edit button still doesn't work properly, then you can have a million good ideas, but they're irrelevant because you can't implement them.
Host
So, Elon, I've got a quick question
Elon Musk
for you, my friend. I was removed from the. Hey, I want to test my mic. Can you guys hear me? I can hear you.
Host
Can you hear me? Alex? We can hear you. Yeah, go ahead, Alex, ask. Okay. Does Alex want to go? And then I can go.
Elon Musk
Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, so my question was if the files. Are those also going to include other content other than. So basically all cases. Yeah, Mario, we can't hear you.
Co-host
This is a bit of an audio shit show. Let's try and get this back on the road. I unmuted everyone. I muted everyone. I'm going to unmute. Those who are not talking. Just mute yourself, please.
Elon Musk
I would like to ask Elon a quick question.
Co-host
I think Alex just did, and he was ready to respond. He just now would have to unmute himself to respond to Alex.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I was just wondering if all accounts that were requested to have things taken down by the DNC and by the Biden campaign, even ones that have nothing to do with the Hunter Biden laptop, if they will also be released. Elon, you're muted.
Host
He's got to unmute. Yeah, you got on it?
Elon Musk
Yeah, he's got unmute. Sorry. Yes. The intent is to release all the files. So it's not like anything that's hidden or anything.
Co-host
I can't hear anybody.
Host
He dropped out. Is my mic good, Kim, by the way? Is my mic okay?
Co-host
You just Sound like you are. You are in. Okay.
Elon Musk
Yeah, we can hear you now. You cut out. Yeah, you cut out for a second while you were answering, Alex. I mean, I think this is, you know, this is like whatever Stasi files or, you know, truth and reconciliation, like Nelson Mandela would say, you know, it's. If you want reconciliation, there must be truth. That's. That's the intention. Intent here is to just make. Make it clear what was happening and provide transparency about the past, and in doing so, to build trust about the future. Awesome. So do you think that Twitter could also, like, have an automatic notification if anyone was, say, if their account was requested, taken down? Do you think there could be something, like, implemented? Yeah, like the VPN sites actually offer that. Yeah, I mean, you mean it's like. Like, if a government has a takedown request or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Hey, we want you censored. I mean, I think.
Elon Musk
Like, even Germany would let you know. Right. So why doesn't America. Yeah. Or with James woods, for example, how his content was. They requested his content be removed. Say if that happened for. From, like, the Biden campaign. Yeah, I. Past and future requests should be. And sunshine is a great disinfectant if, you know, if they request content takedowns that are embarrassing, then they'll be less likely to request those content takedowns. At the end of the day, Twitter doesn't have a choice but to abide by the laws of the US and whatever countries it's operating, otherwise, get arrested. We shouldn't do more than that. Abide by the laws because you have to. And, you know, if there may be. There may be some potential to say, like, well, if we disagree with the law, maybe we can lobby to have a law changed or something like that. But.
Host
So, Elon, I want to ask you on this point. Go ahead.
Elon Musk
Sorry. No, but I'm saying, like, saying, like, the overarching goal here is that on balance, that Twitter be a force for good, for the future of civilization, and for the expansion of consciousness.
Host
So to that point, I want to
Elon Musk
ask you then, because I'm speaking from the European lens, what do you think about the EU's proposals over potential restrictions to the Ukraine? I think they're losing you a little bit or equally.
Host
I know you had a little bit
Elon Musk
of a, shall we say, fanfare with Alex Vindman earlier this week. I was wondering if you would be
Host
interested in a space with you and
Elon Musk
him, since I know him. The week ago we had a chat. I invite you to, if you'd be interested if you'd be interested,
Co-host
don't waste your time with the intelligence community.
Co-host
I'm teasing, I'm teasing, I'm teasing.
Host
But I am curious about your thoughts
Elon Musk
on the European Union perspective. Well, actually a lot of the EU rules polka call for things that I agree with, which is transparency and an ability for users to appeal and have a clear process. So I think in terms of the Digital Services Act, I think it's mostly good. I think we have to watch the implementation of it and make sure the implementation is not bad for the people of Europe. But the actual, you know, I think most of what is in there I agree with. You know, because it's transparency and accountability. It seems quite sensible. We just need to make sure that that is not warped in a bad direction. But generally I, you know, I agree with it, or at least what I know of it today. I have a question for you, Elon.
Co-host
We don't allow governments to define what misinformation or disinformation is. Right. I mean, that is, is probably the most dangerous development to give governments that kind of power that they become the deciders of what's good and what is not.
Elon Musk
Yeah, no, that is a big deal. I agree. That goes to the heart of the situation. You don't want to have governments and especially it may not even be sort of. It may not be an elected official, maybe someone who's potentially a mid level executive in a ministry who people don't even know exists and was never elected despite being in a democratic country. What about the China protests? What role do you think that Twitter can have in helping to support Iran, Ukraine, China and other countries that are facing, you know, technological oppression and limitation in their access to freedom of speech? Well, I mean, yeah, like I said, we'll do whatever is possible within the bounds of, you know, I have a kind of a personal question and I've been curious, you know, was there a breaking point that made you decide to want to buy Twitter? That's a good question.
Co-host
I was hoping you would say the child exploitation that you've done more to get rid of in the past month than they did in the past 10 years on Twitter. And I wanted to thank you for that. And I'm sorry that the media has completely snubbed you on mentioning the fact that you guys have gone above and beyond to make that happen. And Eliza Blue, thank you for your work and efforts there.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I'd like to say thank Eliza Blue. I would like to thank Andrea as well. We've actually had. This is actually Like a really good case of, you know, crowdsourcing, of having people on Twitter actually help solve the child exploitation stuff. It's actually. It is. It is true, yes. Twitter has done more to stop child exploitation in the last month than probably the last 10 years. That insane. It kind of blows my mind, frankly. And we're gonna keep doing it, and it's always gonna be number one. I mean, it's like kids can't defend themselves. So we must.
Co-host
Mario, we can't hear you. Mario. You sound like a mosquito now.
Host
Sounds like he's in the toilet, to be honest.
Co-host
Elon, do you still have plans to drop the W? Everyone is asking.
Elon Musk
I mean, technically, the poll did come out positive on that.
Co-host
The people have spoken.
Elon Musk
No, the people have not spoken. But more to my question, like, I don't think you answered that. Like, I want to know, like, what was the breaking point? I think a lot of people want to know this one. Like, what was the breaking point that
Co-host
made you want to buy Twitter?
Elon Musk
First of all, I suppose if Twitter had been. If I'd been able to buy Twitter sooner, then I might have actually done that. You know, they had a situation where my liquidity was enough and Twitter's value is, you know, you know, there was essentially a closing price. Like, would I actually have. That wasn't the case until recently, but I guess the. It just felt like it really had been building for. For some time. So I wouldn't say there was like, it wasn't like a step change. Suddenly there's a one thing it's not like, oh, the Babylon B got banned, that's why. Or Twitter. That would be crazy. It's more that the. There just seemed to be like this more and more and group think amongst the media more and more sort of toeing the line amongst digital social media company basically just we're traveling the path more and more of oppression of free speech. And this was just getting me concerned. It's like the trends were just very, very bad. So unless something was done to reverse this trend against free speech, then I felt, well, maybe that, you know, at some point everything will just get cut off. And unless you're in agreement with whatever the group think is, you're just going to be ostracized or your voice will be shut off. So like I said, it wasn't any one thing. It was just like, okay. And I can't exactly say why, because it's like one of those things where it's like. It's just that my biological neural net is important to Buy Twitter and you know, just like with a digital neural net, you can't really exactly explain why the neural net is able to understand or text or just say that the collective result of the neural net says that this is an important action or this is the right action. And my biological neural net concluded that it was important to buy Twitter and that if Twitter was not bought and steered in a good direction would be a danger for the future of civilization. And so that's why I. That's why I bought it. That's brilliant, Elon Musk.
Co-host
And, and you mentioned the biological neural net and the digital neural net. When is neuralink going to be ready to copy our consciousness into a forever?
Elon Musk
Where can I sign up for it? Because I would love to have my brain augmented. You know, it's like cyberpunk. Yeah, exactly. We're just going full cyberpunk at this point. Elon, I want to aside to that, I'm sure you're familiar with Doctor who, right? And the Cybermen and this idea of a centralized system by which you can influence people's thoughts. Is that not a consideration that you have on your radar, if you get what I'm coming from? Well, I mean, frankly, on the neural link front, if I look at the pace at which artificial intelligence is improving versus the pace at which neuralink is, are progressing, artificial intelligence is moving much faster than the neuralink is moving because as soon as anything gets done with humans, it gets very slow because of the danger to humans. I mean, for the next few years, neuralink is really just focused on storing movement to people that have a broken neck or spine and restoring vision. So it's restoring movement and vision. It's not, you know, uploading memories or controlling thoughts or anything like that. It's pretty basic stuff. It's like in the early days of, of computers, you know, it's basic. But it's life changing though, right? I mean, being able to see, if you're born blind, that is, that is a gift that I don't think, you know, anyone would pass up. That would be amazing. Yeah, and that's, that's very doable. Anyway, so what I'm saying about neuralink is that you'll be able to see anything that neuralink's doing. You'll be able to see coming from very far off. Like, like, because you've got to go through the whole FDA device approval process that takes ages. Got to evaluate the safety in humans. That takes a long time. So it's basically, it's very slow compared to the development of digital superintelligence very fast. Now I do think for a long time that we ought to be more cautious in the development of digital superintelligence. You know, this represents a danger to the public. And just as we have other regulatory agents oversee dangers of the public like the FDA or the FAA or, you know, any one of a number of fcc. You can't just have companies just going hog wild developing digital superintelligence with no oversight. You potentially see this happening in a country where there are no oversights, where the governments allow the scientists to go hog wild, as you said. Well, Look, there's the things we can control and things we can't control. And I think there should be some kind of oversight. You know, North America and Europe, which is where a lot of the AI innovation is happening. There should be some kind of oversight beyond nothing, which is currently the case. How far do you think we are
Co-host
from general artificial intelligence? Like what is your time frame, you think? Until we have the big deal.
Elon Musk
I mean, I think it's, it's happening very fast. You've said like AGI is defined by where digital superintelligence is smarter than the smartest human. What is your definition of AGI?
Co-host
Yeah, exactly. I mean once, once AI is able to basically program itself and understands how to, how to advance itself, that would be the level where need to start to worry, right?
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah. Well, to add to that, Elon, I mean, what about this? You know, last year after the pandemic we had the, the great resignation and now there's the concern about the replacement
Co-host
of traditional labor jobs with, you know,
Elon Musk
AI and machine technology. I think it was you, you know, I saw the video and the capacity for it to control things with its mind is not a concern about the
Co-host
potential impact it has on know, very menial jobs and the, you know, those
Elon Musk
people who don't have necessarily the skills
Co-host
or ability to retrain that quickly.
Elon Musk
Just, you know, how can we plan in advance to minimize the consequences? Sorry, the audio. The audio is like not, not good right now, so. Oh, no worries. Yeah, we can't hear you, Mario.
Co-host
We can have another space sometime in the future to talk about AI, because I think that is one of the big topics, you know, where a lot of people don't really realize how big the risk of AI is. And what you are always asking for is, you know, more regulation, better rules, in order to prevent the worst case scenario of an AGI taking over and basically wiping out like an artist and
Elon Musk
an artist and jobs, you know, I mean, midjourney has basically replaced graphic artists for book covers. You know, you don't need a book artist anymore. You can just do it with AI. Not. Not to change the subject back to the Twitter files, but Kim, I just want to ask Elon a quick question about section 230. Are you concerned about that now and what the government could potentially do to section 23030 as a result of the flattening that you're creating at Twitter and all the truth that you're pushing out and the objectivity. Well, I think it is. And I said. I say this on Twitter publicly. It is good that we actually. That the House will be Republican. You know, it's like, it's not. It's generally not a good idea. If us. If the House, Senate, and executive branch are all of one party, then you have sort of situation. So it's good to have at least one of those branches, the other party, because then they will. Then. Then they will check the worst successes of both parties. So I think, you know, I think it's. It's good that the House will be Republican, you know, and at least. And people interpreted that as like, oh, I must be some huge Republican or something. It's like, no, I'm a huge moderate, actually, is what I am. It's just like, I wish people were moderate. But, like, by its nature, being moderate is not. It does not lend itself. You know, you cannot be. It's like, be fanatically moderate, but fanaticism. Be a radical centrist. I think some YouTubers like to say, right, be a radical centrist. Yeah. So it's just like, like, you want to have the government pass laws that are in the best of people, not that are in the interest of a small segment of the people. And, you know, so that's why I think if like a mixture of parties in control, then they will pass. Only things that sort of are the intersection of sets of what both parties agree on, which is more likely to be in the interest of the people. So I think. I guess I feel pretty okay about that Section 230 stuff. Yeah. Elon, can you just.
Host
Quickly, guys, can you. Can you hear me now or no? Yeah, I've just got. I've just got. I've just. Yeah, I've just got. I've got great speakers that just came up because now it's not glitching for me anymore. So I've just welcomed Clayton Patrick. Pat David is on stage as well. And there's more speakers about to come up that all of you would know. Now my Space is working. So guys, feel free to jump in and ask Elon any questions.
Elon Musk
Hey, thank you. Thank you so much.
Co-host
If you want to retry the cohost thing too, Mario.
Elon Musk
I will now. I will.
Host
Yeah, I will now. I will know. Go ahead, Clay. And then Patrick. Go ahead, Clay.
Elon Musk
Hey, thanks, Elon. This is Clayton from Redacted. One of the stories we've been covering on our show over the past couple of months is Dr. Shiva's lawsuit. He was banned from Twitter running for the Senate from Massachusetts. And one of the things in his lawsuit that was uncovered was the back end government portal to both Facebook and Twitter that they trusted Twitter partnership. And I know on Twitter's blog that trusted Twitter partnership between Twitter and someone with a government email address would reach
Co-host
out to Twitter and basically have accounts banned, taken down.
Elon Musk
Is that portal, is that trusted partnership still available to the government? And given what you've released in the Twitter files, does it make sense for
Co-host
that to still be there?
Elon Musk
I gotta dig into this trusted partnership thing. You know, obviously that has like some Big Brother vibes. Twitter will adhere to the law, but it will not do, you know, it's not going to go to go beyond the law. And, and if there are laws that, that seem, that don't seem to be the interest of the people then to who push to change the laws to be in it. But I'll think into this trusted partnership thing kind of what's going on.
Co-host
I like, I do what's rejected and I love you and your wife. You're doing an amazing job. So keep it going.
Host
Eric, did you have a. Eric Sebastian, did you have a question?
Elon Musk
I do, Elon. Maybe a follow up too to the prior question. Elon, in the Twitter and you know, the Twitter files, the things that you found, did you find any relationship between Facebook and any other TikTok, whoever, whomever, with regards to what could be considered, you know, the collusion with, with a certain political parties? Was it, was it. In other words, was there any collusion among other social media groups with Twitter? I've not directly seen that. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it's. I've not seen it yet. In fact, in terms of the Twitter files, Matt, TVs read way more than I have because my priority has been just getting Twitter healthy and fixing Twitter engineering so that we can actually release features at a high rate. That's been my priority on the Twitter front. We've got to get Twitter to be in a financially healthy place, fix the engine of engineering. So we can add the features and capabilities that'll make it much better and improve transparency and trust and all that. So actually, don't even.
Elon Musk
Most of the stuff I've read hardly any of the Twitter files. Matt TV has, and Barry Wise is also getting access to it, so she'll read it too.
Host
Have you been in contact with any of the other social platforms, meta, Google, etc. Since the release of the files? Has there been any pushback, any concerns, anything at all, or. It's been pretty quiet.
Elon Musk
They haven't reached out to me. I'm not aware of any outreach from them. So I guess, I think if it turns out this, like, stuff that the public should know about, then we'll put it out there. And Matt JB and Barry Wise. Hey, listen, whatever you see, you think publishers know about it. You just post it with regards to the dissemination of information. So right now it's just Matt Taibi and Barry Weiss. Do you have any plans to maybe give access to more journalists like, say, Ryan Saavedra of Daily Wire, Jack Masobic, you know, I mean, he's done lots of coverage on this stuff even previously, so I'm sure they'd love to know. Yeah, I think maybe at some point we should just, like, put it all out there, you know? So, like, I think in the beginning it's good to have some coherence and, you know, so it's not just a million stories all at once. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, it's a drip feed at first, and then later on it's a. To be a flood. Right. Because otherwise it's just too many stories, too much all at once, and then people can't really focus on anything. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, you just, you just get drowned out in the flood of things. I think once we think that the stories have. The critical stories have been told, then I think probably the right move is to just, you know, provide a data dump and then people can go through it and see what was missed. Are you, Are you surprised at all about the blowback against Matt Taibbi over
Co-host
the past 24 hours?
Elon Musk
And a number of, a number of liberal news organizations, a lot of liberal news reporters came out and really slammed Matt Taibbi, which really was really shocking. What was your response to that? Well, I think those people should be looking in the mirror and wondering why they were deceptive. Why did they deceive the American public? And instead of trying to redirect blame to Matt Tiggy, they seemed to be accepting some responsibility themselves for not being truthful to the American public. Elon, it's Mike Cohen here. Congratulations on of course, the acquisition of Twitter. But my question to you is, how are you going to go about combating the issue of bot and bot farms who create so much misinformation and hate on your platform? The last thing I do, I will defeat the damn bots and trolls. Maybe they need like a mind virus that purchase them, you know, just makes them self destructive. Yeah, I mean it's war. It's war. And, and we're gonna win that war big time.
Co-host
Yeah, because I'm confident you will.
Elon Musk
Because the extent of the hatred that these bots cause is astronomical and it's really terrible. But thank you for, thank you for your commitment to that. Can I, can I jump in and ask a question here, Michael?
Co-host
Just, just really quick, just real quick. I wanted to say something about the bots. There are of course commercial bots. Right. People trying to do spam. But the more dangerous bots are those that are trying to interfere in discourse and you know, try to manipulate the conversation. And those are primarily run by governments. Right. They are run by the intelligence community in different countries. They're trying to manipulate the way people are talking, for example, about Ukraine. I think one of the more famous examples here are the so called narco bots that are going out and shooting everyone around.
Co-host
Yeah, often is where they're mixing it. Right. So the intelligence community does it in that way. They have real people, then they have bots that are fully automated and then they even let their intelligence community employees work with Twitter profiles to chime in as well. But all with one goal, which is to manipulate the public discourse towards their goals. And I think you experienced that yourself when you spoke out for peace in Ukraine. You were attacked by these same bots.
Elon Musk
Yeah, no, absolutely. Like I said, you know, I've been on the job a month. I'm very good at software. I wrote software for 20 years and I was very good back in the day at defeating the scammers. And they were just like, they were just the bad actors had free reign than before. They will not have that in the future. I look forward to that battle and we will expose those who are acting to manipulate public opinion and shine a bright light on it.
Elon Musk
Hey Kim, if I could just ask
Co-host
a quick question on that same topic,
Elon Musk
because there was a point at which I was told by someone who apparently
Co-host
had access to this Discord server for
Elon Musk
these NATO or Napo trolls, that I was among their top targets or even the number one target for a while.
Co-host
So I'm just sort of a personal curiosity. By the way, this is Michael Tracy.
Elon Musk
And so Elon, I'm just curious if you were able to detect or gauge any inauthentic activity on Twitter specifically related to this sort of pro Ukraine faction or, you know, was there a particular sort of system that kind of connects those actors that you were able to discern since you've taken the helm? Well, the tools that Twitter currently has to detect large scale manipulation are quite strengthened through. That's why. But in order for that, for them to be strengthened, we must, like I said, build the engine of engineering to be able to sort of see what's going on in the system. I mean, over and over again it's been, it's like Twitter doesn't know what's going on in Twitter. That's actually the issue. We need to build the tools that can analyze what's going on and see where is there evidence of large scale manipulation in order to highlight it. I think even if it's not shut down, if it is simply highlighted and said, wait a second, these accounts are all acting in concert. They're acting in a way that is faster than a human could possibly coordinate. This appears to be a link. 100,000 bots linked that are all acting in concert and just say and expose them essentially. But those software tools need to be written and they have not yet been written, but they will be.
Co-host
I have written those so I can
Elon Musk
give them to you. Right. Elon, wouldn't it be easier if you were able to use some form of two part authentication in order to ensure that the individual.
Host
You're back. Yeah, go ahead.
Elon Musk
Yeah. Elon, would it not be easier to just use some form of two card authentication to ensure that the individual is who they say they are? Yes. Now the game plan with the sort of, you know, blue verified thing is that right now it is, it is. There are problems on many levels.
Elon Musk
It's too cheap to have a bot, so, or even a troll. Like, it's not just that somebody's operating a bunch of 10,000 instances of Twitter accounts in a bank of PCs. It's like you can have a warehouse with. And there are many parts of the world like warehouses where there's just banks of phones. So they actually are operated by people. The, the challenge right now. So the challenge is actually you have to make it more expensive to have bots and trolls. It can't be like, it's like a guy sitting in front of eight Phones, Right. That's just how they operate. Exactly. The farms are guys sitting in front of eight phones. Yeah. Like there's like.
Co-host
Well, unfortunately, the disinformation budget for the CIA for these NAFO bots is over $100 million. I mean, even if you throw $8 per month per account in front of them, is that really going to stop them?
Elon Musk
Not the $8. If it was purely, then I think they could overcome a budget challenge. But also then having to have a huge number of phones and a huge number of credit or debit cards, these all amplify the difficulty. And then having, if you want to do it, such that you can't find any connection between 100,000 phones and 100,000 credit cards and 100,000 authenticated phone numbers, that's very difficult to do. Just the logistical difficulty of that is really high. So it's more like you need to process some amount of money through the payment system in order to piggyback off the authentication of the payment system. So $8 is kind of like a random number, obviously. But there's another thing that has to be accomplished simultaneously, which is that Twitter cannot be so heavily dependent on advertisers. So this is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, which is build a source of revenue that is not advertiser dependent. So the advertisers do not have too much sway over what happens on Twitter and also use the payments system as an additional means of identifying and stopping large scale manipulation of the system.
Co-host
And just to add on, in other
Elon Musk
words, their advertisers are going to realize that these are people. Right? They're all verified individuals that will make them want to advertise on the site. So it's win, win, let's win, right? Yes. Hey, Kim, can I ask a quick follow up to my question? Would you mind?
Co-host
Okay. I have to. I have to just stop this for a second because everyone is talking over each other. Elon just made a really important point, which is that he has more freedom to do what is good for his users if he is less dependent on advertise. So there's a large group of people here. I think everyone who appreciates what Elon is doing for us right now in this fight for freedom of speech should support him. And the best way you can support him is to become a subscriber at Twitter. And you're using this great service all the time. If you want him to have more power and more freedom to achieve these goals for us, well, you know, make that $8 a month investment I think it's really worth it. Did Elon already say when he plans to reinstate the verification, the $8 verification process?
Elon Musk
Elon, you're muted.
Host
I was going to tell you because Kim muted everyone.
Elon Musk
Sorry. Sometimes mute me, I guess.
Elon Musk
So the. I think we're probably about a week away maybe basically this coming week we should be able to restart the verification process. Will it be global or is it just the US still? Actually, I'm just discuss that with the team. So this time for verification, we're taking some additional steps where, you know, one has to be phone phone verified with a known good carrier, an own good phone carrier, and will offer people the opportunity if they want to do ID verification. Kind of like what Airbnb does similar thing and they do that all around the world. And then you'll be able to look at an account and say this account is payment verified. It is verified. It is ID verified, optionally. And also to establish organizational affiliation. Do you actually have affiliate affiliation with this organization and providing organizations with the ability to define, to state which set of users are affiliated with that organization. So like, are you actually a professor at Stanford or are you actually, for example, a reporter at the New York Times or whatever, or an employee of PepsiCo or whatever it is, you know, just generally to have granularity and nuance to what verified means, as opposed to the sort of like grab bag of nonce, which has been the past Blue Verified situation where, you know, you could have been an intern@mashable 10 years ago and now you've got Blue verified and it's, it's kind of crazy or. And then they were also just being traded constantly. You could just buy a verified badge. So you can't, you can't actually tell if something is blue verified for legacy blue. You can't tell if it's. If that is a legitimate situation, a crypto scam, whether they're actually. You don't know because there's no granularity to it. And there was a way to buy them off of Google right now, like you can literally Google Verified accounts and they sell them for like 200, $500 or something, right? Yes, exactly, exactly. It's not like blue Verified. It's not like you have to go to the inquiry Dark Web to buy Blue Verified. You can literally Google search it on and it's on page one of the Google search results verified. So it's just basically verified is a corrupt garbage file. And so we need to move forward with something that gives granularity and Detail and nuance about the nature of the verification so that you can actually trust what you see. Elon, you said to me some really admirable things about freedom of speech and your commitment to it and its role in the future of humanity. You didn't answer the question about supporting protesters in China and Iran. Is there freedom of speech? Freedom of speech for Chinese people important in China. Just so you know, like Twitter is inaccessible in China. You need vpn. So it's kind of a pointless question. So you, you don't think making it accessible for Chinese or Iranian. It doesn't matter.
Host
Yeah, it's not Elon. It's not Elon. Blocking. Tommy had a question.
Elon Musk
Tommy, that was Tommy.
Elon Musk
Tommy, can you address the question of the freedom of speech of Sebastian Gorkha here? Because a lot of people are confused that it's a first amendment issue. What was dumped by Matt Taibi. The first amendment concerns government suppression. So anything that happened before January 20th isn't first amendment unless it was the Biden administration afterwards. So for those who think that, you know, we've got the smoking gun and they don't need to wait for anything else. Could you address that issue, Mr. Moss? Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, actually there are issues if there's election interference before the government because, you know, that is, I think, an issue. It certainly would appear that Twitter falsely claimed that the it was not right. But that has to do with in kind contributions. That's a very different kind of thing and it is criminal. But can you tell us if there's, you know, there will be more smoking guns coming? Yeah, I think there will be more smoking guns. Because the obvious next question is, well, what happened after the election? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, that's probably the right thing for episode two is what happened after the election and how long do we have to wait for episode two? I don't know. I'll check with Matt.
Host
Yeah, Will, just quickly. Will, go ahead. Will, thank you.
Elon Musk
Elon, apologies if you addressed this earlier. Appreciate how long you've been on this call. What subjects outside of Hunter Biden? By the way, this is Will Kane from Fox News. What subjects outside of Hunter Biden were subject to the most government induced censorship? You may not have heard my earlier comment, but I don't actually like, like I said, I've been, me personally, I've been working on getting Twitter to be healthy and fixing the engine of engineering. I've not been sort of poring over the Twitter files personally. That's sort of been, you know, Matt Taibbi is doing that and Barry Weiss is going to do it now as well. So anything I say would be somewhat of a, you know, guesswork really. But, you know, so I, I don't know. There's obviously a lot of questions and around January 6th, there's questions around, you know, Covid, There's a lot of questions. I think the important thing is that we just get, you know, bring daylight to all of these things. And so anything that Twitter has done, and sometimes things, a lot of times Twitter's done things that were just, they were just, it wasn't malicious. It was just foolish. So the things that are like the nuking people for NPCs right for proposing NPC means thousands of people were banned. Yeah, exactly.
Host
Just quick question with the companies that stopped advertising on Twitter, which I think most of us agree is just not right, has there been any progress since? Have you been in discussions with them? And what are some other strategies to bring in revenue so we depend less on advertisers?
Elon Musk
You can hear this Eric Bolling, again, any knowledge or you can have any proof that those. There's some indication that a lot of people on the right side of the political aisle lost a ton of followers, I would say, from 2015, 2016 all the way through the, you know, towards the end of 2021. I'll give you anecdotally myself, I lost 80,000 or so. And not until this is literal, not until you purchase Twitter did I start gaining followers again in a fairly robust manner. Is there any proof of that? Do you have any evidence of that being sort of a plan or a strategy on Twitter's part? You know, again, like I said, I have not read the Twitter file, so it's difficult for me to say that, except my understanding is limited. And that's why I would leave it to Matt TV and Barry Weiss and ultimately others. But, but if I, if I, if I say what, what, what is my best guess is that there was a very different standard applied to Republican candidates in the US Versus a Democrat candidate. There appears and emphasize. Appears. I'm not saying this is definitely the case. There appears to have been a double standard where, where Democrats were not censored and, and left causes were not censored. But right, right causes and, and Rep. Republicans were. And I think this is frankly obvious to anyone who uses Twitter without any expose of Twitter files, not even handed. And it's frankly the behavior that is to be expected from an organization that is based in San Francisco, which is far left. So from their standpoint, it wouldn't seem like that they're being unfair. From their standpoint, it's simply how they see the world. I mean, I think Matt posted like political contributions of Twitter being over 99% Democrat. So what kind of viewpoint would you expect people to have then? It's the behavior you would expect from a company that is essentially a distillation of San Francisco politics. And I hope that.
Co-host
By the way, just by the way, I want to make, I want to make a suggestion real quick. Elon, when you are speaking, we can
Elon Musk
hear you really well.
Co-host
When you are listening, the background noise from your jet is interfering a little. Can you just mute yourself?
Elon Musk
Yeah. So anyway, I have a question. Like, so when you're making the files available to everybody, or rather more people, I would just like to request that, I don't know, give it to me because I work for Rebel News and I think we could do a tremendous job covering this as much as anybody else, really. Yeah.
Host
So Tim Cast is trying to come up. By the way, Elon just asked you a question, but in the meantime, just want to go back and I know that persistence has a question as well. I'll give you the mic right after persistence. But one question again, back to the advertisers. Elon, not sure if you heard it before. Any progress there with the advertisers that stopped advertising on Twitter, which we all agree is just not right. And any other strategies to bring revenue outside of advertising? You're muted, Elon Musk. Yeah.
Elon Musk
So, I mean, so Apple has fully resumed advertising, which is appreciated. Apple is the single biggest advertiser on Twitter and historically and presently. So thanks to Apple for fully resuming advertising. And I think we're seeing, we are starting to see a lot of other advertisers also resume their spending. I think the problem is that they would read all these stories in the media and then think that they were true and they're not true. And then as it's becoming clear that the media stories about Twitter being some sort of like right wing hellscape, which it absolutely isn't, and in fact it is, there are far fewer bots, far fewer trolls, and it's actually, I think, way more fun and interesting. And we're seeing that in the user minutes and in the daily average users, then advertisers are like, okay, I guess maybe it is safe to get back in the water. And so we are seeing advertisers resume advertising on Twitter. So that's a good sign. I wish it would be faster but we are seeing them resume. The more concerning factor on the advertising front is just the entire industry wide drop in advertising which Twitter is not immune from. So even though advertisers do get back on the advertising expenditures in general are dropping for all companies. And so it is imperative that Twitter have an ultimate revenue source. Hence the subscriber revenue which is just very important for both of the survival and of Twitter and to reduce its dependence on advertisers. Yeah, overall I think I'm cautiously optimistic about the future. Yeah. So
Host
I'll add one point of credit. Like I have no stats, I have nothing against the old executives at Twitter, etc. But very objectively speaking, what you've done in a month and again that's purely being objective, what you've done in a month is fucking insane. The amount of progress that you've had and where Twitter is at now in such a short period of time. So not that you need more credit because you're getting a lot here, but I just want to add to it as well. I'll give the mic to the persistence who's been waiting for a while and then spike. Go ahead. Persistence.
Elon Musk
Well, thank you for making us a social media. My question is, do we have any information on advertisers threatening to pull money from Twitter if Twitter did not adhere to a policy? And additionally, do we have any information on congressmen or women who have threatened legislation should Twitter not adhere to a certain policy? And last, I was really intrigued by your comment on positivity and negativity in tweets. You saying that positive tweets would go further and I just wanted to see what would constitute the measurement from Twitter that would make something positive or negative.
Host
Thank you. You're muted, Elon. Oh, you're back.
Elon Musk
Yeah, sure. Well, the advertisers, for the most part the advertiser. Advertisers are quite rational in that, you know, especially if you're like you're advertising a family friendly product that you don't want to be sort of like, let's say you're advertising a Disney movie, you don't want to have like some super negative sort of hate speech or you know, and also movie or whatever. And you also, they don't want to have not safe for work content right next to to ads for children, toys and stuff like that. So that stuff is quite reasonable. And I agree with advertisers have a right to have their advertising be next to non advertising content as consistent with their brand. So that really just means is not attempting to monetize with advertising content that advertisers are uncomfortable. So I think in general, it's been okay. I mean, I think there has been some overzealous action by activist groups that pressure the advertisers that then in turn pressure Twitter. And, you know, we're trying to sort of, you know, that I thought was somewhat unreasonable, but I think it's going to trend in a good direction going forward. But I'm not sure, but it looks like it's headed in a good direction. Like I said, advertisers are returning to Twitter. Apple's back at full, full ad spend. And I've had a number of conversations with the advertiser groups, and every time I've had those conversations, the advertisers have responded positively. And I've also, just because they're like, I mean, they end up reading the sort of mainstream media and it's like, you know, and then they end up with all the wrong impressions of what's going on. And I said, well, have you tried using Twitter? Do you see these things for yourself? And they're like, actually, it seems fine when we use Twitter. Like, yes, that's because it is fine. And so then, and then I also tell them, like, look, as we try to grow Twitter's user base, if a new user comes on Twitter and then is immediately attacked by trolls and dumped on, they're going to want to leave. So, because who wants to go? It's like going into a party or something and everyone just starts yelling at you, you're going to want to leave that party. Twitter does need to be a more welcoming environment for new users. And so the incentives are actually aligned that if people come on and they see interesting, funny tweets, things where they learn something new or it's entertaining, it's funny, that's the kind of thing that we should see more of. And, and that will, that, that's consistent with what most advertisers want, I think, and what, what Twitter wants in order to grow the user base. And, and then just generally over time, it's like kind of, you know, people can be to some degree choose what sort of experience. Like, just like you can choose a radio station. Like, you know, some people want to listen to sort of smooth jazz, easy listening, or they may want to go to, you know, pop, pop music, or they want to go to heavy metal, thrash, and, you know, to each their own. Or if this was, you know, do you want to have like full contact martial arts or do you want to have light contact or do you want to do yoga? You know, and you can decide which one of those, what kind of experience you want. That's going to be important in order to have Twitter appeal to a broad audience. Yeah, so that's, that's, that's a rough game plan.
Co-host
He had mentioned different color check marks for verification, different entities. Was that still going to be part of the new verification process?
Elon Musk
So again, like, the goal is like to see how do you convey people using Twitter as quickly as possible and as clearly as possible what they're seeing. So there will be a gold check mark for commercial organizations, a gray check mark for government, and a blue check mark for verified individuals. And then there will also be an organizational affiliation logo. So like next to your check, let's say a verified user. If you are a professor at Stanford and Stanford is participating in identifying who is a professor, then there would be like a tiny Stanford location that would appear next to your blue check mark. So then as you're scrolling, it's like, see, oh, this is actually a Stanford professor, or this person actually did his work at Coca Cola. And there's a clarity there. Will there be a process for this to apply for an organization for, you know, let's say you're a part of a small news organization and you want to apply for this status, will it be available to the public or is this something that's going to be very selective? No, it will be available to the public. So it's sort of, it's not going to be like an anointed set of companies. Now there will be a strong policy against impersonation and deception. So if someone's attempting to deceive users, then their account will be suspended.
Host
I've got a question here. I'll give it to Tom, just by a pretty notable person that doesn't disclose the identity. But it's a simple question. By the way, anyone that has a question, you could DM me. The team is checking all the DMs. The question is plans for crypto Twitter payments, whether it's going to be like WeChat or whether you have, you have plans at all.
Elon Musk
Yeah, exactly. Oh, hell yeah. Dogecoin to the moon. Yeah, I think we do want to have Twitter enable both regular payments and fiat currency and, and make it easier to transact with crypto.
Host
Okay, I've got another question here From a big YouTuber as well, Elon, one of the first. So they're asking, they want to bring YouTube creators to Twitter. What's your plan with what's your Twitter creator plan? If there is one? Yeah.
Elon Musk
So for video, we need to upgrade the Twitter system to be able to have longer video and then enable creators to derive revenue from viewership, which is a combination of advertising. And these are obviously things that need to happen. Like I said, in order for these to happen, you can have a wish list a mile long, but if the engine of engineering is not fixed, the wish list is. So that's why I am focused on Twitter engineering first and foremost. In the absence of that, you could have a wish. Whatever you wish for cannot be done because the sharing is not working.
Co-host
Hey, I have a really great suggestion for you.
Host
And right after, Kim, I'll let Tom jump in. Right after you just. Tom, sorry for delaying it so much. Go ahead, Kim. Sorry.
Co-host
Yeah. You know how foreign media is labeled on Twitter often as like Russian controlled, state controlled media. Why don't we do the same thing in the US with all of these media organization that are telling us go to war? You know, this is all great. Like, why don't we label them as, well, US Government state media?
Elon Musk
No, I think that's a good idea because, like, you know, it's like SBF gave so much money to different media organizations that. And then they just write these puff pieces and it's like, okay, we should be labeling that SBF affiliated media, because it is like, if you're gonna write a puff piece about someone who gave you a ton of money, then the public should know that you maybe have a bias. So, yeah, I mean, I think it should be. If something is taking direction from the state, then that information should be made clear to the readers, like, who really has editorial control, to be clear. Because that's all part of trying to give users of Twitter the most accurate and truthful understanding of what's going on and be able to calibrate what they read, see, or hear on Twitter to be able to calibrate the truthfulness as a function of where is it coming from, who is the author, who is controlling this from an editorial standpoint, and so they can apply reasonable judgment in that case.
Co-host
Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that would be a really good thing to level the playing field. Because when you want to find out about what's going on in Ukraine, and you get it from sources that are labeled in a certain way, and then the US News sources are not labeled at all. The problem with that is that people think this source is trustworthy and this source is not trustworthy. So if Twitter has labels like this, then they need to be applied fairly, also against media that is clearly pro war and clearly infiltrated by commentators from the intelligence community who are telling us all this about why we have to be at war.
Elon Musk
I agree. This is the maximum truth is the truth still, you know, set you free.
Host
Jon, I know you've been waiting for a while. Tom.
Co-host
Thank you for having me.
Elon Musk
Soon, so maybe just a couple more questions and then I gotta go back to work here.
Elon Musk
quickly, Elon, just before those. And we appreciate, keep innovating and keep creating.
Host
Go ahead, Tom. Let you ask your question, Tom, and then I'll jump in. Go ahead, Tom.
Elon Musk
I don't think Tom's here.
Host
Yeah, so I'll jump in. Elon Musk my question to you, because Tom's not, it's not working on his end. That's actually a simple question. I'm going to shoot my shot if I can get a DM on Twitter to have a line of communication and then I can try to get you on, convince you to join more spaces. So it's not a question, it's just giving it a shot on my end. I appreciate you joining. Again, this is Tom again. Go ahead, man. I said my word. Now it's your turn.
Elon Musk
Yeah, thank you.
Co-host
This is Tom Fitton with Judicial Watch. Elon, appreciate your public service and your transparency efforts here. You know, my concern is, you know, as the head of a watchdog group, is the government corruption in response, you know, not only to what you potentially may uncover, but in response to what you're doing. And when you have the President of the United States from the podium, celebrate his election victory for, by calling for a national security review of your activities. You have senators, you know, focusing on you, you have other government agencies investigating you and your other businesses. Are you concerned, A, about the retaliation and B, are you seeing evidence of it already?
Elon Musk
Well, government is slow to act. So this is the thing about, that's important to appreciate about anything, anything government related, is that they're not nimble, they are slow. So I think the actions that, that we'll see, and I think there probably will be some actions will happen, but they'll happen slowly. And it's only been, it's only been a month so far. But I wouldn't, I would expect, I would expect some, you know, there's probably not, there's probably at least a few nefarious things that are in the works right now. Probably I would be naive to Assume that there are no nefarious things. And so I guess if they. But I will just expose them on Twitter and see what happens.
Co-host
Well, the most important thing. You don't have any suicidal thoughts, do you, Elon?
Elon Musk
I do not have any suicidal thoughts. I. If I committed suicide, it's not real.
Host
Well, that was a good one, Clay. I know Eli has to jump off, so maybe one more question or one or two, Clay. And then, Ian. I'll let you end it, Ian, because you've done a great job asking questions earlier. Clay, go ahead.
Elon Musk
Yeah, Elon, this is Clay Travis with Al Kick, FOX News and radio show with Clay and Fox. You said earlier. And I think it's so important. Important that you were thinking about just letting everybody know when you get a governmental request to censor someone or take down tweets, what. What kind of process is in play there, and to what extent can that happen? Because I think you're right. The sunlight of the government being embarrassed when they're going after James woods, for instance, would drastically reduce any attempts at censorship. What's the update there? What kind of time frame? And do you think that's able to be implemented?
Elon Musk
I mean, as I said earlier, like, Twitter will do whatever it is allowed to do within the boundaries of law, to be as transparent and open as possible. And even something if we're currently. And I don't know this to be the case, but if we are currently drained by the law, I think we will push to have law modified to reduce those constraints, because I think we have to, you know, we have to fight hard for free speech, which is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. And I think you'll see the proof will be in the pudding. And in the coming months, I think you'll see dramatic improvements in the transparency and trustworthiness of Twitter. You know, hopefully you've seen at least some of that already. And it will get better. And I think it will get better in an accelerating way, provided I don't accidentally suicide myself, which I'm not going to do.
Co-host
Elon, thank you so much today. You have been such a blessing to join us to give us your insights. I really appreciate it. Don't forget to make that poll for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
Elon Musk
Yeah. It'd be interesting to know what the public thinks of these two people and what they're fighting for. And I'll emphasize that I'm not making a judgment here. I'm just asking the. I'll do it right after this. Twitter spaces ends. Just asking question, right? Asking the public a question. You know, just.
Elon Musk
Picking a poll. Yeah, and final. So I have a question. Okay. You know, this is just a question. I'm not. Okay, so I got a question since, you know, like this is the last one. What message do you have for all the haters and losers out there who are making fun of you or attacking Twitter? Said it was gonna die like four weeks ago. What's your message? Twitter is live, baby. It's live. Hell yeah. More alive than it's ever been. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Beautiful.
Co-host
I look forward to the test earning call right here on Twitter with you, Elon Musk.
Host
Yeah, well, I think it will work. I got the dm, so I assume the promise you made, you keep. And the promise you made your tarot should go through. Elon, really appreciate you and thank you, Mario.
Elon Musk
See you back. I got questions.
Host
Hope to see you again soon, Elon. I really appreciate it, man.
Elon Musk
All right, thanks, guys. Bye.
Host
Told you it was worth listening. And this is the kind of stuff I talk about all the time over on my Patreon account. If you're not already a member, you know what to do. By now, there's over 230 videos, many of them diving down these very same rabbit holes. Plus plenty of other stuff as well. The kind of that will literally get me canceled if I discuss it here on YouTube. I'm always walking a fine line. So if you're not already member, head over to Patreon with the card in the corner or the link at the pin comment. I'll see you over there.