Elon's Twitter Circus update

Elon's Twitter Circus update

The full story of the Elon-Twitter situation. What has happened since it all started and why is Elon now scared of the FBI? In this episode, we'll find out.

you've all read the news stories Twitter

seems to be in chaos after his purchase

Elon Musk has flipped the house upside

down he fired the CEO CFO and head of

policy while also disabanding the board

of directors and that's just the start

next he went after the employees firing

close to 50 of total staff and for those

remaining he issued an ultimatum either

work insane hours or quit

lawsuits are filed advertisers left and

the future of the site became unclear

this is perhaps the first time that we

get to see the inner workings of a CEO

publicly trying to figure out how to run

a large and influential company in real

time

since the peak of his wealth Elon has

lost 200 billion dollars becoming the

first person to do so he also claims to

be in danger after revealing ties

between the FBI and Twitter so what is

going on here

it's now 2023 so let's recap the chaos

and take a look at what's happened since

is Twitter really on a collision course

of bankruptcy or is it gaining a fresh

start let's dive into the story of drama

lawsuits and a lot of tweets to try and

figure this

outfusion TV

foreign

Twitter only having a fraction of the

users of Facebook Instagram or even

Snapchat over the years it has become

one of the most influential platforms

for real world discourse

billions of dollars can be lost over a

single tweet Grassroots movements can be

started over a single tweet the lives of

public figures can be altered over a

single tweet however due to a smaller

user base Twitter has largely been

unprofitable having only two years of

profit in the past 10 years

previous management tried to fix the

issue by any means that they could they

purchased many companies such as Vine

and Periscope and added a few new

features to the platform the results

were mixed at best and the company may

have been facing bankruptcy if nothing

changed this is the point where Elon

gets involved in the company

[Music]

he was always a big Twitter user and a

substantial Twitter critic yet things

quickly changed as he got invited to

join the board of directors leaked text

messages showed that Jack Dorsey the

founder and former CEO of Twitter was

very fond of Elon Jack wrote to Elon

quote you care so much get its

importance and could def help in

immeasurable ways

Jack Dorsey had told musk the previous

year when he was still CEO of Twitter

that he wanted to give musk a seed on

the board but they refused citing that

musk would be too much of a risk yet

just as Dorsey was beginning to

celebrate musk screwed the whole thing

up he criticized Twitter publicly and

parag agril the then current CEO of

Twitter sent Elon a tense message quote

you are free to tweet is Twitter dying

or anything else about Twitter but it's

my responsibility to tell you that it's

not helping me make Twitter better in

the current context next time we speak

I'd like to provide you perspective on

the level of internal distraction right

now and how it's hurting our ability to

do work musk seemed to take this message

to Heart replying harshly quote what did

you get done this week I'm not joining

the board this is a waste of time we'll

make an offer to take Twitter private

this was a very unexpected U-turn Elon

began soliciting bankers and other Tech

billionaires for cash to finance the

Takeover

in the following weeks musk announced

the restructuring plans that according

to his estimates would quintuple Twitter

revenues by 2028

while everything seemed to be going

according to plan on May 13th musk

halted the deal citing more bot activity

on the site than he was first told about

some argued that this might serve as a

pretext for must to bargain for a lower

price or exit the deal altogether after

all he was paying a huge premium for a

stock in a declining Market

on the 12th of July Twitter sued mosque

essentially forcing him to complete the

agreement

the move seemed to work as on October

4th Elon proposed the completion of the

deal before the beginning of the trial

scheduled for October 28th and so after

months of back and forth Mars caused the

majority owner of Twitter and yet the

drama had only begun

[Music]

due to large deficits in the Twitter

budget musk's priority became putting

the company's finances in order first

not only did Twitter lose money for

years but while financing the

acquisition musk had to take on a 13

billion loan

analysts project that he's likely to pay

around one billion dollars in interest

payments alone every single year

all of this is in addition to selling

almost 20 billion dollars in Tesla

shares in 2022 3.4 billion of which was

in November alone with that said musk

had to either cut expenses or increase

revenues and his plan seemed to involve

both

right from the get-go he did not

hesitate to dissolve the entire board of

directors sacked several top Executives

and fire hundreds of employees

by the time the first week had ended

less than 50 of the entire Workforce was

left

musk was trying to patch a four million

a day loss since the average engineer at

a big tech company has a salary of

around a hundred thousand dollars per

year at the end of the day millions of

dollars would be saved even with a

severance package and a possible lawsuit

or two many employees took to social

media to protest the way that they've

been treated even launching a class

action lawsuit according to them musk

needed to give a 60-day notice to some

employees but he would counter that the

severance package that he offered was

much larger than required by law

adding to all of the chaos many top

management positions stepped down while

some employees were almost forced to

sleep at the office to make up for the

loss in manpower to compensate for that

musk brought in Engineers from Tesla

SpaceX and the boring company they were

responsible for figuring out how to make

the infrastructure of the company

lighter in resources playing a key part

in determining who goes and who stays

due to that many employees were laid off

by mistake and later asked to return as

managers realized that they didn't have

the Personnel to execute some new

features they were planning

yet the cost cutting didn't end there

According to some reports around 5 000

contractors were laid off as well with

heavy cuts to the content moderation

team on November 7th 90 of Twitter

India's staff was fired

to further save costs in January of 2023

Twitter staff Cuts occurred in Brazil

Australia as well as other locations

meanwhile in the US a data center in

Sacramento was shut down and another one

in Atlanta is downsizing

in elon's mind there's just too many

people working at Twitter for what's

actually needed well I think you could

just stand back and say without knowing

how many employees Twitter has at all

and say how many people are really

needed to run Twitter like they say you

don't know what their employee account

number is at all how many people needed

to keep the site operational like let's

say if excluding product correct

Evolution you basically have to keep the

service going and uh you have to have

customer sort of a support function to

take down a material that is in

violation of the law how many people

what's the minimum number of people

that's in the hundreds probably exactly

it's not it's not like a giant number

yeah Twitter saw is like 2 000 people

right yeah we still have two thousand on

the 9th of December Reuters would report

that Twitter would be sued for

disproportionately fine female staff

the drama intensified even more two

weeks later as Elon issued an ultimatum

to the rest of his Personnel he would

call it hardcore mode and his aim was to

push staff to create a so-called Twitter

2.0 it was simple either work those

insane hours or quit and get a hefty

Severance the move was supposed to kick

off the creation of a new culture within

Twitter where only the passionate

survive within the company the move was

not as popular as 1 200 employees

rejected the proposal and left but now

this left the company with a critically

low amount of people

concerns from former staff grew that the

site could soon break because of the low

levels of Engineers

musk would have an all hands on deck

meeting on the 10th floor of a Twitter

San Francisco headquarters he would call

all Engineers who could quote actually

write software and show him examples of

recent code they were responsible for he

even encouraged staff to fly to San

Francisco the same day if need be

ironically Twitter employees had been

locked out of the building until Monday

for fear of sabotage so there was some

confusion about how people would get in

in the first place it really was crunch

time

massive and very messy layoffs as well

as the general chaos created fear among

advertisers on the platform General

Mills General Motors Pfizer and Audi had

all suspended their advertising activity

for fear of damaging their brand due to

exposure to unsafe content on the 9th of

December Twitter would announce the

rollout of new controls for Brands to

prevent their ads from appearing above

or below tweets that contain any key

words that they want to avoid

according to the New York Post around 50

percent of the top 100 advertisers such

as at T and Wells Fargo still have not

returned as of January 2023

[Music]

to rely Less on advertisers Elon has

been trying out different strategies

many of them were scrapped even before

being implemented such was the case with

transforming Twitter into a blockchain

based platform where quote you have to

pay a tiny amount to register your

message on the Chain which will cut out

the vast majority of spam and Bots there

is no throat to choke so free speech is

guaranteed end quote

one particularly interesting

conversation happened between Elon Musk

and none other than Sam Beckman freed

Sam was willing to finance Twitter for

five billion dollars if musk agreed to

let him quote do the engineering for the

social media blockchain integration end

quote in light of recent news and an

arrest it seems that Twitter dodged a

bullet by rejecting this idea

foreign

as far as ideas that did become a

reality musk asked users to pay an 8 a

month subscription fee if they wanted to

keep their verification

this was supposedly to cut out spam and

ensure legitimate use on the platform

but many thought that this method was

heavy-handed as it crippled the

functionality of other users

I don't want to try to achieve with this

sort of enabling everyone to be payment

verified with with Twitter blue is to

try to get as many people payment

verified as possible it's only eight

bucks a month that effect will be over

time that the verified users will be

will pretty much always be at the top of

of comments and search and you won't

really see you'll have to scroll far to

see the unverified users which will be

the Bots and controls and whatnot

from a strictly Financial view the move

made sense since there are more than 420

million verified users even at a low

conversion rate this new income stream

could have made a difference to the

bottom line however the launch was a

complete disaster

Elon didn't foresee human nature

possibly due to reduced or non-existent

teams to control the rollout the feature

became a tool for Mass impersonation

at first it was funny to watch the Chaos

online as more people started joining in

on the trend impersonating Mario Pepsi

and some very recognizable people and

companies before long the trend ended up

causing a lot of damage

there was one very famous example the

stock of Eli Lillian Co a huge

pharmaceutical company flash crashed due

to a troll impersonating their account

letting people know that insulin was now

free

the real account of the company had to

quickly come out and clarify that the

other tweet was a troll

although some say that this was well

deserved for the company it became clear

that if this trolling reached the sphere

of politics or even geopolitics the

consequences could be less amusing after

the chaos this method of verification

was promptly scrapped and is now

undergoing review

musk would also clash with apple which

he accused of trying to sabotage Twitter

he contemplated the idea of building his

own smartphone but just two days later

he would say that it was a

misunderstanding and had been resolved

EU Regulators are looking at the

situation closely as Twitter no longer

has a data Protection Officer putting it

in violation of the gdpr standard

cutting down on moderation staff also

doesn't help with EU regulators

Twitter has also disbanded their

Brussels office due to concerns over if

the company would be able to abide by EU

rules

there's also a bunch of new feature

ideas that are being thrown about to

name a few making the algorithm open

source dividing Twitter into different

tiers and giving priority ranking to

tweet there's also talk of the relaunch

of Vine and a feature that allows users

to pay to talk to celebrities

in February of 2023 it was also

announced that long-form tweets would be

available features include bold

underline and italic font choices

one concept that's been particularly

underlined by mask is the concept of

transforming Twitter into an X app think

of it like a western WeChat it would

offer services such as messaging social

networking peer-to-peer payments and

e-commerce shopping quote I think

there's a real opportunity to create

that you basically live on WeChat in

China because it's so useful and so

helpful to your daily life and I think

if we could achieve that or even close

to that with Twitter it would be an

immense success end quote the big reason

that musk is running after this idea is

simple WeChat makes a lot of money by

simply taking a small cut out of all the

transactions that users make at a

reasonable volume this becomes a very

lucrative business yet the success of

the plan would fully rely on the

confidence that people have in posts on

social media this is one of the main

reasons that super apps work in China as

58 of users trust content brand posts on

social media

in the United States this figure is only

20 and this puts the whole plan into

question

the Twitter files Saga was a politically

charged dramatic reveal of the behind

the scenes workings of Twitter Elon Musk

began to reveal them to the public in

early December the topic began with the

suppression of a story regarding Joe

Biden's son Hunter Biden who left his

laptop at a repair shop according to the

New York Post that broke the story the

laptop included unsavory images of

illegal activities emails hinting at

possible corruption and much more

this all blew up on Twitter 20 days

before the 2020 election and it was

immediately crushed by Twitter

themselves

in December of 2022 Elon Musk and

journalist Matt taibi and Barry Weiss

released documents of the internal

happenings at Twitter during the peak of

the hunter Biden Story the release

largely didn't paint Twitter in a

positive light

the second league suggested that a

secret group at Twitter who were high up

in the chain of command such as the head

of legal and the head of trust and

safety made decisions behind everyone's

back without overview and these

decisions were in regards to moderating

Twitter certain Trend topics were

blacklisted certain topics weren't

allowed to go viral since then multiple

Twitter files have been posted detailing

the alleged Shadow Banning of right-wing

personalities and internal

Communications when Trump was banned

from Twitter and here comes the

controversy because people on the right

say that this was a Smoking Gun and the

trust and safety team at Twitter were

essentially the ones running the show

while people on the left say that

there's really nothing to see here

some more Twitter files claim that up to

80 FBI agents were being deployed as a

form of mass surveillance on Twitter

a Twitter executive confirmed and

described how they gave data to the FBI

it was also claimed that there are

multiple branches of the US government

involved in social media manipulation

and surveillance and now to the latest

batch of the Twitter files the 9th

9th claims both the FBI and CIA have

moderated content on the social media

platform the documents which were

released on Christmas Eve in a series of

tweets are part of owner Elon musk's

effort to document how the company was

run before he took over Twitter files

all revolves around alleged

Communications and coordination between

Twitter and other government agencies

including the FBI independent journalist

Matt taibi is the one behind this latest

Twitter thread that was posted on

Saturday and he wrote on Saturday quote

the files show the FBI acting as a

doorman to a vast program of social

media surveillance and censorship

encompassing agencies across the federal

government from the state department to

the Pentagon to the CIA taibi claims

that Twitter kept in contact with so

many agencies including the Department

of Defense and the FBI that it lost

track taibi also describes regular

meetings of Executives with FBI

personnel and other agencies

interestingly it was also stated that

there are a dozen former FBI agents that

became Twitter Executives some of whom

were paid by the FBI while at Twitter

and Twitter as a whole got a bunch of

money from the FBI

the FBI has since hit back saying that

this is all essentially misinformation

but strangely they haven't refuted any

of the claims to date

after these Revelations Elon stated that

he is now in quote crazy Danger

it is all just insane but the FBI and

other government agencies being involved

in surveillance somehow doesn't surprise

me

left and right media Outlets have

differing opinions on the validity and

importance of these leaks and I'm not

even American so I'm going to just end

this here

Elon admitted that he never had the

ambition to be the CEO of Twitter and

wants to give the job to someone else at

the end of last year Elon put up a poll

on Twitter asking users if they wanted

him to step down they said yes a clear

successor hasn't been determined yet

[Music]

so in conclusion with Twitter what

happens next is anyone's guess

it's a messy chaotic situation that's

going to be an uphill battle Elon

tweeted that bankruptcy is still not out

of the question for Twitter according to

the New York Post in early 2023 the

value of Twitter is expected to be down

by 50 to 70 percent according to One

Source that spoke to the publication

musk's loans quote ought to be marked

down by 70 of their value

to add to this Twitter's head of HR and

Engineering are leaving

the whole Fiasco may impact elon's other

Ventures

shareholders of elon's other companies

worry about his involvement in too many

projects at once

and to some degree public opinion on

Elon has shifted for example as outlined

by Bloomberg a large number of people

who bought Teslas were left-leaning they

felt neutral to positive about the Tesla

brand but as Elon exposed more and more

of his personality over Twitter they now

have a bitter taste in their mouth and

as a whole it's affecting Tesla's brand

image

Tesla stock has tumbled 70 since its

peak partly from macroeconomic

situations but this situation certainly

isn't helping

whatever the case it's clear that elon's

Twitter takeover has gotten off to an

extremely Rocky start but predicting

where this one goes is extremely murky

if he chooses the wrong successor

Twitter will crash and burn but if his

successor does an amazing job Twitter

could Thrive surprising a lot of people

I think it's too early to tell at this

stage but I'll be watching closely

interestingly Twitter has Rose to the

number one spot on the App Store under

the US News category at the start of

2023 so perhaps it's a tiny but a

fleeting sign that things may not be a

complete failure let's wait and see

though so what do you guys think feel

free to let me know in the comments

below

so that's about it from me I'll play you

out with a new track I made over on the

second Channel admittedly I've been

having too much fun making music over

the past few months so my name is Togo

and you've been watching cold fusion and

I'll catch you again soon for another

episode cheers guys have a good one

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