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政府都对党
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- 2014-10-21
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00:00
just everyone knows Elon Musk gave me about 20 minutes noted so it's also going to go on Twitter yeah it's true um like this whole thing came only came together in like a matter of hours so um came together by a very speculative email yes which I didn't think would even be responded to and you were like no let's do it tonight sure um anyway all right are we we're actually filming just so everyone knows we're filming this for the BBC so we have like three cameras and a loads of Lights um but this is also being listened to
00:34
um around the world yeah it's uh unique open and transparent there we go exactly uh wait can you um is my audio coming through just checking okay um and and it is James invited to well again I should be on right speaker yeah man I don't see you listed as a speaker wow okay we've got 200 000 people listening that is great all right okay great should we do this yes uh so I'll keep us here I guess uh so you can kind of keep it yeah right this is yeah about around that around yeah is that in shot okay
01:38
actually matter if the phone's in shot I think we all know that that you do it it's not top secret all right okay fine I'm gonna start I'm gonna start asking questions great fire away all right um first why did you agree to do this this interview with the BBC um I don't know I like spontaneity and uh I don't know there's a lot going on and it seems like I I actually um do have a lot of respect with BBC um although sometimes forget what the PVC stands for you know but uh what does
02:05
it say I'm just kidding um yes I do um so um yeah yeah so there's there's a lot going on um so I thought this might be a good opportunity to uh answer some questions and um you know I guess uh maybe get some feedback too um what should we be doing different um I know the BBC for example is not thrilled about being labeled uh State Affiliated media respond to it uh yeah yeah so we're I mean our goal is simply to uh have um you know uh to be as uh truthful and accurate as possible so um I think there's uh I think we're
02:54
we're adjusting that label to be publicly funded which I think is perhaps uh not too objectionable well it would try to be accurate uh I'm not the BBC but publicly funded is how the BBC describes okay okay so that would be accurate that's uh if we use the same words that the BBC uses to describe itself that presumably would be okay I'm not asking you for a yes or no since you're not running if you see per se or but it's probably it seems to pass a reasonable reasonably so you're going to change
03:29
those labels on the team basically that's we're trying to be as accurate as possible okay yeah yeah fine um first of all I just want to clear something up are you sleeping in the office here I sometimes sleep in the office like in the library five days a week no no three days a week I'm not here five days a week um but uh there's a library that nobody goes to uh on the uh seventh floor and uh there's a couch there and there's some I sleep there sometimes okay okay um in terms of the general Library the
04:13
reason why I think we've agreed to do this is because he wants to talk about the first six months as chief executive owner of Twitter um yes kind of like whatever you want to talk about yeah right so how do you think of Scott well it's not been boring it's been quite a roller coaster so um I mean Thanksgiving I think you know reasonably well I mean we've seen some all-time highs in terms of total user time so uh we passed uh 8 billion user minutes per day which is a lot of user minutes um so usage is up uh growth is good
05:04
the site works mostly the other point a few glitches here and there but the site is working fairly well um and we're doing it with a small fraction of the original you know account so I mean you mentioned now such as that that have been several and we've actually spoken to an engineer who works at Twitter and they said that the plumbing is broken here and it's on fire and there could be problems at any minute do you do you accept that I mean there have been a few outages but uh not from very long and it's currently
05:40
working fine so you don't you don't it doesn't keep you up at night the Twitter might go offline again uh at this point I think we've got a pretty good handle on what makes gonna work um and uh we're also doing it with uh two data centers instead of three so we used to write and have three data centers uh we shut down one of them so we're actually two-thirds of the compute capability uh but we've made so many improvements to the core algorithms in some cases we improved the core algorithm about 80 percent so the
06:16
actual CPU usage of computer usage is dramatically less so but there's also speak for themselves uh the system despite being at all-time highs of usage is fast it's responsible it's more responsive than it was before the Takeover and we've also added longfold tweets we've added uh you know post videos after two hours and two videos of any length um we we're rolling out our subscriber programs so so people can content creators can actually make a living on Twitter by having some of their content behind a paywall
06:57
and um we're open source the algorithm so there's transparency about what tweets get shown what what content gets shown versus not um I think you said like what are you really going to trust are you going to trust uh some sort of Black Box algorithm from some other site or you're going to trust something that you can actually see and understand but you do you accept that there are lots of Engineers that are looking at at the way that Twitter is built and the lack of Engineers because so many have left and are worried about the health of
07:31
Twitter well I mean there's been um many of these people have predicted that Twitter will cease to function their predictions have not turned out to be true you know insert Mark Twain saying you know Roosevelt death originally exaggerated um let's go back six months ago I mean we're literally on Twitter right now right let's go back six months and even further further back than that when you put that initial bid in you then had a wobble you kind of said I actually don't want to buy Switzer anymore
08:12
um I mean I mean it really is quite entertaining I mean it's like soap opera uh because when I first made the offer uh the response was the board of doctor poisoned her so they were like hell no you can't buy Twitter we'd rather die we're like chew on cyanide before being being bored that was their initial response and then and then you said and then you said actually I don't want to buy it yes and then they said no you must buy us gun to the head you have to buy it I'm like are you the same people who said
08:47
you'd rather die then I'm bored doesn't that seem odd so I guess I guess my question to you is in terms of you said that you said that the reason was because of bots because Twitter was filled with Bots looking back at it now was there a little bit of you that thought actually maybe I've overpaid actually maybe I don't want to do this I want to get out of this be honest the problem was that the um publicly stated because were in excess of the real user numbers uh so um but I've heard you talk about that
09:25
yeah basically looking back at it now was that the only reason that you wanted to play yes that's literally the issue it's like it's like let's say you um uh buy a warehouse full of goods and you're told that uh less than five percent of the goods in the warehouse are have are broken you know um but then you actually get to where how you look into the warehouse and turns out actually 25 of the things broken people like huh that's uh so you said so then you change your mind again and decided to buy it did you do that did
10:04
you do that right did you do that because you thought that a court would make you do that yes right yes that is the reason right so you were still trying to get out of it and then you just were advised by lawyers look we're gonna have to buy this yes no I mean like like let's say I think analogy is pretty pretty close like let's say you know it's like you there's a warehouse all good uh they say the warehouse uh less than five percent of what's in the warehouse so it's broken and then you
10:42
walk into warehouse to say actually it's 25 so you you guys still want to buy what's the in that warehouse but probably at a lower price we're not just buying the stuff that's broken so you didn't have an epiphany you just thought I'm gonna I'm gonna have to buy this I might as well buy the bullet yeah so so then you walk it's super complicated right right I'm not sure you've said that before fair enough um so then you you came into two cute hoverboard court case with a sec what were your first
11:23
impressions well I thought wow this is a really nice office building uh and uh expensive yes very expensive office building um great decor it's lovely place um and um they're spending money like it's doing on a fashion which is it isn't quite going out of fashion yet um so I mean the gravity of the situation perhaps uh it's not well understood of um you know the point which uh the company the credit transaction closed uh Twitter was tracking to uh lose uh over three billion dollars a year and so and had one billion in the bank so
12:24
that's four months to death so this is your starting position how would you feel pretty pretty intense you know you just had to borrow quite a lot of money and pay interest on that too well that's what by the way it was a three billion dollar uh run rate so um in rough numbers a normal year Twitter would do your say let's say four and a half billion in Revenue one half billion dollars in cost um I mean it was really kind of like a non-profit they'd run it at roughly roughly Break Even but that's not a bank
12:54
that's not bankruptcy you're not saving that company from bankruptcy no it's breaking even but then then the issue is that uh if you then add a billion and a half dollars in debt Servicing um and have a massive drop in Revenue if we did uh which was partly cyclic and partly you know political concerns or whatever um so Revenue you know quote dropped by over a third it's not and this is not just Twitter uh you know Facebook and Google full systems advertising Revenue to clients it was a little it's been a
13:27
little higher Twitter but mostly advertisers are coming back so I think we'll just go back where there's a cyclic demand drop which is still pretty significant um it but in rough numbers a revenue dropped from four and a half billion to three um uh and expenses went from four and a half to six creating a three billion dollar negative cash flow situation and Twitter having a billion dollars in the bank that's four months to live so unless drastic action was taken immediately it's going to die to be
14:00
honest let's talk about that drastic action because almost immediately um you sacked a lot of Twitter workers um yeah and I I spoke to them it's very easy to speak to them uh when it happened and and the way they set pretty much everyone said is that it felt quite haphazard it was it felt a little bit uncaring do you I wouldn't say uncare the the you know the issue is like uh the companies isn't going to go bankrupt or if we do not cut costs immediately um this is not a caring uncaring situation it's like if All Ships sinks
14:35
nobody's gonna drop right yeah but a lot of people just lost their jobs like that um and and they went well I didn't even know they'd lost their jobs what would you do well you might want to give someone some notice I mean you might it's by the way I'm not running Twitter but I know but this is this is the criticism and this is what actual this is what I'm talking about to say a little bit of notice uh you know I understand you're four months to live 120 days and 120 days you're dead
15:07
so how important so what do you want to do how much are you worth I don't know but yeah I mean we're talking about around the 200 billion dollar Mark I mean it's not quite you're framing it in in a way that that you know that it had had a few months to live you're quite a rich man I sold a lot of Tesla stock to close this deal I said I did not want to sell the Tesla stock okay um do you have any regrets on the way that some of the staff would let go uh I mean who were given you know three months of seven in some cases more
15:46
so um you know we really like I said the companies need to run on their own cognizance uh and uh it's not it's not so easy for me to sell stock that's pretty my dick after sales stock during certain periods I can't sell stuff during other periods um there's only there are only brief Windows where I can't sell Tesla stock and then this is often taken as some lack of faith in Tesla matter of fact the the Tesla stock sales of course the Tesla stock Department uh which is not good do you think those
16:20
two were connected well the the people can can parse the difference between I'm selling Tesla stock because I've lost weight in Tesla which I haven't or that it's definitely needed Twitter um okay and then after that after um you um let go of a lot of stuff obviously for Twitter came to slim down a lot then you started making some more policy decisions one of those policy decisions was to bring Donald Trump back he hasn't actually tweeted yet right do you expect him to come back at any point like have
16:53
you spoken but the point is that Twitter should be uh a Town Square that that is uh gives uh equal voice to you know the whole country and ideally the whole world um it should not be a partisan politics you know and the more partisan politics that are the very far left of the spectrum San Francisco publicly politics normally it's quite Niche um but if Twitter effectively active as a megaphone for a very Niche Regional politics and megaphone that to the world so if in order for something to serve as a digital Town Square it must uh
17:39
you know so all people from all political Persuasions uh provided it's legal um so yeah close to half the country uh voted for Trump I wasn't one of them I voted for Biden um but nonetheless uh you know free speech is meaningless unless you allow people you don't like to say things you don't like otherwise it's relevant and if at the point in which you lose a free speech it doesn't come back I think the issue some people have is that a lot of people were brought back I mean some people were brought back who
18:15
uh were previously bad for spreading things like she went on conspiracies you have some people like Andrew take you were brought back you were previously uh banned for things like hate speech do you think you prioritize freedom of speech over misinformation and hate speech well you know who's to say something is misinformation um who's the Arbiter of that is it the BBC you know you're literally asking me yeah well no you are the Arbiter on Twitter because you own Twitter yeah so I'm saying who is to say that one person's
18:56
misinformation is another person's information um the point I wish you you said that there is uh this is like who is this information can be dangerous that it can cause real world harms that it can potentially cause um yeah so the point I'm trying to make is the BBC itself has at times published things that are false do you agree if that has occurred I I I I'm quite sure the BBC have said things turn out to not be true right and it's whatever it is 100 Year history and questions even if you aspire to be accurate there
19:31
are times where you you will not be nice but you accept it has to be a line in terms of hate speech I mean not you're not looking at total 100 unrestricted speech um there's well I mean I generally I'm about 15 in that too if uh if you if if the people of a given country are against a certain type of speech they should talk to their elected representatives of pass a law to prevent it so for example you cannot Advocate murdering someone that's illegal in the United States and everywhere really I suspect so
20:11
uh so there are limits to speech um I mean I guess taking your argument to a logical conclusion that do you accept that there's more misinformation on the platform if it's not being policed in the same way I I actually think there's there's less these days because we we've eliminated so many of the Bots which we're pushing scams to spend uh and previously previous management turned a blind eye to to the bond because their bonuses were tied to user growth and if you vote if you're if your compensation is tied
20:42
to use a growth uh well you're not going to look too closely at some of the users that's part of the problem so I think we've got less less information because we've we don't have the what problem that we used to do and we also have given a lot of attention to community notes which corrects where the community itself corrects misinformation has been very effective um I I mean I would only just add that you know we have spoken to people who who have been sacked that used to be in content moderation and and P we've
21:15
spoken to people very recently you were involved in moderation and they just say they just there's not enough people to police this stuff particularly around um particularly around hate speech um in the company is that something that you were talking about I mean you use Twitter right do you see a rise in hate speech I mean just your personal anecdote like what do you do I don't personally my uh for you I would see I get I get more of that kind of content yeah personally but I'm not going to talk to talk to the rest of for the rest
21:44
of Twitter hate speech personally I would say I would see more hateful content in that in that content you don't like or or hateful what do you mean to describe a hateful thing yeah I mean you know just content that will solicit a reaction something that may include something that is slightly racist or slight sexist those kinds of those kinds of things slightly sexist attribute event no I know what you're saying I'm not saying anything I'm just curious I'm trying to say what you mean by hateful
22:13
content I'm asking for specific examples um and if and you just said that if something is slightly sexist that's hateful content does that mean that it should be bad well you've asked me you've asked me whether my feed whether it's got less or more I'd say it's got slightly more that's why I'm asking for examples right can you name one example I I honestly don't you I I honestly I don't name a single example I'll tell you why because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore
22:41
because I just don't particularly like it there's actually a lot of people a lot of people are quite similar I I only I only look at mine with my followers you can't name it a single example not even one I'm not sure I've used that fee for the last because I've been I've been using it I've been using twister since you've taken over for the last six months okay so then you must have at some point seen that you poor you hateful content I'm asking for one example right and you
23:06
can't give us something and I'm saying I I say so that you don't know what you're talking about really yes because you can't be a single example of hateful content not even one tweet and yet you claimed that the hippo content was high well that's a false no what I could applied what no no what I claim was uh there are many uh organizations that say that that kind of information is on the rise now whether whether it has on my feet I mean right and literally accountable strategic dialogue eyes this year in the
23:38
UK they will say that so people will say all sorts of nonsense I'm literally asking for a single example you can't name one right and as I already said I don't use that feed but let's I don't think this is getting anything you've literally said you experienced more hateful content and then couldn't name a single example right and as I said that's absurd I haven't I haven't actually looked at that feeling how would you know this because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago I
24:03
can't give you an exact example let's move on we have we only have a certain amount of time um covert misinformation BBC changes covered misinformation the BBC does not set the rules on Twitter so I'm asking you no I'm talking about what the BBC's misinformation about Kobe I'm I'm literally asking you about you change the labels the covered misinformation labels there used to be a policy it then it then disappears why do that covert is no longer an issue does the BBC uh hold itself at all
24:48
responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccinations and not reporting on that at all and what about the fact that BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change this editorial policy are you aware of that this is a this is not an interview about the baby's age oh you thought it wasn't I see now why you've done Twitter spaces I am not a representative of the BBC's editorial policy I want to make that clear let's talk about something else all right let's let's talk about let's
25:22
talk about something else you weren't expecting that let's talk about something else Narendra Modi the BBC did a documentary um about uh Narendra Modi and his leadership during the rising Gujarat um we then believe that some of those some of that content was taken off Twitter was that at the behest of the Indian government I'm not aware of that particular situation so you're just you're not sure I I don't know if I don't know about that you know what exactly happened with some content situation in India the
25:56
the rules in India for for what uh pure on social media are quite strict and we can't go beyond the laws of the country but do you get the if you do that you incentivize countries around the world to Simply pass more Draconian laws no uh look what if we have a choice of either our people go to prison uh or we comply with the laws we'll comply with the laws same goes for the BBC okay okay um since you uh became CEO there's been another story in town I'm not CEO anymore okay did you achieve to it or what are you no my dog Loki is
26:42
let's see okay um he's taken over I I saw that yeah um okay so so Tick Tock has also been in the news there's talk of perhaps by demonstration wanting to potentially ban it or or force a sale what what's your view of the situation I don't really use tick tock um I mean one of the reasons that I emphasize that the uh I think our goal here at Twitter is to maximize uh unregretted user minutes or unreparated user time is that I hear many people tell me they spent a lot of time on Tick Tock but they regret the
27:18
time spent and that seems like okay well we don't want to have regretted time we want the time to be unregretted where you learned things uh you were entertained and used um I reflect I I you know I I I get to more uh laps out of Twitter than anything else and many people tell me the same thing so that's a good sign um Tick Tock itself like I said I just don't know enough about what's going on there um I can't say I have a strong opinion on tick tock so you'd have an opinion on whether it
27:53
should be banned or not you know I'm generally uh against Banning things um so I I probably not be in favor I mean it would it would help Twitter I suppose if Tick Tock was banned uh because then people would spend more time on Twitter unless I'm in Tick Tock but even though that would be that even if it would help Twitter I would be generally against uh Banning of of things okay um do you feel sometimes that you're many business interests might get in the way of you having an opinion I mean for example Tesla has major Connections in
28:34
China do you you you wouldn't you wouldn't have a you wouldn't have a certain opinion on something or feel uncomfortable about saying something because of your other business interests elsewhere do I look uncomfortable which ideas I'm looking comfortable um uh yeah I mean Tesla has got activities around the world in some of the SpaceX um you know once in a while those things do common conflict um but it's not like Twitter is like uh you know operates in China it doesn't do Choice branding right now so
29:12
um and certainly I perceived no no communication whatsoever from the Chinese government for regard to Twitter okay um in terms of advertising obviously it's not a private company anymore so we don't really know how it's how it's all going have all the advertisers come back uh not all but most and you can see it for yourself even in the for you right I mean sorry in the following ideas for you rightly um that's not what I said okay well why don't you use for you what's wrong with it um
29:56
how is it going is twittering profit now you know Twitter is uh uh rough I'd say we're roughly break even at this point and I think you've said before you you see uh you see a world where you could be in profit is there a timeline on that do you think I mean depending on how things go if current trends continue I think we could be profitable or I mean to be more precise we could be cash flow positive uh this quarter if things keep going well this quarter as soon as I I possibly yeah wow um and do you have a message for the
30:35
appetite I mean can you say which advertisers haven't come back um I think I think almost all of them have either come back or so they're going to come back there are very few exceptions can you say it say any of the exceptions I actually don't know of anyone who said definitively they're not coming back they're all sort of training towards coming back but there are some that just jump in the water as well it's great advertising their children's movies and apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones those
31:14
are good indicators that Twitter is a good place to advertise um I want to talk about if you have any regrets and and you know I think you you were Buddha Dave Chappelle concert I think your own lawyer yourself a little a little well some say a little some say a bit more um I think our own lawyer said you couldn't get a fair trial in San Francisco because there are lots of people that don't necessarily like you here yeah but you know he was wrong I guess that uh because I was quitted by the San Francisco jury
31:52
unanimously so yeah but I guess but look in there do you have any regrets by buying Twitter um I think it was something that needed to be done um I'd say the like the the pain level of Twitter has been extremely high um this hasn't been some sort of party um so uh it's been really quite a stressful situation the last several months not not an easy one but apart from the pain I mean so it's been quite painful but I think a day of the day it should have been done I think that were there many mistakes
32:35
made along the way of course you know um and uh but you know all swell that ends well and so I I feel like we're headed uh to a good place um you know we're roughly break even I think we're trending towards a half low positive very soon literally in a matter of of months the advertisers are returning um the I think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly it would take a lot of feedback from people that have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm and we've we've made a lot of
33:13
improvements even to get even since that was made open source and we're going to keep doing that so overall I think the trend is very good so you know I mean it was actually something I was going to ask you you mentioned the pain but you actually tweeted I think in February you said the last three months have been extremely tough I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone okay are you talking emotionally yeah I mean can you can you explained right right some people around here dangerous it is or can be but just can you just talk me through the
33:47
emotional strain of this yeah I mean look I'm under I've been under constant uh it's not like I you know have a stone called heart or something like that you know uh if you're under constant criticism and attack it's and then that that gets fed to non-stop including through Twitter um that uh it's rough you know um not not the other day I kind of think that like if you do lose your feedback loop that's that's actually not good um so uh you know if so I think it is actually important
34:27
to get negative feedback um I don't turn reply is all and I actually got rid of I removed my entire block list it's not block anyone either um so so somebody can you know so I get like a lot of negative feedback um good to get negative feedback right when you talk about the emotional strain you've gone back to feedback is it is that the thing that's been most difficult to take the sort of negative feedback yeah I mean if if uh if the media is writing non-stop stories about why you're horrible person I mean you know
35:02
um it's uh hurtful obviously I I I've written down a lot of these questions about that I haven't written this one down but it's interesting it feels like you have quite a kind of interesting relationship with the media because in one in some ways you're quite skeptical by critical certainly of established media but also you kind of get hurt by what the media writes and um did you get your new still from the BBC as you've already said I don't really follow the views right right so do you
35:34
feel you have a kind of kind of odd relationship with the media yes explain no it's it it it it is somewhat of a love-hate relationship although I mean it might be totally different more towards the hate um but uh you know it it's uh you know I I think that's what this is so sort of part and parcel of having a a free media situation which is that um you know I do I do take uh part in the in that the media is actually able to trash me on a regular basis uh in you know in the United States and UK and whatnot um
36:24
whereas you know in a lot of other places uh you read it cannot say uh mean things to proper people okay so I think it's better that we have a situation where the media can say uh mean things to problem people if we're talking about the media let's talk about verification labels you obviously want to create another Revenue stream that's subscription based it's verification the way to do that because if we have a kind of a situation at the moment where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge whereas anyone
36:57
else who can pay whatever few bucks a month yeah can is that can that be right is that what you envisaged when you bought Twitter I must confess this I'm delighted in removing the verified Bachelor of times that was that was great um anyway they're still alive and well so uh they're doing fine but on a serious note it could flame disinformation again if you have verified accounts that uh are from anyone who can pay money they simply they go up to potentially uh the top of feeds um they get more action on
37:32
Twitter and uh traditional media that may not pay for uh verification doesn't do you see how that could potentially be a driver of misinformation well I mean I I think the media is Survivor of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are um I mean that's a different question yeah um but you are sort of saying like like who who knows best the average citizen or you know uh so someone who who is journalist um and I think a lot of cases um is the average citizen that knows more than than the journalist in fact I
38:07
mean very often when I see an article about some uh something that I know a lot about and I read the article it's like they get a lot wrong um and uh you know some of the best interpretation is there is someone who doesn't really understand what's going on in the industry has only a few facts to play with has to come up with an article no it's going to be you know it's not gonna it's not getting the bullseye um uh so so then like generally this is what how expensive if you read an article that's something you know
38:39
about how much of that are how accurate is that article now imagine that that is the that is how or essentially all articles are they there are an approximation of what's going on but not any not an exact uh situation so if somebody is actually let's say uh in The Fray or like an expert in the field and uh was actually there and then and writes about their experience of being actually there I I think that actually that that could that's uh in a lot of cases going to be better than a journalist because the journalist wasn't
39:10
there I think you said the Legacy verified blue techs are going to go next week uh there have been a few few deadlines yeah that's the joke um it costs you a lot of money well fortunately it didn't in the trial well yeah right as you say right yes we're gonna ask for a refund yeah okay yeah good luck um let's move on from that but blue sex in theory all Legacy blue Tech's gone gone next week and this is and at that point you'll kind of work out whether this is going to single swim yes what's your what's your hatch I mean
39:56
you've obviously yeah yeah I'll swim just fine okay what are you looking for in terms of in terms of Revenue stream on that what are your calls well I I think it's like that's really a giant Revenue stream um you know even if you have sort of a million uh people that are subscribed for let's say 100 a year in the dish that's a hundred million dollars um and uh that's that's a that's a fairly small Revenue stream relative to advertising um what are we really trying to do here with uh verification is to massively
40:34
raise the cost of this information and and bots in general so my prediction is that in any social media company that does not uh insist on paid verification will simply be overwhelmed uh by Advanced AI Bots I mean check gbt is essentially a zillion instances of chat gbt how would you even know what you want on the platform do you want big news organizations being overwhelmed by bots so they have to go to the point and say you won't be if you pay but a lot of organizations have already said they're not going to
41:06
pay like the New York Times well then you know that's up to them if they you know can't make them pay um it's a small amount of money so I don't know what their problem is um so uh but if we're going to feed everyone equally so what we're not going to do is say that there's some anointed class of journalists who are the special ones who get to tell everyone what they're which what they should think that it should be up to the people what they think and even if an article is completely accurate and
41:40
um comprehensive and everything they're still in in writing that article the media is choosing the narrative they're deciding what to write an article about um so I'm hopeful that this can be more a case of the public choosing the narrative as opposed to the media choosing narrative but the media choosing at least at least a combination of the media and the public choosing the narrative and the the public getting to to weigh in on stories that they if they think that they should add something to
42:08
it or uh we've got something wrong and over time I think if Twitter is the best source of Truth it will succeed and if and if we are not the best source of Truth we will fail someone comes in and offers you 44 billion for Twitter right now would you take it no considerate yeah why uh well I I think about it depends on who I suppose if I was confident that they would pursue that they would rigorously pursue the truth um Then I then I I guess I guess I would be glad to hand it off to someone else I don't care about the money really but I
42:54
I do want to have some sort of truth that I can count on um and and I hope that's our aspiration with much better is to have a source of proof that you can count on that's that's also real time it's an immediate source of truth that you can count on and that gets more accurate with time as people comment on a particular thing well if you don't care about the money you could just give it to someone that you that you think is a good person to run Twitter who do you think that might be I I I'm
43:27
not aggressive Twitter nobody choose well that's you might still have an idea who could run Twitter yeah honestly I had no idea who could run Twitter yeah it's a hard job okay let's I mean let's move on so you've said that you were going to um Stand Down chief executive right okay I'm not the CEO of Twitter my dog is the CEO okay have you got any it's a great dog other than the dog very alert and it's hard to get anything by him okay that's good to know other than the dog have you got any success with his mind
44:05
you've got a black a turtle turtleneck or what would you need yeah okay all right we're going down that that route um Steve Jobs are Elizabeth highness team I guess more or less okay I forgotten the question now let's go how's your voice um what are we talking about there uh yeah who would who who would you want have you got a successor in mind not yet hopefully at some point right so because you did say you were going to stand out I did stand out okay all right let's move on from that then all right what about this office
44:48
I'm intrigued about office you said it was basically expensive yeah yeah why can't we be um anarchicalistic commune I think Jack Dorsey kind of recommended doing that and we kind of ignored it yeah it was kind of bad actually um um this office are you thinking about moving out of San Francisco uh not yet not yet but yeah I mean this place is nice and uh we you know I kind of like this obstacle thing actually yeah okay so you're not because I know you've talked about there's been high levels of crime
45:25
here you actually said at one point you should know something about the crime right because people are dying right we should take action he also talks about how potentially I would think you would might have been joking but you could turn this into a homeless shelter so then I guess the reason I'm asking is you know you yeah they won't let us which bits have you tried to turn into a hamster but we're only using one of the buildings and so the other building could be a homeless shelter and you try
45:53
to yeah we would like to do it right now really yeah No in fact they wouldn't even let us take the W off the site so how are you going to do that with a really quite quite uh you know what was your what was your plan for the shelter I don't know we could just let people stay there nice right okay whatever right and it's a roof over their head yeah it's the building owner of that software will do it yeah so if the building only that owner lets you you would you would happily do that yes okay all right there we go
46:34
um what's the most difficult thing you've had to do what's the hardest thing you've had to do in my whole life in the last six months I've talked about the last six months it's with Twitter owners um well shutting down uh our one of our service centers was was quite difficult because it turns out there were I thought the service centers were redundant but they were in fact a lot of things that were hard-coded to the swan server Center and so where he shut it down and we actually uh it was quite catastrophic we lost a lot
47:09
of functionality sort of really rushed to put it back when was that was around late December during early January so that was the biggest sort of I'm I'm worried biggest crisis yeah yeah and what about Han in terms of emotion I mean I mean does Letting Go I mean what what were the current the levels of staff and what are they now um I think we're um around 1500 people at this point and there was I think 7 800.
47:43
I think it was around just under eight thousand eight thousand fifteen hundred right now okay and has it been hard letting that many people go yeah not fun at all for people I mean I guess in in what way do you do you feel like you need to speak to people when they when when they leave or I mean it's not physically possible to speak to that many people is that I mean you talked about that being the most technical bit is that has has that been sort of the hardest thing emotionally or is it it's one of the
48:18
hardest things certainly yeah um the nasty Pelosi tweet but there have been is an example of a theme there have been others um do you feel like you're an impulsive person I mean have I shot myself on the quote with tweets multiple times yeah do you feel like I need bulletproof shoes at this point I mean you've definitely done that the issue is that you're now Twitter owner do you feel like you should be look at your tweets more you have more a higher responsibility when you tweet something out for it to be accurate I
48:56
think I should not tweet uh after 3am that's the rule yeah well maybe to it that's the new rule yeah something like that okay so there's a blanket ban I should I shouldn't I shouldn't uh what are your Twitter what are your Twitter rules I mean I've heard some people say never tweet when you've been drinking whenever tweet when angry what are your Twitter rules well I think those are two grid rules yeah don't tweet if you're wasted um and uh or you know really upset about something
49:29
yeah probably uh I mean a good friend of mine um I actually had a good suggestion it has helped which is that uh if you're going to Tweet something that uh maybe it's controversial uh you save it as a draft look at it the next day it's your store and that has been a good rule of thumb okay we've got a bunch of things I'm glad I didn't say um I can't remember whether I've asked you this this was my sort of sort of wrapping up at this point but yeah do you have any regrets you know you know a bunch of decisions
50:12
that kind of been made better for sure um but um as I said all's well it ends well um I think it's going pretty well so uh the grand scheme of things I can't complain okay um I'm gonna just check my my list of things to make sure I've actually I mean it's maybe this probably got people on the on the Twitter what you say ask you know we could ask them that's on you that's on you wow 680 000 people listening there you go that's a lot that is a lot uh let's see how do we see okay
50:46
let me see who I'll just look at my my tweet and uh see what people are saying or what questions they have um do you like the BBC do you like BBC okay yeah we're not gonna oh I can't even always have work for the BBC I mean you like do you like BBC I know what you're doing I'm not going to respond to that okay if you wanna if you want to continue thank you very much surely you like BBC come on um it honestly has been a pleasure okay and if you wanna if you want to carry on answering questions on on on on this
51:34
then okay well I just want to see if there's like any you know good there's a lot of comments here um I can imagine um there's so many anyway so it's it's nice to be interviewed by the BBC I have a lot of respect for the British Broadcasting Corporation um when did you say when the when the actual label is going to go public oh this is um is it do we still say State Media or whatever or it says government-funded media currently um as opposed to publicly funded media uh well I guess probably we can make that
52:14
change tomorrow if you'd like I it's uh it's up to you but I mean we'll expect that tomorrow I mean do you have any requests on a personal level or you can't speak on a personal level no I don't okay okay I think we've established that um what what questions are people asking you go on um I mean there's like a lot of comments uh let's see I was literally reading on looking at replies to the you know the fact that the space of these um are there any good questions that I've missed out in the last
52:55
in the last six months I'm sure there are many um I mean people generally seem to like this interview before you can tell um refer a few negative comments so generally positive is that is that um that's probably bad for me uh I guess there's some complaints about Twitter spaces being needing some improvement let's fix Twitter spaces as one of the comments um people like the fact that my dog Loki is the CEO um and uh I'm really just rolling as fast as I can here um I I think I think it's my reflection on this
53:47
interview I like BBC okay I do find it funny um I I think I mean honestly it's looking listening to the interview the answer about misinformation and saying oh we don't police misinformation in the same way but we're closer because we try and get books because we try and take down Bots when we effective at Bots we're actually there's actually less misinformation on the platform I think that's a big factor a lot of people I think will be listed really you're arguing you can police content moderation far less and end up
54:28
with less misinformation we do have we do have uh you know content moderation it's not like we don't um so I've spoken to lots of people who've been who've been fired so a lot lots of people have been let go I mean you've gone from eight yeah the censorship Bureau was like oh um I don't think the the sort of putting a thumb on the political scales in the far left has been let go because that's not right that's not what you want for a public a Public Square um you know you've got to have equal
54:57
treatment for people from um across the political Spectrum so um you know something we're going to be upset about that um but like I said I my my experience is that there's less less misinformation these days not more um and that the community notes feature is extremely powerful for uh addressing uh so-called misinformation um I mean you've been you've had Community notes placed on your own tweets yes um one of them involving I had an alleged diamond mine the I think a mind that your father part owned
55:39
yeah my father never heard a dog uh so you're thinking of an emerald Emerald mine yeah I'd like to see a picture of this alleged Emerald line because you've been you've been Community noted on that tweet yeah did you know that no but it's he never owned a a emerald mine it's a total not even a 50 steak no because in community no first of all okay okay do you think Emerald do you think something like an emerald line would have like um you know uh some sort of property register there'd be like a picture of it
56:07
it's not like you can say oh that's my mind you know these things are hotly debated if you've got something valuable um you you have to have some property record like a house but but much more important than a house and yet there is no property record whatsoever there is no picture of this line whatsoever it doesn't exist it's fake so that's it's a really good example then because there is a community note on that tweet that says you said this thing on the X day blah blah blah so in that instance the
56:39
key Community nox didn't work so you're saying that that's a way of solving this information but you're literally saying one of those Community notes is wrong it's in the community community note may be referring to a thing where uh I I went on a trip with my father to Zambia um but I never saw any mine or anything so there's no it's there's no mic I'm not right but at this point I'm just saying the community note says it is so you're saying it's this big great
57:05
Panacea but yeah it's literally on your own tweet the community notes according to you're wrong uh if they're referencing um an article then the article may not be wrong but there's still yeah but communities is not going to be perfect but it's the batting average of community notes I found to be extremely high right um so Community nights Plus getting rid of millions and millions of bots every day I guess that's that's what we're talking about yeah that that that's what you
57:41
think is tackling misinformation over over content moderation and I think I think because I think that's the bit a lot of people will go really really yes really but look the asset test is people who use the system and find it find it to be a good source of Truth or they don't and no no system is going to be perfect uh in in its uh pursuit of the truth um but I think I think we can be the best of the least uh inaccurate that's our goal the least inaccurate but I think we I I think we might be there already if we're not there we'll
58:15
be there soon do you have I've I've spoken to people who you think nice do you have a a kind of message for people who who think that Twitter has been ruined well we have all-time high usage so I don't think it has been yes well they're probably the same people who predicted that Twitter would cease to exist and their predictions have turned out to be false okay I know I'm not going to ask you whether you think it's been ruined because obviously you you look no I think it's great that's way better
58:50
um better by a lot I'm done with this interview it sounds like you don't want to take any questions from your Legions to fans I mean I was looking for um you know questions uh you got any questions okay Let's uh what's the average designer okay so what I do the top of it again yeah he's submitted we're just getting some technical help for anyone who's listening okay so should I how do you unmute he just needs to okay those designer if you if you unmute you can talk hey Lauren um can you hear me but let's unmute Jason
59:50
and David as well uh and and us I think and definitely definitely Walter Isaacson if he does want to speak I actually um yeah sure well we'll get a few people going here I thought we had um half an hour for this interview I know we're so good it's respect to keep going I always told you were very impressed for time um yeah that's true Alex you can speak hey what's going on all right that's better uh so my question actually had to do with more privileges or features for long-term Twitter blue subscribers uh
1:00:49
one of the complaints I hear a lot is people who change their just their profile picture and not their display name um how they lose their verification badge um I know there's an ID verification coming up as well what are your thoughts for expanding privileges for long time subscribers so they kind of gain trust with the platform where they might not have to lose their blue check if they just change their profile picture as opposed to their name and profile picture yeah just you know during this kind of uh transition period we're
1:01:28
um extra vigilant about impersonation so I agree that over time if somebody is has a trusted track record they should be able to change their their name and profile picture without losing the blue check you know during this transition period uh we want to be just like I said extra vigilance against impersonation so um that's that's why we're being so rigorous in this regard now if somebody has um organizational affiliation they can't change their name or picture uh without losing the verification check
1:02:03
because they're cross-verified with their organization um so I really would encourage people to get organizational verification um as much as possible and we're going to add you know so you can be have multiple organizational affiliations um I think this can be really powerful for avoiding in post Nation I've heard from a lot of people that impersonation is a serious issue um actually more on other platforms than Twitter and I think that um you know if you can say that you you really do belong to if the organization if some
1:02:35
organization can say that that you really do belong to them that's a great way to address impersonation risk yeah for sure thank you cool hey long can you hear me I can yes how's it doing good how's it going all good I'm flying to us tomorrow I just have couple of questions for you one is like I will be asked why you are here in like U.
1:02:59
S so what should I tell them I am here to visit Twitter headquarters or just Twitter headquarters yeah well I mean I've yeah I would recommend adding adding the W uh for the srts and second question is like will I be able to meet the Twitter CEO there or no uh sure perfect can't wait and I just have one message for James uh like you know the number of people like you know in this Twitter space so you should be responsible like you should be a responsible reporter you are claiming that you are seeing a lot of hate speech but you could not even give a single
1:03:35
example so I just request you to be a responsible speaker that's it all right thank you um thank you so uh let's see uh let's see David or Jason I don't know if you guys can speak um that you're welcome to if you'd like I I just want to clear up what what I said there I said you said has you I believe I said something like has you will feed okay or something and I said my for you feed has got a bit more hateful I didn't say I was seeing tons of hate speech on it that's not what I said no but you can I
1:04:10
mean you can frame it like that well look it's recorded so you know uh yeah it's not like uh you know we don't have to engage in guesswork here it's recorded in terms of your for you feedy are you just trying you're trying to get as many videos that are viral to to people as possible to get people to stay on the platform is that is that the is that well I think if we keep people entertained then they're gonna keep they're gonna yeah I mean if if we're entertaining and informing people then they're gonna stay
1:04:38
on the platform yeah obviously I mean it's if we bore people or it's like you know somehow uninteresting then they they will beep um yeah there has been this talk that um that people like you and other senior celebrities uh some journalists get favorable treatment on the algorithms well you're gonna care about treatment right now do you give yourself a favorable treatment on the algorithm No in fact the algorithm is is open sourced uh so you can see exactly what's going on I believe defeat the for you one is open
1:05:16
source is that right well following is just who you follow it's pretty it's not algorithm it's just it's still an algorithm yeah that's still an average policy you don't see every single in following you should see all the tweets of people that you follow if not there's a bargain system right just just sequentially when they tweet yeah yeah following is literally the thing they say when they say it there's no but there shouldn't be any algorithmic interaction there so um all right so this is hard to actually
1:05:53
see I think well I I definitely see some room for improvement from a functionality standpoint uh because when you have a really big spaces it's hard to see who it's actually hard to even see who's um requesting to speak because there's so many need to add there but throw people in the requester here okay it's a long ways oh okay I've got a I've got a question here someone's texted me okay what about Elon chat uh what about him that was obviously quite controversial moment when I think you but I think you did you ban
1:06:44
his account for a while yeah real-time uh dark scene of locations it's not flexing your muscle overly I mean now it's just a real-time boxing is not not allowed because if I take a picture of someone in the street and then tweets it it's not toxic uh if it's against their will and you're you're sort of following them around then yeah that would be exactly but Elon jet wasn't wasn't following you around just using publicly available information wasn't there um no it wasn't here it actually
1:07:25
it's actually not true yeah he was using non-public information with public information do you think that you you sort of gave yourself favorable treatment there I mean that that's the criticism on that that no uh it's just real-time doxing is it's not allowed that wasn't right but that wasn't you you literally created that rule after that actually no it just was unevenly enforced right so there's no doxing rule it was unevenly enforced in fact in general part of the issue with the prior
1:07:58
management Twitter is there they'll have all these rules but they would only enforce them against some people not against others you know what doxing generally means which is revealing someone's address yes where they are right well as I say taking a picture is revealing something by someone else yeah that's being a concert yeah and take a picture of loads of people if you can't recognize them then it's not a thing I think I think it was clarified where they would say that if it was a public event like a concert or
1:08:26
say a political Rally or whatever that's a public space rather than somebody is traveling you know I think there's the distinction there yeah it's not someone's house right if you're going to somebody's house and you're taking a photo of it say JK Rowling right so several people have harassed at her house that would be dachshund right and they have been gotten rid of so I don't know where the question is here James uh it was actually a question it got texted to me it wasn't on my list let's
1:08:52
move on to be honest I'm I'm done so okay do you want to leave I'm happy to if you want to carry on doing questions uh yeah maybe welcome to this will be the first time the interview interviewer has ever walked out how to turn tables how long are you gonna sit here for was gonna pack up around you yeah that sounds good uh Elon thank you very much for talking to me oh you're welcome so it was fun I enjoyed it thoroughly sounds good well this has really given me a long list of feature improvements that we
1:09:36
need for spaces oh yeah I I um yeah I have a bunch of suggestions not right now but I do being on Twitter spaces every single day there are a host of problems um first of all where's the desktop app right I want to connect with my nice microphone yeah it's pretty good but it's like you know it's yeah a lot a lot of things need to be improved that's for sure oh yeah there's a laundry list of things all right how often do you use stock Twitter spaces I'm like you know I'm sure you have like an ALT account or
1:10:10
something do you do stock Twitter spaces uh no not really um and uh I actually didn't even have a burner account um I I do have a second account at this point because uh I need to test the uh app before it goes out so it's kind of like a beta test account um but uh no I don't I don't have a boner or anything like that um okay and never yeah never have had yeah none of those okay nope um so well let's see uh I mean any any uh key points anyone wants to make otherwise we'll I'll sign off in a few
1:10:58
minutes um I'm I just um I don't know if the other guys do I think whole whole Mars blog is here maybe he has some questions yeah I had one question about Twitter uh Elon some media had been reporting today that Twitter bought 10 000 gpus for some type of generative AI project and I also noticed that on Twitter there were a couple of people who mentioned working at AI infrastructure the super Computing team at both Tesla and Twitter I was wondering if you could share anything with us about what Twitter's working on
1:11:30
there and if there's maybe any synergies maybe you know Twitter using Dojo or something like that or what exactly is going on with this project um well it seems like everyone um you know and their dog is buying uh deep views at this point you know it's kind of getting to the point where like you're gonna have to buy gpus in a back alley um so uh there's certainly um a lot of people buying gpus uh Twitter and Tesla certainly buying gpus and we're also working on dojo um so I think there's a lot of potential
1:12:10
there with Dojo that people don't realize um so yeah well actually I do have a question and well I guess people keep dming me uh they're wondering what's the future of the Twitter files do you still have any journalists working on these things or no uh yeah I mean I mean at some point we need to move on from the Twitter files but I think there's a few things uh left uh but uh you know generally I think there's not there's not a lot that I'm aware of that's left so um it's mostly just like you know let's
1:12:42
let's move on to the Future um that's true yeah yeah I think uh yeah I think that's more that's true what what are your thoughts on you know companies like Facebook Instagram Tick Tock kind of following Twitter's footsteps you know I think Facebook recently did a verification thing for 15 which is like double the price what's your what's your thoughts on that yeah like I said uh my opinion is that uh any uh social media organization that does not insist on paid verification uh will be worthless
1:13:14
um because at this point uh you take Instagram for example uh if you you can generate an infinite number of those picks using my journey um and you know for free uh we're not for free but for very little um and you can get at this point um modern AI can pass you know any human verification test um so the the only solution that I can think of is to increase the cost of a fake accounts um so if somebody's paying on the order of eight bucks a month that's a hundred dollars a year and they also need to get
1:13:49
a credit card and a phone number from reputable referral carrier so so then like the it's much harder to create like a million Bots um whereas uh if you don't require those things uh it's trivial frankly uh to create a million Bots and they're all seem very human um and and will take very little Computing effort to do so um so that's why I think basically uh any social media that does not require um paid verification will basically cease to be relevant makes sense speaking of generative content uh is it possible for
1:14:29
you guys to add a flag that says that hey this video or this image is uh you know for like like I make a lot of AI generated content and a lot of it looks real right I put a one of Donald Trump uh making out with Gavin Newsom yeah I mean you have anything it looks pretty real um right and yeah including the voice that can get the voice match and the video matched I mean it it's really gonna get it's really getting to the point where it'll be quite easy to generate uh for extremely realistic uh fake videos
1:15:00
images and so forth um and voice um I mean I saw like a fake um like Joe Rogan interview um and it really sounded like Joe Rogan's voice um I sent it to Joe and he was like wow this is crazy so so yeah I think verification is going to be extremely fundamental in the future uh that's why we're so focused on it so I mean the reason I brought that up is you know as a content creator I'd like to keep making those and I don't want to necessarily fool people right so would it be possible to I don't know add
1:15:33
a flag to it so that you know content creators can say hey this is EI generated content don't take it seriously it's a parody well I think in in the in the Tweet you know in the post uh I think that it would be advisable to say that this is not real right if it is something that can be um potentially misinterpreted um I mean it was crazy how viral that uh you know picture of the Pope with the you know awesome yeah yeah yeah um Joe Biden falling off the airplane I mean you could also like the best advertisement Balenciaga
1:16:13
has ever gotten in there um like the Harry Potter valenciaga uh demon flying fox one was was a genius he did a D1 today yeah a lot of the Rings I think yeah yeah it's amazing um and actually even even the AI fashion is great right I mean if if I was a fashion designer I'd be taking ideas from this because the stuff that makes actually original right yeah the AI fashion is incredible yeah yeah so I mean just can we just like print that somehow or make it because uh yeah it's amazing um maybe you should
1:16:50
patent the idea you know just have like a DI profession generator thing that prints them out and you know it's like a like I think there's craft or something right like the clothing manufacturer thing that you can sort of do it at home yeah yeah you can make so much money well I I don't really believe in patents actually uh yeah so but yeah I mean there's really some amazing AI generated uh clothing it's really cool um and that I really love that one with the Pope and that went viral a lot of
1:17:19
people thought that the pope actually had that outfit uh which is not like totally out of the question because there's a lot of amazing fashion in Italy so it's possible that some you know Fashion House made a really epic code for the pope you know and um but that that was that was obviously AI generated I mean we're headed into a weird world here we are we're video games like trying to figure out what's real is super hard yeah I mean I mean I fooled millions of people of the uh you know the one of uh
1:17:51
Joe Biden falling off the airplane so I mean anything's possible Right well that I mean he has slept a few times on the stairwell so you know the stairways so that's that's you know yeah quite quite believable in that situation so um yeah a bunch of things like very close to the truth are it's quite reasonable to expect that people would interpret that as possibly true um so yeah I think just just verification that an account is real that material is real um the what is real anymore is a extremely
1:18:22
fundamental question of Worlds right I mean that's what Bill Clinton used to say yeah so well here so here at uh Twitter we're going to be very focused on um you know figuring out what's real and it's not real then uh you know trying to address it um I mean I think Nick Carter has been doing a great job of um you know covering the news right like four hours ahead of the AP so I mean that's a big plus for Twitter that it you know you have citizen journalists now who are able to cover this stuff hours before
1:18:53
anybody else yeah I mean if you want the real-time news is this is the best place is a sweater um and um and you know like I said in any given source of information is going to have some degree of inaccuracy and we can just aspire to make that as small as possible um and and iterate towards um you know being closer to the truth over time that is our goal yeah it's it's a good goal and but we're not we're definitely not going to assert that everything we say is uh everything you see on Twitter is true because
1:19:29
because it isn't um yeah I think um any organization that claims to be uh completely truthful um yeah you know so because they're not and so that that very claim is false um uh so you know I think it's important to reflect on what mistakes we're making and try to make few of them in the future yeah unlike you know media could you tell us about x-corp is this just something that's like a legal thing that you had to do or is there maybe something more to it there is something more to it um oh yeah
1:20:16
my goal is to create X the everything app you know uh that's the goal as we're working towards yeah Twitter is an accelerant to X the average does that what does that mean what does it mean well I guess you'll have to stay tuned to find out I love it for another episode I've canceled my Netflix Twitter Twitter's taking my time yeah thank you for that like it's very entertaining very interesting I was I was thinking like like Twitter does make you miserable at times but it actually makes me laugh as well and right you
1:20:56
know and I think if if it's sort of entertaining and informative and um that then we're doing a good job like that's the difference between Twitter and Tick Tock because Tick Tock is mostly passive entertainment you're just watching videos right but right on Twitter you're interacting you're saying things to people and when you tweet as a celebrity there's a pretty good chance they read your tweets and they get irritated by it let's say you're trolling them which is what I do so I
1:21:20
mean it's good it's fun having that reaction it's like it's like playing a video game but better yeah yeah totally exactly I mean honestly this is uh Twitter is trollhaven um yeah a lot of the media is going to hit it because because it's it's certainly 12 having on Twitter um and and other things like even I I even get trolled and I'm like God like why did I control the game that was really right yeah every day and it's like ah well you know part and parcel of being on Twitter yeah totally it's worth
1:21:55
it on that note did you see the guy who got charged for a meme on Twitter what were your thoughts on that I know you commented on it I didn't know if you got to look more into it his name's Douglas Mackey oh that's the guy who uh I guess was accused of election interference or something you'll Vote or something yeah like people shouldn't believe everything that they see online and you know I don't think that should be criminal no I I think criminal is a that's over the top there I would agree
1:22:28
with that that they went too far um you know if that's the standard for uh throwing someone in prison then there's really a lot of a lot of people in prison yeah what are you in prison for oh meme crimes exactly meanwhile it's like murder is running free you know so yeah exactly precisely I mean look at San Francisco right pretty damn good example um crime there I I I I was in San Francisco I don't know a decade ago it was it was fine and now I look at it and it's like I don't recognize this place anymore
1:23:02
yeah um it really needs something needs to be done about the crime situation in San Francisco it's really the area around Twitter's headquarters especially is like zombie apocalypse is the perfect way to describe it yeah literally it's like if people think oh maybe you're exaggerating I'm like no you can just literally come here any day of the week including like you know 10 in the morning or two in the afternoon like we're not talking like you know midnight stuff uh literally mid-morning
1:23:28
you know driving into Twitter it looks like it looks insane um so you just feel it can just come here and see further or not with their own eyes it's you know it's next level or you know watch your videos on Twitter because it's safer yeah as sad as it is right oh man like everything is intense so I mean it's like you're like whoa um I mean it can be overplayed too I mean we I spend my time often being outside Twitter with a camera doing lives really outside Twitter yeah like oh you're brave what are you doing like pointing
1:24:05
camera at the sign or something okay why is it because it's more sort of uh gives up Ambiance or something yeah you must have seen the news right I know I well I I suppose I have seen a few things where uh there's sort of uh people doing interviews uh with the Twitter science background and I I guess that's more interesting than just being in a studio or something well I mean next time I do it you can just invite me in okay sure just shoot me a note great um it's it's the W is now background
1:24:38
color so look I hold up I held a poll and there was a strong yes on Twitter removing it Down Right you've got a bite better people it rocks popular Vox day exactly only dog haters would be opposed to making the dog CEO yeah I see people saying oh you promised to quit and step down I'm like well no the dog's a CEO you know yeah like what are you complaining about yeah it's a great dog I mean there are towns where the mirrors the dog right they elect a dog because all the people suck yeah here's the same
1:25:26
thing yeah dog's always cool yeah he's got great instincts um anyway I hope people have a good time on Twitter and learn things and um you know like I said acid test is undergraded user time and if it's undergraded user time is growing then we're doing the right thing it's good I'd like to hear that I mean I love Twitter uh and uh it's good to see uh things go onward and upward all right sounds good well good talking guys uh I'll I'll head back to work and uh thanks for all your feedback yeah
1:26:01
thank you three million people joined this space wow three million yeah amazing yeah dang people really like that part of the interview where you started interviewing them this is uh Elon Musk interviewing the BBC wait you can still hear me oh no okay well all right well thanks for coming time you enjoyed that yeah entertainment hey welcome you're most welcome welcome all right thanks uh signing off guys bye-bye
just everyone knows Elon Musk gave me about 20 minutes noted so it's also going to go on Twitter yeah it's true um like this whole thing came only came together in like a matter of hours so um came together by a very speculative email yes which I didn't think would even be responded to and you were like no let's do it tonight sure um anyway all right are we we're actually filming just so everyone knows we're filming this for the BBC so we have like three cameras and a loads of Lights um but this is also being listened to
00:34
um around the world yeah it's uh unique open and transparent there we go exactly uh wait can you um is my audio coming through just checking okay um and and it is James invited to well again I should be on right speaker yeah man I don't see you listed as a speaker wow okay we've got 200 000 people listening that is great all right okay great should we do this yes uh so I'll keep us here I guess uh so you can kind of keep it yeah right this is yeah about around that around yeah is that in shot okay
01:38
actually matter if the phone's in shot I think we all know that that you do it it's not top secret all right okay fine I'm gonna start I'm gonna start asking questions great fire away all right um first why did you agree to do this this interview with the BBC um I don't know I like spontaneity and uh I don't know there's a lot going on and it seems like I I actually um do have a lot of respect with BBC um although sometimes forget what the PVC stands for you know but uh what does
02:05
it say I'm just kidding um yes I do um so um yeah yeah so there's there's a lot going on um so I thought this might be a good opportunity to uh answer some questions and um you know I guess uh maybe get some feedback too um what should we be doing different um I know the BBC for example is not thrilled about being labeled uh State Affiliated media respond to it uh yeah yeah so we're I mean our goal is simply to uh have um you know uh to be as uh truthful and accurate as possible so um I think there's uh I think we're
02:54
we're adjusting that label to be publicly funded which I think is perhaps uh not too objectionable well it would try to be accurate uh I'm not the BBC but publicly funded is how the BBC describes okay okay so that would be accurate that's uh if we use the same words that the BBC uses to describe itself that presumably would be okay I'm not asking you for a yes or no since you're not running if you see per se or but it's probably it seems to pass a reasonable reasonably so you're going to change
03:29
those labels on the team basically that's we're trying to be as accurate as possible okay yeah yeah fine um first of all I just want to clear something up are you sleeping in the office here I sometimes sleep in the office like in the library five days a week no no three days a week I'm not here five days a week um but uh there's a library that nobody goes to uh on the uh seventh floor and uh there's a couch there and there's some I sleep there sometimes okay okay um in terms of the general Library the
04:13
reason why I think we've agreed to do this is because he wants to talk about the first six months as chief executive owner of Twitter um yes kind of like whatever you want to talk about yeah right so how do you think of Scott well it's not been boring it's been quite a roller coaster so um I mean Thanksgiving I think you know reasonably well I mean we've seen some all-time highs in terms of total user time so uh we passed uh 8 billion user minutes per day which is a lot of user minutes um so usage is up uh growth is good
05:04
the site works mostly the other point a few glitches here and there but the site is working fairly well um and we're doing it with a small fraction of the original you know account so I mean you mentioned now such as that that have been several and we've actually spoken to an engineer who works at Twitter and they said that the plumbing is broken here and it's on fire and there could be problems at any minute do you do you accept that I mean there have been a few outages but uh not from very long and it's currently
05:40
working fine so you don't you don't it doesn't keep you up at night the Twitter might go offline again uh at this point I think we've got a pretty good handle on what makes gonna work um and uh we're also doing it with uh two data centers instead of three so we used to write and have three data centers uh we shut down one of them so we're actually two-thirds of the compute capability uh but we've made so many improvements to the core algorithms in some cases we improved the core algorithm about 80 percent so the
06:16
actual CPU usage of computer usage is dramatically less so but there's also speak for themselves uh the system despite being at all-time highs of usage is fast it's responsible it's more responsive than it was before the Takeover and we've also added longfold tweets we've added uh you know post videos after two hours and two videos of any length um we we're rolling out our subscriber programs so so people can content creators can actually make a living on Twitter by having some of their content behind a paywall
06:57
and um we're open source the algorithm so there's transparency about what tweets get shown what what content gets shown versus not um I think you said like what are you really going to trust are you going to trust uh some sort of Black Box algorithm from some other site or you're going to trust something that you can actually see and understand but you do you accept that there are lots of Engineers that are looking at at the way that Twitter is built and the lack of Engineers because so many have left and are worried about the health of
07:31
Twitter well I mean there's been um many of these people have predicted that Twitter will cease to function their predictions have not turned out to be true you know insert Mark Twain saying you know Roosevelt death originally exaggerated um let's go back six months ago I mean we're literally on Twitter right now right let's go back six months and even further further back than that when you put that initial bid in you then had a wobble you kind of said I actually don't want to buy Switzer anymore
08:12
um I mean I mean it really is quite entertaining I mean it's like soap opera uh because when I first made the offer uh the response was the board of doctor poisoned her so they were like hell no you can't buy Twitter we'd rather die we're like chew on cyanide before being being bored that was their initial response and then and then you said and then you said actually I don't want to buy it yes and then they said no you must buy us gun to the head you have to buy it I'm like are you the same people who said
08:47
you'd rather die then I'm bored doesn't that seem odd so I guess I guess my question to you is in terms of you said that you said that the reason was because of bots because Twitter was filled with Bots looking back at it now was there a little bit of you that thought actually maybe I've overpaid actually maybe I don't want to do this I want to get out of this be honest the problem was that the um publicly stated because were in excess of the real user numbers uh so um but I've heard you talk about that
09:25
yeah basically looking back at it now was that the only reason that you wanted to play yes that's literally the issue it's like it's like let's say you um uh buy a warehouse full of goods and you're told that uh less than five percent of the goods in the warehouse are have are broken you know um but then you actually get to where how you look into the warehouse and turns out actually 25 of the things broken people like huh that's uh so you said so then you change your mind again and decided to buy it did you do that did
10:04
you do that right did you do that because you thought that a court would make you do that yes right yes that is the reason right so you were still trying to get out of it and then you just were advised by lawyers look we're gonna have to buy this yes no I mean like like let's say I think analogy is pretty pretty close like let's say you know it's like you there's a warehouse all good uh they say the warehouse uh less than five percent of what's in the warehouse so it's broken and then you
10:42
walk into warehouse to say actually it's 25 so you you guys still want to buy what's the in that warehouse but probably at a lower price we're not just buying the stuff that's broken so you didn't have an epiphany you just thought I'm gonna I'm gonna have to buy this I might as well buy the bullet yeah so so then you walk it's super complicated right right I'm not sure you've said that before fair enough um so then you you came into two cute hoverboard court case with a sec what were your first
11:23
impressions well I thought wow this is a really nice office building uh and uh expensive yes very expensive office building um great decor it's lovely place um and um they're spending money like it's doing on a fashion which is it isn't quite going out of fashion yet um so I mean the gravity of the situation perhaps uh it's not well understood of um you know the point which uh the company the credit transaction closed uh Twitter was tracking to uh lose uh over three billion dollars a year and so and had one billion in the bank so
12:24
that's four months to death so this is your starting position how would you feel pretty pretty intense you know you just had to borrow quite a lot of money and pay interest on that too well that's what by the way it was a three billion dollar uh run rate so um in rough numbers a normal year Twitter would do your say let's say four and a half billion in Revenue one half billion dollars in cost um I mean it was really kind of like a non-profit they'd run it at roughly roughly Break Even but that's not a bank
12:54
that's not bankruptcy you're not saving that company from bankruptcy no it's breaking even but then then the issue is that uh if you then add a billion and a half dollars in debt Servicing um and have a massive drop in Revenue if we did uh which was partly cyclic and partly you know political concerns or whatever um so Revenue you know quote dropped by over a third it's not and this is not just Twitter uh you know Facebook and Google full systems advertising Revenue to clients it was a little it's been a
13:27
little higher Twitter but mostly advertisers are coming back so I think we'll just go back where there's a cyclic demand drop which is still pretty significant um it but in rough numbers a revenue dropped from four and a half billion to three um uh and expenses went from four and a half to six creating a three billion dollar negative cash flow situation and Twitter having a billion dollars in the bank that's four months to live so unless drastic action was taken immediately it's going to die to be
14:00
honest let's talk about that drastic action because almost immediately um you sacked a lot of Twitter workers um yeah and I I spoke to them it's very easy to speak to them uh when it happened and and the way they set pretty much everyone said is that it felt quite haphazard it was it felt a little bit uncaring do you I wouldn't say uncare the the you know the issue is like uh the companies isn't going to go bankrupt or if we do not cut costs immediately um this is not a caring uncaring situation it's like if All Ships sinks
14:35
nobody's gonna drop right yeah but a lot of people just lost their jobs like that um and and they went well I didn't even know they'd lost their jobs what would you do well you might want to give someone some notice I mean you might it's by the way I'm not running Twitter but I know but this is this is the criticism and this is what actual this is what I'm talking about to say a little bit of notice uh you know I understand you're four months to live 120 days and 120 days you're dead
15:07
so how important so what do you want to do how much are you worth I don't know but yeah I mean we're talking about around the 200 billion dollar Mark I mean it's not quite you're framing it in in a way that that you know that it had had a few months to live you're quite a rich man I sold a lot of Tesla stock to close this deal I said I did not want to sell the Tesla stock okay um do you have any regrets on the way that some of the staff would let go uh I mean who were given you know three months of seven in some cases more
15:46
so um you know we really like I said the companies need to run on their own cognizance uh and uh it's not it's not so easy for me to sell stock that's pretty my dick after sales stock during certain periods I can't sell stuff during other periods um there's only there are only brief Windows where I can't sell Tesla stock and then this is often taken as some lack of faith in Tesla matter of fact the the Tesla stock sales of course the Tesla stock Department uh which is not good do you think those
16:20
two were connected well the the people can can parse the difference between I'm selling Tesla stock because I've lost weight in Tesla which I haven't or that it's definitely needed Twitter um okay and then after that after um you um let go of a lot of stuff obviously for Twitter came to slim down a lot then you started making some more policy decisions one of those policy decisions was to bring Donald Trump back he hasn't actually tweeted yet right do you expect him to come back at any point like have
16:53
you spoken but the point is that Twitter should be uh a Town Square that that is uh gives uh equal voice to you know the whole country and ideally the whole world um it should not be a partisan politics you know and the more partisan politics that are the very far left of the spectrum San Francisco publicly politics normally it's quite Niche um but if Twitter effectively active as a megaphone for a very Niche Regional politics and megaphone that to the world so if in order for something to serve as a digital Town Square it must uh
17:39
you know so all people from all political Persuasions uh provided it's legal um so yeah close to half the country uh voted for Trump I wasn't one of them I voted for Biden um but nonetheless uh you know free speech is meaningless unless you allow people you don't like to say things you don't like otherwise it's relevant and if at the point in which you lose a free speech it doesn't come back I think the issue some people have is that a lot of people were brought back I mean some people were brought back who
18:15
uh were previously bad for spreading things like she went on conspiracies you have some people like Andrew take you were brought back you were previously uh banned for things like hate speech do you think you prioritize freedom of speech over misinformation and hate speech well you know who's to say something is misinformation um who's the Arbiter of that is it the BBC you know you're literally asking me yeah well no you are the Arbiter on Twitter because you own Twitter yeah so I'm saying who is to say that one person's
18:56
misinformation is another person's information um the point I wish you you said that there is uh this is like who is this information can be dangerous that it can cause real world harms that it can potentially cause um yeah so the point I'm trying to make is the BBC itself has at times published things that are false do you agree if that has occurred I I I I'm quite sure the BBC have said things turn out to not be true right and it's whatever it is 100 Year history and questions even if you aspire to be accurate there
19:31
are times where you you will not be nice but you accept it has to be a line in terms of hate speech I mean not you're not looking at total 100 unrestricted speech um there's well I mean I generally I'm about 15 in that too if uh if you if if the people of a given country are against a certain type of speech they should talk to their elected representatives of pass a law to prevent it so for example you cannot Advocate murdering someone that's illegal in the United States and everywhere really I suspect so
20:11
uh so there are limits to speech um I mean I guess taking your argument to a logical conclusion that do you accept that there's more misinformation on the platform if it's not being policed in the same way I I actually think there's there's less these days because we we've eliminated so many of the Bots which we're pushing scams to spend uh and previously previous management turned a blind eye to to the bond because their bonuses were tied to user growth and if you vote if you're if your compensation is tied
20:42
to use a growth uh well you're not going to look too closely at some of the users that's part of the problem so I think we've got less less information because we've we don't have the what problem that we used to do and we also have given a lot of attention to community notes which corrects where the community itself corrects misinformation has been very effective um I I mean I would only just add that you know we have spoken to people who who have been sacked that used to be in content moderation and and P we've
21:15
spoken to people very recently you were involved in moderation and they just say they just there's not enough people to police this stuff particularly around um particularly around hate speech um in the company is that something that you were talking about I mean you use Twitter right do you see a rise in hate speech I mean just your personal anecdote like what do you do I don't personally my uh for you I would see I get I get more of that kind of content yeah personally but I'm not going to talk to talk to the rest of for the rest
21:44
of Twitter hate speech personally I would say I would see more hateful content in that in that content you don't like or or hateful what do you mean to describe a hateful thing yeah I mean you know just content that will solicit a reaction something that may include something that is slightly racist or slight sexist those kinds of those kinds of things slightly sexist attribute event no I know what you're saying I'm not saying anything I'm just curious I'm trying to say what you mean by hateful
22:13
content I'm asking for specific examples um and if and you just said that if something is slightly sexist that's hateful content does that mean that it should be bad well you've asked me you've asked me whether my feed whether it's got less or more I'd say it's got slightly more that's why I'm asking for examples right can you name one example I I honestly don't you I I honestly I don't name a single example I'll tell you why because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore
22:41
because I just don't particularly like it there's actually a lot of people a lot of people are quite similar I I only I only look at mine with my followers you can't name it a single example not even one I'm not sure I've used that fee for the last because I've been I've been using it I've been using twister since you've taken over for the last six months okay so then you must have at some point seen that you poor you hateful content I'm asking for one example right and you
23:06
can't give us something and I'm saying I I say so that you don't know what you're talking about really yes because you can't be a single example of hateful content not even one tweet and yet you claimed that the hippo content was high well that's a false no what I could applied what no no what I claim was uh there are many uh organizations that say that that kind of information is on the rise now whether whether it has on my feet I mean right and literally accountable strategic dialogue eyes this year in the
23:38
UK they will say that so people will say all sorts of nonsense I'm literally asking for a single example you can't name one right and as I already said I don't use that feed but let's I don't think this is getting anything you've literally said you experienced more hateful content and then couldn't name a single example right and as I said that's absurd I haven't I haven't actually looked at that feeling how would you know this because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago I
24:03
can't give you an exact example let's move on we have we only have a certain amount of time um covert misinformation BBC changes covered misinformation the BBC does not set the rules on Twitter so I'm asking you no I'm talking about what the BBC's misinformation about Kobe I'm I'm literally asking you about you change the labels the covered misinformation labels there used to be a policy it then it then disappears why do that covert is no longer an issue does the BBC uh hold itself at all
24:48
responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccinations and not reporting on that at all and what about the fact that BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change this editorial policy are you aware of that this is a this is not an interview about the baby's age oh you thought it wasn't I see now why you've done Twitter spaces I am not a representative of the BBC's editorial policy I want to make that clear let's talk about something else all right let's let's talk about let's
25:22
talk about something else you weren't expecting that let's talk about something else Narendra Modi the BBC did a documentary um about uh Narendra Modi and his leadership during the rising Gujarat um we then believe that some of those some of that content was taken off Twitter was that at the behest of the Indian government I'm not aware of that particular situation so you're just you're not sure I I don't know if I don't know about that you know what exactly happened with some content situation in India the
25:56
the rules in India for for what uh pure on social media are quite strict and we can't go beyond the laws of the country but do you get the if you do that you incentivize countries around the world to Simply pass more Draconian laws no uh look what if we have a choice of either our people go to prison uh or we comply with the laws we'll comply with the laws same goes for the BBC okay okay um since you uh became CEO there's been another story in town I'm not CEO anymore okay did you achieve to it or what are you no my dog Loki is
26:42
let's see okay um he's taken over I I saw that yeah um okay so so Tick Tock has also been in the news there's talk of perhaps by demonstration wanting to potentially ban it or or force a sale what what's your view of the situation I don't really use tick tock um I mean one of the reasons that I emphasize that the uh I think our goal here at Twitter is to maximize uh unregretted user minutes or unreparated user time is that I hear many people tell me they spent a lot of time on Tick Tock but they regret the
27:18
time spent and that seems like okay well we don't want to have regretted time we want the time to be unregretted where you learned things uh you were entertained and used um I reflect I I you know I I I get to more uh laps out of Twitter than anything else and many people tell me the same thing so that's a good sign um Tick Tock itself like I said I just don't know enough about what's going on there um I can't say I have a strong opinion on tick tock so you'd have an opinion on whether it
27:53
should be banned or not you know I'm generally uh against Banning things um so I I probably not be in favor I mean it would it would help Twitter I suppose if Tick Tock was banned uh because then people would spend more time on Twitter unless I'm in Tick Tock but even though that would be that even if it would help Twitter I would be generally against uh Banning of of things okay um do you feel sometimes that you're many business interests might get in the way of you having an opinion I mean for example Tesla has major Connections in
28:34
China do you you you wouldn't you wouldn't have a you wouldn't have a certain opinion on something or feel uncomfortable about saying something because of your other business interests elsewhere do I look uncomfortable which ideas I'm looking comfortable um uh yeah I mean Tesla has got activities around the world in some of the SpaceX um you know once in a while those things do common conflict um but it's not like Twitter is like uh you know operates in China it doesn't do Choice branding right now so
29:12
um and certainly I perceived no no communication whatsoever from the Chinese government for regard to Twitter okay um in terms of advertising obviously it's not a private company anymore so we don't really know how it's how it's all going have all the advertisers come back uh not all but most and you can see it for yourself even in the for you right I mean sorry in the following ideas for you rightly um that's not what I said okay well why don't you use for you what's wrong with it um
29:56
how is it going is twittering profit now you know Twitter is uh uh rough I'd say we're roughly break even at this point and I think you've said before you you see uh you see a world where you could be in profit is there a timeline on that do you think I mean depending on how things go if current trends continue I think we could be profitable or I mean to be more precise we could be cash flow positive uh this quarter if things keep going well this quarter as soon as I I possibly yeah wow um and do you have a message for the
30:35
appetite I mean can you say which advertisers haven't come back um I think I think almost all of them have either come back or so they're going to come back there are very few exceptions can you say it say any of the exceptions I actually don't know of anyone who said definitively they're not coming back they're all sort of training towards coming back but there are some that just jump in the water as well it's great advertising their children's movies and apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones those
31:14
are good indicators that Twitter is a good place to advertise um I want to talk about if you have any regrets and and you know I think you you were Buddha Dave Chappelle concert I think your own lawyer yourself a little a little well some say a little some say a bit more um I think our own lawyer said you couldn't get a fair trial in San Francisco because there are lots of people that don't necessarily like you here yeah but you know he was wrong I guess that uh because I was quitted by the San Francisco jury
31:52
unanimously so yeah but I guess but look in there do you have any regrets by buying Twitter um I think it was something that needed to be done um I'd say the like the the pain level of Twitter has been extremely high um this hasn't been some sort of party um so uh it's been really quite a stressful situation the last several months not not an easy one but apart from the pain I mean so it's been quite painful but I think a day of the day it should have been done I think that were there many mistakes
32:35
made along the way of course you know um and uh but you know all swell that ends well and so I I feel like we're headed uh to a good place um you know we're roughly break even I think we're trending towards a half low positive very soon literally in a matter of of months the advertisers are returning um the I think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly it would take a lot of feedback from people that have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm and we've we've made a lot of
33:13
improvements even to get even since that was made open source and we're going to keep doing that so overall I think the trend is very good so you know I mean it was actually something I was going to ask you you mentioned the pain but you actually tweeted I think in February you said the last three months have been extremely tough I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone okay are you talking emotionally yeah I mean can you can you explained right right some people around here dangerous it is or can be but just can you just talk me through the
33:47
emotional strain of this yeah I mean look I'm under I've been under constant uh it's not like I you know have a stone called heart or something like that you know uh if you're under constant criticism and attack it's and then that that gets fed to non-stop including through Twitter um that uh it's rough you know um not not the other day I kind of think that like if you do lose your feedback loop that's that's actually not good um so uh you know if so I think it is actually important
34:27
to get negative feedback um I don't turn reply is all and I actually got rid of I removed my entire block list it's not block anyone either um so so somebody can you know so I get like a lot of negative feedback um good to get negative feedback right when you talk about the emotional strain you've gone back to feedback is it is that the thing that's been most difficult to take the sort of negative feedback yeah I mean if if uh if the media is writing non-stop stories about why you're horrible person I mean you know
35:02
um it's uh hurtful obviously I I I've written down a lot of these questions about that I haven't written this one down but it's interesting it feels like you have quite a kind of interesting relationship with the media because in one in some ways you're quite skeptical by critical certainly of established media but also you kind of get hurt by what the media writes and um did you get your new still from the BBC as you've already said I don't really follow the views right right so do you
35:34
feel you have a kind of kind of odd relationship with the media yes explain no it's it it it it is somewhat of a love-hate relationship although I mean it might be totally different more towards the hate um but uh you know it it's uh you know I I think that's what this is so sort of part and parcel of having a a free media situation which is that um you know I do I do take uh part in the in that the media is actually able to trash me on a regular basis uh in you know in the United States and UK and whatnot um
36:24
whereas you know in a lot of other places uh you read it cannot say uh mean things to proper people okay so I think it's better that we have a situation where the media can say uh mean things to problem people if we're talking about the media let's talk about verification labels you obviously want to create another Revenue stream that's subscription based it's verification the way to do that because if we have a kind of a situation at the moment where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge whereas anyone
36:57
else who can pay whatever few bucks a month yeah can is that can that be right is that what you envisaged when you bought Twitter I must confess this I'm delighted in removing the verified Bachelor of times that was that was great um anyway they're still alive and well so uh they're doing fine but on a serious note it could flame disinformation again if you have verified accounts that uh are from anyone who can pay money they simply they go up to potentially uh the top of feeds um they get more action on
37:32
Twitter and uh traditional media that may not pay for uh verification doesn't do you see how that could potentially be a driver of misinformation well I mean I I think the media is Survivor of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are um I mean that's a different question yeah um but you are sort of saying like like who who knows best the average citizen or you know uh so someone who who is journalist um and I think a lot of cases um is the average citizen that knows more than than the journalist in fact I
38:07
mean very often when I see an article about some uh something that I know a lot about and I read the article it's like they get a lot wrong um and uh you know some of the best interpretation is there is someone who doesn't really understand what's going on in the industry has only a few facts to play with has to come up with an article no it's going to be you know it's not gonna it's not getting the bullseye um uh so so then like generally this is what how expensive if you read an article that's something you know
38:39
about how much of that are how accurate is that article now imagine that that is the that is how or essentially all articles are they there are an approximation of what's going on but not any not an exact uh situation so if somebody is actually let's say uh in The Fray or like an expert in the field and uh was actually there and then and writes about their experience of being actually there I I think that actually that that could that's uh in a lot of cases going to be better than a journalist because the journalist wasn't
39:10
there I think you said the Legacy verified blue techs are going to go next week uh there have been a few few deadlines yeah that's the joke um it costs you a lot of money well fortunately it didn't in the trial well yeah right as you say right yes we're gonna ask for a refund yeah okay yeah good luck um let's move on from that but blue sex in theory all Legacy blue Tech's gone gone next week and this is and at that point you'll kind of work out whether this is going to single swim yes what's your what's your hatch I mean
39:56
you've obviously yeah yeah I'll swim just fine okay what are you looking for in terms of in terms of Revenue stream on that what are your calls well I I think it's like that's really a giant Revenue stream um you know even if you have sort of a million uh people that are subscribed for let's say 100 a year in the dish that's a hundred million dollars um and uh that's that's a that's a fairly small Revenue stream relative to advertising um what are we really trying to do here with uh verification is to massively
40:34
raise the cost of this information and and bots in general so my prediction is that in any social media company that does not uh insist on paid verification will simply be overwhelmed uh by Advanced AI Bots I mean check gbt is essentially a zillion instances of chat gbt how would you even know what you want on the platform do you want big news organizations being overwhelmed by bots so they have to go to the point and say you won't be if you pay but a lot of organizations have already said they're not going to
41:06
pay like the New York Times well then you know that's up to them if they you know can't make them pay um it's a small amount of money so I don't know what their problem is um so uh but if we're going to feed everyone equally so what we're not going to do is say that there's some anointed class of journalists who are the special ones who get to tell everyone what they're which what they should think that it should be up to the people what they think and even if an article is completely accurate and
41:40
um comprehensive and everything they're still in in writing that article the media is choosing the narrative they're deciding what to write an article about um so I'm hopeful that this can be more a case of the public choosing the narrative as opposed to the media choosing narrative but the media choosing at least at least a combination of the media and the public choosing the narrative and the the public getting to to weigh in on stories that they if they think that they should add something to
42:08
it or uh we've got something wrong and over time I think if Twitter is the best source of Truth it will succeed and if and if we are not the best source of Truth we will fail someone comes in and offers you 44 billion for Twitter right now would you take it no considerate yeah why uh well I I think about it depends on who I suppose if I was confident that they would pursue that they would rigorously pursue the truth um Then I then I I guess I guess I would be glad to hand it off to someone else I don't care about the money really but I
42:54
I do want to have some sort of truth that I can count on um and and I hope that's our aspiration with much better is to have a source of proof that you can count on that's that's also real time it's an immediate source of truth that you can count on and that gets more accurate with time as people comment on a particular thing well if you don't care about the money you could just give it to someone that you that you think is a good person to run Twitter who do you think that might be I I I'm
43:27
not aggressive Twitter nobody choose well that's you might still have an idea who could run Twitter yeah honestly I had no idea who could run Twitter yeah it's a hard job okay let's I mean let's move on so you've said that you were going to um Stand Down chief executive right okay I'm not the CEO of Twitter my dog is the CEO okay have you got any it's a great dog other than the dog very alert and it's hard to get anything by him okay that's good to know other than the dog have you got any success with his mind
44:05
you've got a black a turtle turtleneck or what would you need yeah okay all right we're going down that that route um Steve Jobs are Elizabeth highness team I guess more or less okay I forgotten the question now let's go how's your voice um what are we talking about there uh yeah who would who who would you want have you got a successor in mind not yet hopefully at some point right so because you did say you were going to stand out I did stand out okay all right let's move on from that then all right what about this office
44:48
I'm intrigued about office you said it was basically expensive yeah yeah why can't we be um anarchicalistic commune I think Jack Dorsey kind of recommended doing that and we kind of ignored it yeah it was kind of bad actually um um this office are you thinking about moving out of San Francisco uh not yet not yet but yeah I mean this place is nice and uh we you know I kind of like this obstacle thing actually yeah okay so you're not because I know you've talked about there's been high levels of crime
45:25
here you actually said at one point you should know something about the crime right because people are dying right we should take action he also talks about how potentially I would think you would might have been joking but you could turn this into a homeless shelter so then I guess the reason I'm asking is you know you yeah they won't let us which bits have you tried to turn into a hamster but we're only using one of the buildings and so the other building could be a homeless shelter and you try
45:53
to yeah we would like to do it right now really yeah No in fact they wouldn't even let us take the W off the site so how are you going to do that with a really quite quite uh you know what was your what was your plan for the shelter I don't know we could just let people stay there nice right okay whatever right and it's a roof over their head yeah it's the building owner of that software will do it yeah so if the building only that owner lets you you would you would happily do that yes okay all right there we go
46:34
um what's the most difficult thing you've had to do what's the hardest thing you've had to do in my whole life in the last six months I've talked about the last six months it's with Twitter owners um well shutting down uh our one of our service centers was was quite difficult because it turns out there were I thought the service centers were redundant but they were in fact a lot of things that were hard-coded to the swan server Center and so where he shut it down and we actually uh it was quite catastrophic we lost a lot
47:09
of functionality sort of really rushed to put it back when was that was around late December during early January so that was the biggest sort of I'm I'm worried biggest crisis yeah yeah and what about Han in terms of emotion I mean I mean does Letting Go I mean what what were the current the levels of staff and what are they now um I think we're um around 1500 people at this point and there was I think 7 800.
47:43
I think it was around just under eight thousand eight thousand fifteen hundred right now okay and has it been hard letting that many people go yeah not fun at all for people I mean I guess in in what way do you do you feel like you need to speak to people when they when when they leave or I mean it's not physically possible to speak to that many people is that I mean you talked about that being the most technical bit is that has has that been sort of the hardest thing emotionally or is it it's one of the
48:18
hardest things certainly yeah um the nasty Pelosi tweet but there have been is an example of a theme there have been others um do you feel like you're an impulsive person I mean have I shot myself on the quote with tweets multiple times yeah do you feel like I need bulletproof shoes at this point I mean you've definitely done that the issue is that you're now Twitter owner do you feel like you should be look at your tweets more you have more a higher responsibility when you tweet something out for it to be accurate I
48:56
think I should not tweet uh after 3am that's the rule yeah well maybe to it that's the new rule yeah something like that okay so there's a blanket ban I should I shouldn't I shouldn't uh what are your Twitter what are your Twitter rules I mean I've heard some people say never tweet when you've been drinking whenever tweet when angry what are your Twitter rules well I think those are two grid rules yeah don't tweet if you're wasted um and uh or you know really upset about something
49:29
yeah probably uh I mean a good friend of mine um I actually had a good suggestion it has helped which is that uh if you're going to Tweet something that uh maybe it's controversial uh you save it as a draft look at it the next day it's your store and that has been a good rule of thumb okay we've got a bunch of things I'm glad I didn't say um I can't remember whether I've asked you this this was my sort of sort of wrapping up at this point but yeah do you have any regrets you know you know a bunch of decisions
50:12
that kind of been made better for sure um but um as I said all's well it ends well um I think it's going pretty well so uh the grand scheme of things I can't complain okay um I'm gonna just check my my list of things to make sure I've actually I mean it's maybe this probably got people on the on the Twitter what you say ask you know we could ask them that's on you that's on you wow 680 000 people listening there you go that's a lot that is a lot uh let's see how do we see okay
50:46
let me see who I'll just look at my my tweet and uh see what people are saying or what questions they have um do you like the BBC do you like BBC okay yeah we're not gonna oh I can't even always have work for the BBC I mean you like do you like BBC I know what you're doing I'm not going to respond to that okay if you wanna if you want to continue thank you very much surely you like BBC come on um it honestly has been a pleasure okay and if you wanna if you want to carry on answering questions on on on on this
51:34
then okay well I just want to see if there's like any you know good there's a lot of comments here um I can imagine um there's so many anyway so it's it's nice to be interviewed by the BBC I have a lot of respect for the British Broadcasting Corporation um when did you say when the when the actual label is going to go public oh this is um is it do we still say State Media or whatever or it says government-funded media currently um as opposed to publicly funded media uh well I guess probably we can make that
52:14
change tomorrow if you'd like I it's uh it's up to you but I mean we'll expect that tomorrow I mean do you have any requests on a personal level or you can't speak on a personal level no I don't okay okay I think we've established that um what what questions are people asking you go on um I mean there's like a lot of comments uh let's see I was literally reading on looking at replies to the you know the fact that the space of these um are there any good questions that I've missed out in the last
52:55
in the last six months I'm sure there are many um I mean people generally seem to like this interview before you can tell um refer a few negative comments so generally positive is that is that um that's probably bad for me uh I guess there's some complaints about Twitter spaces being needing some improvement let's fix Twitter spaces as one of the comments um people like the fact that my dog Loki is the CEO um and uh I'm really just rolling as fast as I can here um I I think I think it's my reflection on this
53:47
interview I like BBC okay I do find it funny um I I think I mean honestly it's looking listening to the interview the answer about misinformation and saying oh we don't police misinformation in the same way but we're closer because we try and get books because we try and take down Bots when we effective at Bots we're actually there's actually less misinformation on the platform I think that's a big factor a lot of people I think will be listed really you're arguing you can police content moderation far less and end up
54:28
with less misinformation we do have we do have uh you know content moderation it's not like we don't um so I've spoken to lots of people who've been who've been fired so a lot lots of people have been let go I mean you've gone from eight yeah the censorship Bureau was like oh um I don't think the the sort of putting a thumb on the political scales in the far left has been let go because that's not right that's not what you want for a public a Public Square um you know you've got to have equal
54:57
treatment for people from um across the political Spectrum so um you know something we're going to be upset about that um but like I said I my my experience is that there's less less misinformation these days not more um and that the community notes feature is extremely powerful for uh addressing uh so-called misinformation um I mean you've been you've had Community notes placed on your own tweets yes um one of them involving I had an alleged diamond mine the I think a mind that your father part owned
55:39
yeah my father never heard a dog uh so you're thinking of an emerald Emerald mine yeah I'd like to see a picture of this alleged Emerald line because you've been you've been Community noted on that tweet yeah did you know that no but it's he never owned a a emerald mine it's a total not even a 50 steak no because in community no first of all okay okay do you think Emerald do you think something like an emerald line would have like um you know uh some sort of property register there'd be like a picture of it
56:07
it's not like you can say oh that's my mind you know these things are hotly debated if you've got something valuable um you you have to have some property record like a house but but much more important than a house and yet there is no property record whatsoever there is no picture of this line whatsoever it doesn't exist it's fake so that's it's a really good example then because there is a community note on that tweet that says you said this thing on the X day blah blah blah so in that instance the
56:39
key Community nox didn't work so you're saying that that's a way of solving this information but you're literally saying one of those Community notes is wrong it's in the community community note may be referring to a thing where uh I I went on a trip with my father to Zambia um but I never saw any mine or anything so there's no it's there's no mic I'm not right but at this point I'm just saying the community note says it is so you're saying it's this big great
57:05
Panacea but yeah it's literally on your own tweet the community notes according to you're wrong uh if they're referencing um an article then the article may not be wrong but there's still yeah but communities is not going to be perfect but it's the batting average of community notes I found to be extremely high right um so Community nights Plus getting rid of millions and millions of bots every day I guess that's that's what we're talking about yeah that that that's what you
57:41
think is tackling misinformation over over content moderation and I think I think because I think that's the bit a lot of people will go really really yes really but look the asset test is people who use the system and find it find it to be a good source of Truth or they don't and no no system is going to be perfect uh in in its uh pursuit of the truth um but I think I think we can be the best of the least uh inaccurate that's our goal the least inaccurate but I think we I I think we might be there already if we're not there we'll
58:15
be there soon do you have I've I've spoken to people who you think nice do you have a a kind of message for people who who think that Twitter has been ruined well we have all-time high usage so I don't think it has been yes well they're probably the same people who predicted that Twitter would cease to exist and their predictions have turned out to be false okay I know I'm not going to ask you whether you think it's been ruined because obviously you you look no I think it's great that's way better
58:50
um better by a lot I'm done with this interview it sounds like you don't want to take any questions from your Legions to fans I mean I was looking for um you know questions uh you got any questions okay Let's uh what's the average designer okay so what I do the top of it again yeah he's submitted we're just getting some technical help for anyone who's listening okay so should I how do you unmute he just needs to okay those designer if you if you unmute you can talk hey Lauren um can you hear me but let's unmute Jason
59:50
and David as well uh and and us I think and definitely definitely Walter Isaacson if he does want to speak I actually um yeah sure well we'll get a few people going here I thought we had um half an hour for this interview I know we're so good it's respect to keep going I always told you were very impressed for time um yeah that's true Alex you can speak hey what's going on all right that's better uh so my question actually had to do with more privileges or features for long-term Twitter blue subscribers uh
1:00:49
one of the complaints I hear a lot is people who change their just their profile picture and not their display name um how they lose their verification badge um I know there's an ID verification coming up as well what are your thoughts for expanding privileges for long time subscribers so they kind of gain trust with the platform where they might not have to lose their blue check if they just change their profile picture as opposed to their name and profile picture yeah just you know during this kind of uh transition period we're
1:01:28
um extra vigilant about impersonation so I agree that over time if somebody is has a trusted track record they should be able to change their their name and profile picture without losing the blue check you know during this transition period uh we want to be just like I said extra vigilance against impersonation so um that's that's why we're being so rigorous in this regard now if somebody has um organizational affiliation they can't change their name or picture uh without losing the verification check
1:02:03
because they're cross-verified with their organization um so I really would encourage people to get organizational verification um as much as possible and we're going to add you know so you can be have multiple organizational affiliations um I think this can be really powerful for avoiding in post Nation I've heard from a lot of people that impersonation is a serious issue um actually more on other platforms than Twitter and I think that um you know if you can say that you you really do belong to if the organization if some
1:02:35
organization can say that that you really do belong to them that's a great way to address impersonation risk yeah for sure thank you cool hey long can you hear me I can yes how's it doing good how's it going all good I'm flying to us tomorrow I just have couple of questions for you one is like I will be asked why you are here in like U.
1:02:59
S so what should I tell them I am here to visit Twitter headquarters or just Twitter headquarters yeah well I mean I've yeah I would recommend adding adding the W uh for the srts and second question is like will I be able to meet the Twitter CEO there or no uh sure perfect can't wait and I just have one message for James uh like you know the number of people like you know in this Twitter space so you should be responsible like you should be a responsible reporter you are claiming that you are seeing a lot of hate speech but you could not even give a single
1:03:35
example so I just request you to be a responsible speaker that's it all right thank you um thank you so uh let's see uh let's see David or Jason I don't know if you guys can speak um that you're welcome to if you'd like I I just want to clear up what what I said there I said you said has you I believe I said something like has you will feed okay or something and I said my for you feed has got a bit more hateful I didn't say I was seeing tons of hate speech on it that's not what I said no but you can I
1:04:10
mean you can frame it like that well look it's recorded so you know uh yeah it's not like uh you know we don't have to engage in guesswork here it's recorded in terms of your for you feedy are you just trying you're trying to get as many videos that are viral to to people as possible to get people to stay on the platform is that is that the is that well I think if we keep people entertained then they're gonna keep they're gonna yeah I mean if if we're entertaining and informing people then they're gonna stay
1:04:38
on the platform yeah obviously I mean it's if we bore people or it's like you know somehow uninteresting then they they will beep um yeah there has been this talk that um that people like you and other senior celebrities uh some journalists get favorable treatment on the algorithms well you're gonna care about treatment right now do you give yourself a favorable treatment on the algorithm No in fact the algorithm is is open sourced uh so you can see exactly what's going on I believe defeat the for you one is open
1:05:16
source is that right well following is just who you follow it's pretty it's not algorithm it's just it's still an algorithm yeah that's still an average policy you don't see every single in following you should see all the tweets of people that you follow if not there's a bargain system right just just sequentially when they tweet yeah yeah following is literally the thing they say when they say it there's no but there shouldn't be any algorithmic interaction there so um all right so this is hard to actually
1:05:53
see I think well I I definitely see some room for improvement from a functionality standpoint uh because when you have a really big spaces it's hard to see who it's actually hard to even see who's um requesting to speak because there's so many need to add there but throw people in the requester here okay it's a long ways oh okay I've got a I've got a question here someone's texted me okay what about Elon chat uh what about him that was obviously quite controversial moment when I think you but I think you did you ban
1:06:44
his account for a while yeah real-time uh dark scene of locations it's not flexing your muscle overly I mean now it's just a real-time boxing is not not allowed because if I take a picture of someone in the street and then tweets it it's not toxic uh if it's against their will and you're you're sort of following them around then yeah that would be exactly but Elon jet wasn't wasn't following you around just using publicly available information wasn't there um no it wasn't here it actually
1:07:25
it's actually not true yeah he was using non-public information with public information do you think that you you sort of gave yourself favorable treatment there I mean that that's the criticism on that that no uh it's just real-time doxing is it's not allowed that wasn't right but that wasn't you you literally created that rule after that actually no it just was unevenly enforced right so there's no doxing rule it was unevenly enforced in fact in general part of the issue with the prior
1:07:58
management Twitter is there they'll have all these rules but they would only enforce them against some people not against others you know what doxing generally means which is revealing someone's address yes where they are right well as I say taking a picture is revealing something by someone else yeah that's being a concert yeah and take a picture of loads of people if you can't recognize them then it's not a thing I think I think it was clarified where they would say that if it was a public event like a concert or
1:08:26
say a political Rally or whatever that's a public space rather than somebody is traveling you know I think there's the distinction there yeah it's not someone's house right if you're going to somebody's house and you're taking a photo of it say JK Rowling right so several people have harassed at her house that would be dachshund right and they have been gotten rid of so I don't know where the question is here James uh it was actually a question it got texted to me it wasn't on my list let's
1:08:52
move on to be honest I'm I'm done so okay do you want to leave I'm happy to if you want to carry on doing questions uh yeah maybe welcome to this will be the first time the interview interviewer has ever walked out how to turn tables how long are you gonna sit here for was gonna pack up around you yeah that sounds good uh Elon thank you very much for talking to me oh you're welcome so it was fun I enjoyed it thoroughly sounds good well this has really given me a long list of feature improvements that we
1:09:36
need for spaces oh yeah I I um yeah I have a bunch of suggestions not right now but I do being on Twitter spaces every single day there are a host of problems um first of all where's the desktop app right I want to connect with my nice microphone yeah it's pretty good but it's like you know it's yeah a lot a lot of things need to be improved that's for sure oh yeah there's a laundry list of things all right how often do you use stock Twitter spaces I'm like you know I'm sure you have like an ALT account or
1:10:10
something do you do stock Twitter spaces uh no not really um and uh I actually didn't even have a burner account um I I do have a second account at this point because uh I need to test the uh app before it goes out so it's kind of like a beta test account um but uh no I don't I don't have a boner or anything like that um okay and never yeah never have had yeah none of those okay nope um so well let's see uh I mean any any uh key points anyone wants to make otherwise we'll I'll sign off in a few
1:10:58
minutes um I'm I just um I don't know if the other guys do I think whole whole Mars blog is here maybe he has some questions yeah I had one question about Twitter uh Elon some media had been reporting today that Twitter bought 10 000 gpus for some type of generative AI project and I also noticed that on Twitter there were a couple of people who mentioned working at AI infrastructure the super Computing team at both Tesla and Twitter I was wondering if you could share anything with us about what Twitter's working on
1:11:30
there and if there's maybe any synergies maybe you know Twitter using Dojo or something like that or what exactly is going on with this project um well it seems like everyone um you know and their dog is buying uh deep views at this point you know it's kind of getting to the point where like you're gonna have to buy gpus in a back alley um so uh there's certainly um a lot of people buying gpus uh Twitter and Tesla certainly buying gpus and we're also working on dojo um so I think there's a lot of potential
1:12:10
there with Dojo that people don't realize um so yeah well actually I do have a question and well I guess people keep dming me uh they're wondering what's the future of the Twitter files do you still have any journalists working on these things or no uh yeah I mean I mean at some point we need to move on from the Twitter files but I think there's a few things uh left uh but uh you know generally I think there's not there's not a lot that I'm aware of that's left so um it's mostly just like you know let's
1:12:42
let's move on to the Future um that's true yeah yeah I think uh yeah I think that's more that's true what what are your thoughts on you know companies like Facebook Instagram Tick Tock kind of following Twitter's footsteps you know I think Facebook recently did a verification thing for 15 which is like double the price what's your what's your thoughts on that yeah like I said uh my opinion is that uh any uh social media organization that does not insist on paid verification uh will be worthless
1:13:14
um because at this point uh you take Instagram for example uh if you you can generate an infinite number of those picks using my journey um and you know for free uh we're not for free but for very little um and you can get at this point um modern AI can pass you know any human verification test um so the the only solution that I can think of is to increase the cost of a fake accounts um so if somebody's paying on the order of eight bucks a month that's a hundred dollars a year and they also need to get
1:13:49
a credit card and a phone number from reputable referral carrier so so then like the it's much harder to create like a million Bots um whereas uh if you don't require those things uh it's trivial frankly uh to create a million Bots and they're all seem very human um and and will take very little Computing effort to do so um so that's why I think basically uh any social media that does not require um paid verification will basically cease to be relevant makes sense speaking of generative content uh is it possible for
1:14:29
you guys to add a flag that says that hey this video or this image is uh you know for like like I make a lot of AI generated content and a lot of it looks real right I put a one of Donald Trump uh making out with Gavin Newsom yeah I mean you have anything it looks pretty real um right and yeah including the voice that can get the voice match and the video matched I mean it it's really gonna get it's really getting to the point where it'll be quite easy to generate uh for extremely realistic uh fake videos
1:15:00
images and so forth um and voice um I mean I saw like a fake um like Joe Rogan interview um and it really sounded like Joe Rogan's voice um I sent it to Joe and he was like wow this is crazy so so yeah I think verification is going to be extremely fundamental in the future uh that's why we're so focused on it so I mean the reason I brought that up is you know as a content creator I'd like to keep making those and I don't want to necessarily fool people right so would it be possible to I don't know add
1:15:33
a flag to it so that you know content creators can say hey this is EI generated content don't take it seriously it's a parody well I think in in the in the Tweet you know in the post uh I think that it would be advisable to say that this is not real right if it is something that can be um potentially misinterpreted um I mean it was crazy how viral that uh you know picture of the Pope with the you know awesome yeah yeah yeah um Joe Biden falling off the airplane I mean you could also like the best advertisement Balenciaga
1:16:13
has ever gotten in there um like the Harry Potter valenciaga uh demon flying fox one was was a genius he did a D1 today yeah a lot of the Rings I think yeah yeah it's amazing um and actually even even the AI fashion is great right I mean if if I was a fashion designer I'd be taking ideas from this because the stuff that makes actually original right yeah the AI fashion is incredible yeah yeah so I mean just can we just like print that somehow or make it because uh yeah it's amazing um maybe you should
1:16:50
patent the idea you know just have like a DI profession generator thing that prints them out and you know it's like a like I think there's craft or something right like the clothing manufacturer thing that you can sort of do it at home yeah yeah you can make so much money well I I don't really believe in patents actually uh yeah so but yeah I mean there's really some amazing AI generated uh clothing it's really cool um and that I really love that one with the Pope and that went viral a lot of
1:17:19
people thought that the pope actually had that outfit uh which is not like totally out of the question because there's a lot of amazing fashion in Italy so it's possible that some you know Fashion House made a really epic code for the pope you know and um but that that was that was obviously AI generated I mean we're headed into a weird world here we are we're video games like trying to figure out what's real is super hard yeah I mean I mean I fooled millions of people of the uh you know the one of uh
1:17:51
Joe Biden falling off the airplane so I mean anything's possible Right well that I mean he has slept a few times on the stairwell so you know the stairways so that's that's you know yeah quite quite believable in that situation so um yeah a bunch of things like very close to the truth are it's quite reasonable to expect that people would interpret that as possibly true um so yeah I think just just verification that an account is real that material is real um the what is real anymore is a extremely
1:18:22
fundamental question of Worlds right I mean that's what Bill Clinton used to say yeah so well here so here at uh Twitter we're going to be very focused on um you know figuring out what's real and it's not real then uh you know trying to address it um I mean I think Nick Carter has been doing a great job of um you know covering the news right like four hours ahead of the AP so I mean that's a big plus for Twitter that it you know you have citizen journalists now who are able to cover this stuff hours before
1:18:53
anybody else yeah I mean if you want the real-time news is this is the best place is a sweater um and um and you know like I said in any given source of information is going to have some degree of inaccuracy and we can just aspire to make that as small as possible um and and iterate towards um you know being closer to the truth over time that is our goal yeah it's it's a good goal and but we're not we're definitely not going to assert that everything we say is uh everything you see on Twitter is true because
1:19:29
because it isn't um yeah I think um any organization that claims to be uh completely truthful um yeah you know so because they're not and so that that very claim is false um uh so you know I think it's important to reflect on what mistakes we're making and try to make few of them in the future yeah unlike you know media could you tell us about x-corp is this just something that's like a legal thing that you had to do or is there maybe something more to it there is something more to it um oh yeah
1:20:16
my goal is to create X the everything app you know uh that's the goal as we're working towards yeah Twitter is an accelerant to X the average does that what does that mean what does it mean well I guess you'll have to stay tuned to find out I love it for another episode I've canceled my Netflix Twitter Twitter's taking my time yeah thank you for that like it's very entertaining very interesting I was I was thinking like like Twitter does make you miserable at times but it actually makes me laugh as well and right you
1:20:56
know and I think if if it's sort of entertaining and informative and um that then we're doing a good job like that's the difference between Twitter and Tick Tock because Tick Tock is mostly passive entertainment you're just watching videos right but right on Twitter you're interacting you're saying things to people and when you tweet as a celebrity there's a pretty good chance they read your tweets and they get irritated by it let's say you're trolling them which is what I do so I
1:21:20
mean it's good it's fun having that reaction it's like it's like playing a video game but better yeah yeah totally exactly I mean honestly this is uh Twitter is trollhaven um yeah a lot of the media is going to hit it because because it's it's certainly 12 having on Twitter um and and other things like even I I even get trolled and I'm like God like why did I control the game that was really right yeah every day and it's like ah well you know part and parcel of being on Twitter yeah totally it's worth
1:21:55
it on that note did you see the guy who got charged for a meme on Twitter what were your thoughts on that I know you commented on it I didn't know if you got to look more into it his name's Douglas Mackey oh that's the guy who uh I guess was accused of election interference or something you'll Vote or something yeah like people shouldn't believe everything that they see online and you know I don't think that should be criminal no I I think criminal is a that's over the top there I would agree
1:22:28
with that that they went too far um you know if that's the standard for uh throwing someone in prison then there's really a lot of a lot of people in prison yeah what are you in prison for oh meme crimes exactly meanwhile it's like murder is running free you know so yeah exactly precisely I mean look at San Francisco right pretty damn good example um crime there I I I I was in San Francisco I don't know a decade ago it was it was fine and now I look at it and it's like I don't recognize this place anymore
1:23:02
yeah um it really needs something needs to be done about the crime situation in San Francisco it's really the area around Twitter's headquarters especially is like zombie apocalypse is the perfect way to describe it yeah literally it's like if people think oh maybe you're exaggerating I'm like no you can just literally come here any day of the week including like you know 10 in the morning or two in the afternoon like we're not talking like you know midnight stuff uh literally mid-morning
1:23:28
you know driving into Twitter it looks like it looks insane um so you just feel it can just come here and see further or not with their own eyes it's you know it's next level or you know watch your videos on Twitter because it's safer yeah as sad as it is right oh man like everything is intense so I mean it's like you're like whoa um I mean it can be overplayed too I mean we I spend my time often being outside Twitter with a camera doing lives really outside Twitter yeah like oh you're brave what are you doing like pointing
1:24:05
camera at the sign or something okay why is it because it's more sort of uh gives up Ambiance or something yeah you must have seen the news right I know I well I I suppose I have seen a few things where uh there's sort of uh people doing interviews uh with the Twitter science background and I I guess that's more interesting than just being in a studio or something well I mean next time I do it you can just invite me in okay sure just shoot me a note great um it's it's the W is now background
1:24:38
color so look I hold up I held a poll and there was a strong yes on Twitter removing it Down Right you've got a bite better people it rocks popular Vox day exactly only dog haters would be opposed to making the dog CEO yeah I see people saying oh you promised to quit and step down I'm like well no the dog's a CEO you know yeah like what are you complaining about yeah it's a great dog I mean there are towns where the mirrors the dog right they elect a dog because all the people suck yeah here's the same
1:25:26
thing yeah dog's always cool yeah he's got great instincts um anyway I hope people have a good time on Twitter and learn things and um you know like I said acid test is undergraded user time and if it's undergraded user time is growing then we're doing the right thing it's good I'd like to hear that I mean I love Twitter uh and uh it's good to see uh things go onward and upward all right sounds good well good talking guys uh I'll I'll head back to work and uh thanks for all your feedback yeah
1:26:01
thank you three million people joined this space wow three million yeah amazing yeah dang people really like that part of the interview where you started interviewing them this is uh Elon Musk interviewing the BBC wait you can still hear me oh no okay well all right well thanks for coming time you enjoyed that yeah entertainment hey welcome you're most welcome welcome all right thanks uh signing off guys bye-bye
