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- [00:00]
David Brown
This is Business War's Flipping the Bird Episodes will drop Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the next two weeks, Wondery subscribers can binge the entire season of Business Wars Flipping the Bird right now. Start your free trial in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Elon Musk walked into a Twitter HQ conference room full of engineers huddled together. It was just five days before super bowl lvii, the Eagles were facing off against the Chiefs, and Super Bowl Sunday was reliably one of Twitter's busiest days of the year. Elon had owned the company for about four months now. In addition to losing roughly three quarters of the workforce, he'd ordered a major server to be shut down, lost almost all of the site's reliability team, and most of HQ was worrying about whether or not the site would buckle under the massive traffic on the big day. But Elon was here to find out what was causing a different problem. Why were fewer people seeing his tweets? Elon had close to 130 million followers. He was Twitter's second most followed user after former President Barack Obama. Elon was also one of its most prolific power users, firing off an average of 120. One of the features he'd insisted on rolling out was a view counter so users could see how many people saw a tweet. And Elon didn't like what he was seeing. Engagement with his tweets was dropping fast. He was sure that there was a bug in the algorithm that was suppressing his tweets, and he wasn't ruling out the idea that one of his own employees had introduced that bug to sabotage his popularity. He'd assigned some of Twitter's best engineers to solve the problem, and they were here today to give him answers. As Elon settled into his seat, an engineer stood up. He was a soft spoken man and one of the highest ranking engineers left at the company. He walked Elon through what they had found. One possibility was the site was glitching because of the removal of the server. But the engineer told Elon there was a more likely reason for the drop off. People just weren't as interested in him anymore. The engineer pulled up a graph of Google Trends that showed searches for Elon Musk had peaked in April 2022 when he'd announced that he was buying Twitter. But now, almost a year later, interest was down. Way down. His Twitter engagement was following the same trajectory. It wasn't a broken algorithm or internal sabotage. The engineer smiled, happy to have figured out the answer. Essentially, he was saying to Elon, Twitter users they're just not into you like they were before. Elon's hands shook with fury. He stared at the engineer for a.
- [03:15]
Zoe Schiffer
Moment, and then he just says, you're fired.
- [03:18]
Elon Musk
You're fired.
- [03:20]
David Brown
Zoe Schiffer from Platformer talked to several people with direct knowledge of what happened in the room that day.
- [03:26]
Zoe Schiffer
One of the things that we've heard from people is that you don't respond to Elon with the right answer. You respond with the least fireable answer. And unfortunately, this person responded with what he thought was the right answer.
- [03:41]
David Brown
The engineer didn't say a word. He just walked out of the room. Elon had fired one of his top remaining engineers in a fit of rage, which sent a clear message to the other engineers working on fixing Elon's engagement issue. The super bowl was fast approaching, and Twitter was operating on a shoestring. But as Twitter braced for the back and forth over the big game, Twitter, Elon seemed far less focused on that than whether his own tweets would soar above the crowd. After telling hundreds of stories about business battles throughout history, I've learned one constant truth. Having the right support systems in place can make or break a new venture. Trust me, it was a battle even I faced on my business journey. That's why AT and T Business makes so much sense for entrepreneurs today. When you're building something from scratch, or even just at the point where you're ready to grow, you need a provider that makes things easy. With AT and T Business, you can have reliable, protected Internet connection you can count on, so you do not miss a beat. Building your dream might take time and a lot of work, but that doesn't mean it can't be a little easier. Wake up to the power of AT and T Business and turn your vision into reality. Business.att.com youm know hiring used to mean endless resumes, missed connections, precious time wasted. Then Indeed changed the game. Here's the thing about Indeed. It's not just another job site. It's your complete hiring solution. Imagine your job post actually reaching the right people instead of disappearing into the digital void. That's what Indeed's Sponsored Jobs do. They push your listing to the top of the search results, putting it right in front of qualified candidates who match what you're looking for. And the numbers? Well, they speak for themselves. Indeed's data shows that sponsored jobs gets 45% more applications than standard listings. That's nearly double your chances of finding the right person fast. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and Business wars, listeners will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.comBW just go to indeed.comBW right now and support Business wars by saying you heard about Indeed right here on this podcast. That's indeed.com VW terms and conditions apply. So you hiring Indeed is all you need from wondering. I'm David Brown, the host of Business wars, and this is Flipping the Elon versus Twitter. This is the sixth and final episode. Tweets aren't loading right now.
- [06:38]
Rihanna
I must confess I've made a mess of what should be a small success, but I at least I've tried my very best. I guess. Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you. Tell me I'm exceptional. I promise to exploit You.
- [07:09]
Sports Commentator
Super Bowl 57 starts now.
- [07:17]
David Brown
Elon Musk made his way into State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Dressed in a black T shirt and jeans, his young son was perched on his right hip. He was one of 70,000 football fans packing the stands to watch the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs battle it out for the championship with another 100 plus million watching the big game.
- [07:39]
Sports Commentator
At home, the Chiefs won the coin toss. They've deferred. The Eagles will receive.
- [07:44]
Elon Musk
And here we go.
- [07:48]
David Brown
The Chief's kicker sent the ball sailing into the end zone and so the.
- [07:52]
Sports Commentator
Eagles will start on their own 25 yard line.
- [07:56]
David Brown
Elon watched the action from a skybox high above the field. He sat next to the head of News Corp. 92 year old Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch was enjoying a hot dog and a photo op. Elon had spent a fair amount of time since buying Twitter waging an increasing war against mainstream liberal media, so the pairing was notable. Elon looked confident and relaxed and for good reason. Before the game began, he had already scored a major victory. After months of scaring off advertisers with his policy changes to Twitter and his own rash behavior, he had finally started to lure some back using the super bowl as enticement. Erin Wu of the Information covers Twitter.
- [08:44]
Zoe Schiffer
There's a really big push to sell these ads in Super Bowl Sunday because they were very high profile.
- [08:51]
David Brown
Elon held a fire sale, slashing prices, offering free ad space, making some promises to keep ads away from hateful content. His efforts worked. He convinced Pepsi to keep their $3 million in ads and sold another 2.4 million to Anheuser Busch.
- [09:10]
Zoe Schiffer
So they were able to score some big deals and this seemed like a good sign for the ad business and.
- [09:17]
David Brown
For all the threats of people leaving Twitter after Elon bought it, there were a whole lot of users on the site that Super Bowl Sunday, President Joe Biden posted one of the day's most shared tweets. As your president, I'm not picking favorites. As Jill Biden's husband Fly Eagles, fly. And as the Chiefs tied the game in the first quarter, Elon sent off a tweet. Go Eagles. He included multiple American flag emojis with his declaration of support. Actress Kerry Washington tweeted that she was tuning in, but not for the game. Ready, set, Rihanna she wasn't the only one. For millions, the halftime show was the show Pop music superstar Rihanna was set to perform live for the first time in five years. Twitter bubbled with speculation. Super bowl halftime shows usually have an unannounced special guest or two. Join the main act who joined Rihanna this year. The National Football League welcomes you to.
- [10:22]
Rihanna
The Apple music Super Bowl 57 halftime show.
- [10:27]
David Brown
Rihanna appeared standing on top of an eliminated platform, swaying 60ft above the ground. Below her, an army of 280 backup dancers. She was dressed in a baggy red jumpsuit layered over a skintight red bodysuit. The camera zoomed in close. Rihanna stood still, the microphone poised next to her lips, her chin angled down, her eyes sultry. As soon as she started singing, the camera went wide. Rihanna stood wide legged and rubbed her belly. Was that a baby bop? This was the type of cultural moment Twitter was made for. The site lit up. Everyone just googled Rihanna pregnant, right?
- [11:12]
Zoe Schiffer
Sex appeal riri has while wearing a baggy jumpsuit.
- [11:15]
Sports Commentator
I'm just gonna say Rihanna's performance was.
- [11:19]
David Brown
I hope Rihanna wins Super Bowl. Posts flying, People bouncing off each other's observations. Even people who weren't watching Rihanna perform could feel like they were part of the moment. But.
- [11:35]
Zoe Schiffer
Did Rihanna's perfect performance overwhelm Twitter? Not RiRi breaking Twitter? LOL. All I'm seeing are tweets are not loading now.
- [11:43]
David Brown
Error messages it was the second outage in four days. Just a few days earlier, the site had gone down for an hour and a half. Twitter employees had scrambled to restore the site. Elon had sent out a company wide email directing employees to stop working on any new features and to make stability during the super bowl the top priority. But the super bowl was here and Twitter was failing at a crucial moment. Rihanna was performing pregnant and users couldn't tweet about it. Advertisers were losing views they had paid for. Employees scrambled once again to fix the site. They managed to do so in under 30 minutes. But the outage was long enough for the world to see that the platform was unstable. And yet, reporter Zoe Schiffer says that even as the site failed on Twitter's most important day of the entire year, Elon was still focused on another problem.
- [12:47]
Zoe Schiffer
He's kind of distracted because he sees right away that his tweet about the Eagles is doing very poorly compared to Joe Biden.
- [12:55]
David Brown
To add insult to injury, the Eagles ended up losing to the Chiefs.
- [13:00]
Zoe Schiffer
And this is like a double loss for Elon Musk because he doesn't like picking the losing team and he doesn't like losing personally, and both of these things have now happened.
- [13:09]
David Brown
Elon furiously deleted his tweet and then got the hell out of Arizona. Elon boarded his private jet and headed straight to San Francisco. He reached out to his cousin James Musk, who had been inside Twitter recently working as Elon's personal fixer. He needed him to rally the troops. Just hours after the game ended, James sent out an urgent slack message at 2:36am to all Twitter employees.
- [13:38]
Zoe Schiffer
He's like, hey, we're dealing with this engagement issue. This is like super high priority if you know how to code. Essentially get your ass in the office.
- [13:49]
David Brown
Roughly 80 engineers heeded James Musk's call. Arriving at HQ bleary eyed in the wee hours of the morning, they are.
- [13:58]
Zoe Schiffer
Told Elon Musk's engagement is not what it should be and this is a massive problem and you need to fix the problem. And ideally, you need to fix it tonight.
- [14:07]
David Brown
There was only one way to guarantee Elon higher engagement. Reprogram the algorithm.
- [14:15]
Zoe Schiffer
Twitter's algorithm has heuristics in place that stop you as a user from seeing the same person's account show up all over your feed. So when you open the app, you shouldn't see like an entire feed of my tweets as much as you'd want to. You would see a variety of different tweets.
- [14:31]
David Brown
The engineers worked through the night to reprogram the algorithm to make sure Elon's tweets outranked everyone else's on the platform.
- [14:40]
Zoe Schiffer
And they do a second thing, which is they apply what's called a power user multiplier. It's a little boost that will essentially ensure that both his tweets and his replies show up very prominently.
- [14:54]
David Brown
The effects were immediate.
- [14:57]
Zoe Schiffer
Monday morning rolls around, we all open our apps and what do we see? An entire feed of Elon Musk, like his replies to obscure right wing accounts, are showing up at the top of.
- [15:06]
David Brown
The for you tab the response was swift and negative.
- [15:12]
Zoe Schiffer
People were like, my man is paying $44 billion just to, like, get his tweets boosted.
- [15:18]
David Brown
But Zoe's sources told her that Elon was thrilled.
- [15:22]
Zoe Schiffer
He thought it was super funny, both that his tweets were everywhere and that people were really pissed that his tweets were everywhere.
- [15:27]
David Brown
Elon registered his joy with a meme, an image of a blonde woman pulling back the hair of a brunette and force feeding her milk. He labeled the blonde Elon's tweets, and the brunette was labeled Twitter, as if he was force feeding his tweets to every Twitter user. Eventually, even Elon seemed to realize he'd gone too far. A few days later, engineers rolled back the multiplier they had added to his account, so his tweets were no longer as dominant across everyone's feed. But the fundamental change was still there. Twitter was now hard coded to make sure its owner was always at the center of the town square.
- [16:11]
Zoe Schiffer
It was kind of scary, you know, when you have the person who literally has the biggest megaphone on a platform, who's now also reconfiguring the megaphone to make sure his voice is always the loudest. That's not a great situation for a social platform, particularly one that plays an important part in the civic discourse globally.
- [16:31]
David Brown
Elon wasn't only focused on his popularity. He was continuing to push the team to roll out all kinds of new features. Even if he was doing so haphazardly. The lack of content moderation was making the site unpredictable and even toxic for many advertisers. But Twitter was also doing things to woo advertisers back. Advertising was likely to be Twitter's main way to make money for the foreseeable future. And Elon seemed to acknowledge that. Twitter had launched with a single tweet from co founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Jack had transformed it from a startup curiosity to a multi billion dollar publicly traded company. When Elon proposed taking Twitter private, Jack had been his biggest champion, calling Elon Musk the singular solution to take over Twitter. Jack believed that Twitter no longer being public would set it free. But By April of 2023, Jack was ready to admit that things with Elon and Twitter hadn't turned out the way he hoped. When a user asked him whether he still believed that Elon was the right leader for Twitter, Jack responded, no. Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad. Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south. I think he should have walked away and the kicker? Jack's response wasn't a tweet, and the user who asked him wasn't on Twitter. Jack had already moved to posting on a rival platform that had sprung up called Blue Sky, a platform Jack helped create and invested in. Everyone from Jack Dorsey to Tesla Investors were ready to see Elon move on from being CEO of Twitter. He'd promised back in December he would step down and find a replacement. The question was, would he be able to step away?
- [18:48]
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- [19:48]
Sports Commentator
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- [20:42]
David Brown
The World Government Summit is like Davos, if a lot hotter and drier. It's an annual gathering of politicians, business leaders and celebrities in Dubai. This year, featured guests included the president of Egypt, the actor Idris Elba, and, you guessed it, Elon Musk. Elon beamed in via satellite, his face appearing on a giant screen on the main stage. It was just three days after the super bowl and the moderator asked the question. On many people's minds, you've been running Twitter as the chairman, as the owner.
- [21:18]
Interviewer
As the CEO, and that takes a lot of time.
- [21:21]
David Brown
Did you identify a CEO and when you are going to hire him?
- [21:27]
Elon Musk
Well, I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it's in a financially healthy place and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out. So I don't know, I'm guessing probably towards the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company because I think it should be in a stable position around the end of this year.
- [21:54]
David Brown
Elon also talked about his view of how free speech should work on Twitter.
- [21:59]
Elon Musk
Obviously that varies a lot by jurisdiction, but I think in general, social media companies should adhere to the laws of countries and not try to put a thumb on the scale beyond the laws of countries. So I think that's the general idea is just to reflect the values of the people as opposed to imposing the values of essentially San Francisco and Berkeley, which are somewhat of a niche ideology as compared to the rest of the world. But Twitter was, I think, doing a little too much to impose a niche San Francisco, Berkeley ideology on the world. So I thought it was important for the future of civilization to try to correct that thumb on the scale, if you will.
- [22:55]
David Brown
But it was looking more and more like Elon's Twitter was just putting the thumb on the other side of the political scale. Hate speech was on the rise. Anti Semitic, racist and homophobic comments. Elon believed that unless it incited direct violence, this kind of speech deserved to be tolerated on the platform. In an interview with the BBC, Elon loudly protested the idea that hate speech had risen under his watch, despite multiple reports from reputed research institutions saying that it had.
- [23:30]
Elon Musk
I'm saying it's curious. I'm trying to say what you mean by hateful content and I'm asking for specific examples. And if. And you just said that if something is slightly sexist, that's hateful content, does that mean that it should be bad?
- [23:44]
Interviewer
You've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more. I'd say it's got slightly more.
- [23:50]
Elon Musk
That's why I'm asking for examples. Right? Can you name one example?
- [23:53]
Interviewer
I honestly don't. Honestly, I don't name a single example. I'll tell you why, because I don't actually use that phone for you feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it. A lot of people are quite Similar. I only look at mine as my following.
- [24:05]
Elon Musk
You said you've seen more hateful content, but you can't name a single example. Not even one.
- [24:11]
David Brown
He also made a surprising announcement. He had finally found a new CEO. Maybe Elon was ready to take a step back and let someone else take the reins.
- [24:23]
Elon Musk
My dog Floki is the CEO.
- [24:25]
David Brown
He's taking over his dog. Elon had tweeted this out in February, but now he was doubling down.
- [24:35]
Interviewer
Okay, so you said that you were going to stand out as chief executive.
- [24:40]
David Brown
Right.
- [24:41]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [24:43]
Elon Musk
I can tell you I'm not the CEO of Twitter. My dog is the CEO of Twitter.
- [24:47]
Interviewer
Okay. Have you got any.
- [24:49]
Elon Musk
He's a great dog. Other than the dog, very alert and it's hard to get anything by him.
- [24:54]
David Brown
Elon did acknowledge that he'd made multiple mistakes, like his decision to shut down one of the main servers.
- [25:01]
Elon Musk
I thought the service centers were redundant, but they were, in fact, a lot of things that were hard coded to this one server center. So when we shut it down, we actually. It was quite catastrophic. We lost a lot of functionality, so really rushed to put it back.
- [25:18]
David Brown
He also publicly admitted that he only went through with the sale because he thought he'd lose in court against Twitter.
- [25:25]
Interviewer
So then you changed your mind again and decided to buy it. Did you do that? Did you do that because. Right. Did you do that because you thought that a court would make you do that?
- [25:34]
Elon Musk
Yes.
- [25:35]
Interviewer
Right.
- [25:37]
Elon Musk
Yes, that is the reason.
- [25:38]
David Brown
Right.
- [25:39]
Interviewer
So you were still trying to get out of it, and then you just were advised by lawyers, look, you're gonna have to buy this.
- [25:44]
Elon Musk
Yes.
- [25:45]
David Brown
And he admitted that the past six months had been hard, likely harder than he expected.
- [25:52]
Elon Musk
You know, I'd say the pain level of Twitter has been extremely high. This hasn't been some sort of party. It's been really quite a stressful situation the last several months. But I think at the end, it should have been done, I think. Were there many mistakes made along the way? Of course.
- [26:13]
David Brown
It was clear that he'd made some miscalculations in buying the site. He'd overpaid. For one thing, he'd underestimated how hard actually running Twitter would be. For another, he'd thought that if he could land rockets on barges in the middle of the ocean, he could run a social media platform. But the problems that Twitter faced weren't solely engineering problems. They weren't problems that could be solved by being hardcore and sleeping in the office. They were messy human problems like free speech and content moderation with lots of gray areas. But Zoe Schiffer says that perhaps his biggest miscalculation was that he'd overvalued his own experience on the site.
- [27:00]
Zoe Schiffer
And his experience on the platform is pretty unique. When he says things like Twitter is overrun with crypto spam and the bots are a huge problem, that's because every single one of his tweets does get an inordinate amount of replies. The difficulty about taking your personal experience and trying to extrapolate it to the entire platform is that Elon Musk is essentially designing Twitter for VIP users like himself. He's not designing it to protect the most vulnerable people on the platform. He's governing, I would say more as a Twitter power user than a Twitter shareholder.
- [27:41]
David Brown
Elon recently found his replacement for CEO, a real replacement that isn't his dog, but rather a former NBC executive whose background is, interestingly enough, in advertising.
- [27:54]
Elon Musk
Very excited to have Linda Yaccarino join. And so I think Linda's going to do a great job running, running Twitter.
- [28:05]
David Brown
He told his Tesla investors at their annual meeting that he'll be spending less time focused on Twitter going forward.
- [28:12]
Elon Musk
You know, there was a, you know, a short term distraction because I had to do like some major open heart surgery on Twitter to ensure the company's survival, but that I think Twitter is now in a stable place and I feel at this point I don't need to devote incremental time. The amount of time that you Twitter will take going forward is relatively small compared to the last six months. So yeah.
- [28:40]
David Brown
But even with a change in the CEO chair, Elon still owns Twitter In a year, two years, three years. Will Twitter still be the place that people go to share their thoughts on a pop star surprise pregnancy? Will it be a place where protesters in some of the most repressed regions of the world, world organize their uprising? Will it be a place where people flock for real time updates about the latest wildfire or hurricane? Or will it be the place that Elon envisions, somewhere people can say whatever they want as long as it's within the bounds of the law? Right now, his whims rule. He is running the company like he has no one to answer to. No shareholders, no board. He's running it like someone with nothing to lose. Because in a way, he doesn't. Just this week In May of 2023, when CNBC's David Faber pressed Elon on this live on air, the 12 seconds of silence that followed spoke volumes.
- [29:47]
David Faber
Do your tweets hurt the company? Are there Tesla owners who say, I don't agree with his political position because, and I know it, because he shares.
- [29:55]
David Brown
So much of it.
- [29:55]
David Faber
Or there are advertisers on Twitter that Linda Yakarina will come and say, you got to stop, man. Or you know, I can't get these ads because of some of the things you tweet.
- [30:15]
Elon Musk
You know, I'm reminded of there's a scene in the Princess Bride. Great movie, great. Where he confronts the person who killed his father and he says, offer me money, offer me power. I don't care.
- [30:48]
David Faber
See, you just don't care. You want to share what you have.
- [30:53]
Elon Musk
To say, I'll say what I want to say. And if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.
- [31:02]
David Brown
For now, Twitter is Elon and Elon is Twitter. And how you you feel about Twitter now depends very much on what you think of Elon Musk From Wondering this is episode six of Flipping the Elon versus Twitter. I'm your host David Brown. Austin Rackless wrote this story. Our producers are Nikka Singh and Dave Schilling. Julia Lowery Henderson and Karen Lowe are our senior producers. Reporting by Emily Corwin. Production assistance by Emily Locke and Mariah Dennis. Fact checking by Nawal Anjani. Consultant is Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg journalist and author of an upcoming book about Twitter and Elon Musk. Special thanks to Matt Almos, Haley Chapman, Derek Duman, Sabrina Farmer, Emily Frost, Claire Gyatsis, Michelle Greenbaum, Katie Huang, Zoe Niederhauser, Chelsea Riba, Olivia Richard, Yasmine Ward, Isabella Wayne and Kate Young. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sync. Senior managing producer is Latha Pandya. Managing producer is Olivia Weber. Coordinating producer is Heather Baloga. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer, Beckman, George Lavender, Marshall, Louie and Jen Sargent for Wondering.
- [33:10]
Elon Musk
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