Elon Musk Interview of Linda Yaccarino on April 18 2023

Summary

Podcast Summary: Elon Musk Interview with Linda Yaccarino

Podcast Information:

• Title: Elon Musk Thinking
• Host: Astronaut Man (Greg)
• Episode: Elon Musk Interview of Linda Yaccarino
• Release Date: January 30, 2025

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Introduction to Elon Musk’s Role at Twitter

Greg opens the conversation by highlighting Elon Musk’s multifaceted roles, humorously emphasizing his transition from inventor to reinventor, particularly focusing on his stewardship of Twitter.

• Greg [00:00]: Welcomes Elon Musk, noting his leadership across SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter.
• Elon Musk [00:41]: Brief acknowledgment of his involvement.

Reinventing Twitter: Vision and Objectives

The discussion delves into Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter 2.0, emphasizing the platform's transformation from a social media site to an essential tool for global communication and commerce.

• Greg [01:11]: Describes Musk switching roles to challenge legacy systems and rituals inherent in Twitter usage.
• Elon Musk [01:56]: States his goal to make Twitter “fun and interesting and informative,” focusing on maximizing “unregretted user time” (02:24).

Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom of Reach

A critical segment explores Musk’s new Twitter policy differentiating between freedom of speech and freedom of reach, addressing advertisers' concerns about content placement alongside potentially harmful material.

• Greg [05:20]: Introduces the new policy titled “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”
• Elon Musk [05:44]: Explains that while users can express any lawful speech, the platform will not amplify hateful or negative content. He emphasizes the importance of not promoting harmful speech despite allowing it legally: “freedom of speech, not reach” (05:41).
• Greg [07:13]: Seeks to understand how this policy diverges from other platforms.
• Elon Musk [07:19]: Admits limited knowledge of competitors, reinforcing Twitter’s unique approach.

Ensuring Ad Safety for Advertisers

Musk addresses advertiser concerns, describing the implementation of adjacency controls that prevent ads from appearing next to negative or hateful content.

• Greg [07:58]: Asks about implications for advertisers.
• Elon Musk [08:13]: Details the effectiveness of adjacency controls, ensuring ads do not associate with negative content by turning them off from such environments (08:30).
• Greg [09:16]: Acknowledges this as a positive impact, citing continued support from major advertisers like Apple and Disney.

Transparency and Open Sourcing Algorithms

Transparency emerges as a cornerstone of Musk’s strategy, with Twitter open-sourcing its recommendation algorithms and the specific words associated with content labeling to build trust.

• Greg [11:35]: Highlights the importance of trust and transparency for advertisers.
• Elon Musk [09:59 - 11:35]: Discusses open-sourcing recommendation algorithms and associated keywords to ensure transparency. Claims over 100 issues have been fixed through this process, asserting that such openness fosters trust (10:00).

Equal Accountability and Personal Conduct

Musk commits to applying the same rules to himself as to all users, reinforcing the platform’s fairness and objectivity.

• Greg [12:23]: Probes whether Musk’s own tweets are subject to the new policies.
• Elon Musk [12:26]: Confirms that his tweets are also labeled and subject to Community Notes, ensuring no preferential treatment (12:28).
• Greg [14:24]: Challenges Musk on maintaining trust considering his high-profile presence on the platform.
• Elon Musk [14:38]: Equates his interaction level pre- and post-acquisition, emphasizing consistency and fairness.

Future Vision: Twitter as an “Everything App”

Musk outlines an expansive vision for Twitter, aiming to evolve it into an indispensable platform integrating payments, private communications, and commerce.

• Greg [20:58]: Asks about Twitter’s long-term vision beyond being a global town square.
• Elon Musk [21:28]: Describes the concept of “X, the everything app,” which would incorporate essential services like payments, voice and video calls, and encrypted communications, making Twitter integral to daily life (21:38).
• Greg [23:03]: Emphasizes the advertising opportunity within this vision.
• Elon Musk [23:06]: Affirms plans to enable seamless commerce on Twitter, facilitating one-click purchases (23:06).

Enhancing Ad Placement and Functionality

Responding to advertiser feedback, Musk announces improved ad targeting capabilities, allowing precise keyword-based ad placements to enhance relevance and effectiveness.

• Greg [28:17]: Recognizes the role of marketing experts in shaping ad relevance.
• Elon Musk [28:58]: Introduces new functionalities enabling advertisers to target specific keywords, enhancing ad placement accuracy (30:20).

Audience Q&A: Addressing Key Concerns

The interview transitions into an interactive Q&A session, where audience members pose questions ranging from AI alignment to the future of journalism and the rationale behind Twitter’s verification changes.

1. Jonathan Berry on AI Alignment [30:21 - 33:08]:

   • Jonathan Berry [31:01]: Asks about AI alignment strategies.
   • Elon Musk [31:02]: Emphasizes AI safety, advocating for truth-seeking and curiosity-driven AI to preserve and extend human civilization, avoiding deception to prevent dystopian outcomes (33:08).

2. Martinas on Decentralized Journalism [33:08 - 34:53]:

   • Martinas [33:30]: Inquires about the future of centralized publishers in the era of decentralized information.
   • Elon Musk [33:30]: Argues for empowering citizen journalism, allowing more voices to shape narratives while still valuing excellence in traditional journalism (34:53).

3. Maria on Verification and Authenticity [34:53 - 38:59]:

   • Maria [34:53]: Questions the shift to paid blue tick verification and its implications.
   • Elon Musk [35:30]: Clarifies that the paid verification aims to prevent corruption and bot proliferation by requiring a small fee and verified phone numbers, enhancing account authenticity (38:59).

4. Carol Christ on Political Elections [38:59 - 41:06]:

   • Carol Christ [39:36]: Seeks insights on Twitter’s role in upcoming elections.
   • Elon Musk [39:58]: Stresses the importance of an open and transparent platform, reiterating the commitment to maintain both reality and perception through transparency in algorithms and content moderation (41:06).

Conclusion: Building Trust and Collaboration

Greg wraps up the interview by emphasizing Musk’s commitments to transparency, advertiser protection, and fostering an open feedback loop with marketing experts to continuously improve Twitter.

• Greg [41:06 - 42:35]: Summarizes key takeaways, including Musk’s accessibility for feedback, commitment to not tweeting frivolously, and the importance of ongoing collaboration with marketing professionals to enhance the platform (42:35).
• Elon Musk [42:35]: Expresses gratitude and concludes the interview.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Twitter 2.0 Vision: Elon Musk envisions Twitter evolving into an “everything app,” integrating essential services like payments, communications, and commerce to become indispensable in users' daily lives.

2. Freedom of Speech vs. Reach: Musk underscores the importance of allowing free speech while controlling the amplification of harmful content, ensuring that hate speech isn't promoted despite being allowed.

3. Advertiser Protection: Implementation of robust adjacency controls ensures that ads do not appear alongside negative or hateful content, maintaining a safe environment for brands.

4. Transparency and Trust: Open-sourcing algorithms and content labeling processes aim to build trust with users and advertisers by ensuring transparency in how content is recommended and moderated.

5. Equal Accountability: Musk commits to being held to the same standards as all Twitter users, reinforcing the platform’s fairness and objectivity.

6. Enhanced Ad Functionality: New features allowing precise keyword-based ad placements enhance the relevance and effectiveness of advertising campaigns on Twitter.

7. Empowering Citizen Journalism: By promoting decentralized information and citizen journalism, Musk aims to democratize narrative formation while still valuing quality content from traditional media sources.

8. AI Alignment and Safety: Musk advocates for truth-seeking, curiosity-driven AI to avoid existential threats, emphasizing the need for honesty and transparency in AI development.

9. Verification Overhaul: Transitioning to a paid verification system aims to reduce bot proliferation and enhance account authenticity, ensuring a more reliable platform for genuine interactions.

10. Commitment to Feedback: Musk emphasizes an open feedback loop with marketing professionals to continuously refine Twitter’s functionalities and policies, ensuring the platform meets the needs of its diverse user base.

Notable Quotes:

• Elon Musk [03:12]: “Everyone needs a reason to be inspired. People need a reason to wake up in the morning. It can't just be about solving problems.”
• Elon Musk [05:44]: “Freedom of speech, not reach, is important.”
• Elon Musk [09:27]: “If you want to trust something, you've got to know how it works.”
• Elon Musk [21:38]: “We do obviously payments, we provide, really, really make a good, meaningful communication...”
• Elon Musk [35:30]: “Verification was not up to me; it's really up to you guys.”
• Elon Musk [38:59]: “Effectively, by charging a small amount of money and requiring a credit card and a phone number, we increase the cost of a fake account by literally 1,000, if not 10,000.”

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Conclusion:

This interview provides an in-depth look into Elon Musk’s strategic vision for Twitter, addressing critical areas such as freedom of speech, advertiser safety, platform transparency, and future expansion into an all-encompassing digital hub. Musk’s commitment to fairness, authenticity, and continuous improvement seeks to establish Twitter as a trustworthy and essential platform for both users and advertisers. By fostering open dialogue and incorporating feedback from marketing experts, Musk aims to navigate the challenges of modern social media, ensuring Twitter remains relevant and influential in shaping global conversations and commerce.

Transcript

[Greg]

Hi, my friend. I thought X was coming out. I had some extra questions for him, I think.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, he changed his mind.

[Greg]

Well, thank you, Elon. It is such a treat and a special opportunity. Welcome to Possible, and while Greg was right, everyone. Okay, let's have a round of applause. Well, Greg was right. You really need no introduction, but in many ways today is your introduction to the advertising community. Right, I think that's a round of applause.

[Elon Musk]

Hello.

[Greg]

It's widely known that in the morning you run SpaceX, in the afternoon you head to Tesla, and in the evening, it's Twitter time. And many of you in this room know me, and you know, I pride myself on my work ethic. But buddy, I met my match. So we're here today to actually talk about your night job.

[Elon Musk]

Great. Sounds good.

[Greg]

But with Twitter, you've switched roles a little bit. You've, you know, your other companies, you move from inventor now to reinventor. And when you're inventing something, it's all new, it's a surprise. We don't know what to expect to reinventor. You challenge legacy, you challenge habits. With Twitter, many of us in this room, we might even go to bed with it in our pocket on the night table, you challenge rituals. And every marketing executive in this room knows the difficulty of a new formula and the challenge of the delicate balance of a rebrand. And now that's what we're going to talk about today.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to make Twitter fun and interesting and informative. You know, the optimization for Twitter is maximize the unregretted user time. So. So it's not like total number of users or anything, it's just total user minutes unregretted. And we actually hit an all time high just yesterday. So it's going well. It's entertaining.

[Greg]

I think entertaining is one way some people in the room describe Twitter today.

[Elon Musk]

Train wrecks arguably are entertaining.

[Greg]

Train wrecks happen sometime. They happen sometimes.

[Elon Musk]

If you're dedicated like a train wreck.

[Greg]

You gotta be dedicated to fixing them. But I think it's important to start with your vision of Twitter 2.0.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Greg]

You yourself wrote, I would like to die knowing that humanity has a bright future. It's actually been quite apparent in all your other businesses, from the early days of PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX, to. To maybe you contemplating a new AI company. Yeah, but how does the better humanity for the future fit into your Twitter 2.0 vision?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, so, I mean, obviously with the goal with Tesla is to advance sustainable energy. With SpaceX, we've got Starlink, which is providing Internet to the least served in the world. And also hopefully getting humanity to Mars and back to the moon. So we have an exciting future. I mean, it's important to bear in mind, like, some of these people say, like, why waste any money on space? Like, don't we have enough problems on Earth? But, you know, the thing is that, like, everyone needs a reason to be inspired. People need a reason to wake up in the morning. It can't just be about solving problems. They have to, have to be things that really get you in the heart. I think I just killed the mic. Okay, so. And going to the moon last century inspired the whole world.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

And hopefully going to Mars can do the same thing. So it's a great question. Why take some time away from that for Twitter? And Mike, you know what I think is essentially in order for civilization to advance, we've got to have freedom of speech. We've got to have a digital. Yeah. So thank you. It's a bigger deal than you'd think. And it's the kind of thing that you don't know what you're missing until you don't have it. And in a lot of places, people don't have it. And so it's important to bear in mind that the nature of free speech is the acid test for it is, are people you don't like allowed to say things that you don't like? Otherwise it's not free. It can't be just the things that. It can't be just things that you like, because eventually somebody's not going to like what you say and they're going to shut you up. And that's the essence of free speech. And that's why it's the First Amendment in this country. And if we lose that, I think we lose the bedrock of democracy.

[Greg]

So the bedrock of democracy, I would imagine, is important to everyone in this room. And you talk about the importance of freedom of speech. Yesterday you posted a new policy that was titled freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. That got my attention.

[Elon Musk]

Yes.

[Greg]

Tell us about your new policy.

[Elon Musk]

Right, so freedom of speech, not reach, is important in that, you know, like, if somebody has something hateful to say, it doesn't mean you should give them a megaphone. They should still be able to say it, but it needs to be not then pushed on people. So if, you know, you can go like in Times Square in New York and you can hear people say all kinds of crazy things, that's fine. But we don't broadcast that to Earth. So if somebody wants to say something that's technically legal but is, you know, by most definitions, hateful, they're not going to get. We're not going to promote that to people. We're not going to recommend hate. Hateful content to people. We'll put that behind a warning label saying, this speech is probably something you don't want. And now this is something we have to be very careful that we roll out and that it does not become what is intended to be good, does not become bad. So we want to be delicate with the freedom of reach, not speech. Freedom of speech, not reach. So we're taking it easy. But it's just. Yeah, if there's. If people are saying things that are making you sad or encouraging negativity, then we're not going to amplify that, which Twitter has done in the past.

[Greg]

So how is this new policy different from the other platforms?

[Elon Musk]

I don't know the other platforms, I don't use them.

[Greg]

So that was not a softball question. I want to go on record.

[Elon Musk]

I don't know. I mean, I think the. Interesting. Honestly, this is true. Before the acquisition of Twitter, I just didn't find the other platforms compelling to be just objectively so.

[Greg]

So let's get back to the new policy for a second because again, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Greg]

What does it mean to the advertisers in this room? Have you de. Risked the. The opportunity or chance of their campaigns landing in these awful, hateful places?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I think people may not be aware of this already, but we have adjacency controls in place that are really quite effective. So, you know, we can just literally turn on the adjacency control and the ad will not appear next to anything that is remotely negative.

[Greg]

Has that gotten better since you arrived?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, we put a lot of effort into it. So I think there have been some mistakes that have been made where in one case, somebody thought they were running a control. They first did a test campaign without the controls in place, and they got like 30% negativity. It's like that should never be done. You must put the controls in place because we have excess inventory on negativity. So the ad engine will naturally say, oh, I've got lots of spots where the negativity. So I'm going to give you a very high negativity. You must put the adjacent controls in place. If you do put the adjacency controls in place, negativity is going to be almost nothing.

[Greg]

So this is a good early step. Of your impact since you got to Twitter?

[Elon Musk]

No, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's worth noting that, I mean, Apple remained a major advertiser. Disney has remained a major advertiser. They literally advertise children's shows on Twitter and they wouldn't do that if it was filled with hate speech.

[Greg]

I want to get back to the labeling and this new policy. Who decides and how does it get decided that it's labeled as what I think some people have talked about, if you've said it this way yourself, if it's awful but lawful, it's going to stay up. It just won't see sunlight, you won't amplify it. But who decides that labeling?

[Elon Musk]

Well, we have a set of words, and so we open sourced the recommendation algorithm. We're also going to open source the words that are associated with the freedom of speech, not reach. And people can argue over the words. I think they're reasonably accurate. And like I said, it is working or Disney would have pulled their ads a long time ago and haven't. So. Yeah, but I think in order to really build trust, you have to have transparency. It can't be that here's this black box, something's happening in here. We won't tell you what it is. Trust us. I think that's bs. If you want to trust something, you've got to know how it works. And so that's why we're open sourcing the algorithm. Now, open sourcing algorithm is kind of embarrassing. People have found all sorts of things that were wrong and foolish and misguided with the algorithm, and we've actually fixed, I think, at this point, over 100 issues with the algorithm. So it's actually been very helpful to open source it. And we're going to open source the entire thing. Basically, you should be able to recreate the probability of a tweet being recommended based on what we've open sourced. If you can't recreate it, then we haven't shown you everything. So it's really complete transparency. And I think that's the only path to trust. I don't think there's another path.

[Greg]

So trust is probably one of the top two or three words that every marketing executive in this room would say is table stakes for any company that they invest in, any company that they can move forward with. You just talked about transparency, open sourcing. I would say that that's the difference between those other platforms you either don't use or never heard of. And open sourcing or transparency is again, another one of those Table stake requirements. But this labeling, this new policy, talking about if it's awful but not unlawful, does it apply to your tweets? Wow, listen to that.

[Elon Musk]

Yes, it does, actually. It does.

[Greg]

It does.

[Elon Musk]

Moreover, my tweets are also subject to Community Notes. So if I say something incorrect, a Community Notes function is actually very effective. Applies to advertisers too. FY so. And there have been a few cases where there's been ads that were not completely accurate and Community Notes has corrected them and they've corrected me and they've corrected heads of state multiple times. So Community Notes is extremely effective.

[Greg]

I think that's an incredible acknowledgment of the. The progression of Twitter 2.0 and the importance of this new policy and protection for everyone. Right. And you're talking about fully democratizing the platform which. Which leads you to Community Notes because you're actually believing in the people who are able to often from the front lines gives their point of view that clarify what some people might say is bias.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Like I said, the important thing is that we're an open book. So you can literally see if there's some line of logic that gives me special privileges. Literally everything. There's nothing that is hidden. So yeah, it's whatever. Obviously people are not going to trust Twitter. If there are different rules for me or others versus the rest of Twitter, that's going to diminish trust. So everything that applies to the rest of Twitter must apply to me. And I think this is going to. I think it's going to be extremely powerful and I think it will result in Twitter being the most trusted place on the Internet by far. Why would you trust anything else?

[Greg]

And let's talk about that. Why would you trust anyone else? Especially if you. The most followed man on Twitter, you've gone from consumer of a product you loved to now the owner of a product that.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, it's like the hair club for men.

[Greg]

It might be a. Be careful.

[Elon Musk]

Remember that ad.

[Greg]

That was a classic type of thing. But you know what if. If you're held to the same level of accountability that everyone else is in the platform. There are some. This room, I think it's a second just to take a beat and talk about. You've talked about recently. You are maybe almost close to cash flow positive, right?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, we have like one on those is like just about quarter.

[Greg]

So maybe a quarter or two away from profitability. The people in this room are your accelerated path to profitability.

[Elon Musk]

Please advertise on Twitter. That would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Greg]

But There's a decent bit of skeptics in the room.

[Jonathan Berry]

What?

[Greg]

Yeah, Never heard of it. The guy works in space. Didn't hear what's going on. There's people who cannot say separated. They're challenged by separating the man, his opinions, and the microphone that he now owns.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, but I. I mean, look, before the acquisition, I was the most interactive with account on Twitter. So it's not like, you know, it's actually all. All that different. So before I even announced acquisition, I didn't have the most number of followers, but I had the highest number of interactions on. On the entire platform before an acquisition offer was even announced. And that's when there were, like, you know, fair number of people at Twitter who weren't exactly my best friends. So.

[Greg]

Well, you know, you open yourself up to this transparency. Your tweets are eligible for this labeling. You've actually unblocked all of your followers.

[Elon Musk]

I deleted my block list.

[Greg]

Right, you deleted your block list. You've also been told that you never want to lose your feedback loop, specifically your negative feedback loop.

[Elon Musk]

Yes, thankfully, Twitter will always provide you with a negative feedback loop.

[Greg]

I have to push you a little because there's a lot of folks in this room, they vote with their pocketbooks and. Or wallets, I should say. I like pocketbooks. Nice ones.

[Elon Musk]

Digital wallet.

[Greg]

But they can't cross that transom. They have a challenge with your points of view, your opinions, and still holding back from unlocking the full power of Twitter. What do you say to them in this room?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think, first of all, if you want to know what my opinions are, you should really, I guess, look at my Twitter, if you read the. And take it with a grain of salt, because it's hard to convey tone with a tweet. So something may be sarcastic or a joke or something like that may come across as serious when it isn't. But a lot of the issue is negative amplification in the media. I recently had an interview with an organization called BBC that you may have heard of, maybe. And that was entertaining. But, you know, the reporter was saying, claiming that there was all this. That he'd seen all this hate speech on Twitter. And I said, okay, well, can you give me a single example? And he couldn't. Not even one. So then I say, like, okay, well, you know, if your personal experience on Twitter, that's how you should judge the platform as opposed to what is represented in sort of the traditional media. And it's important to bear in mind the traditional media is a competitor to Twitter. They Compete for your advertising dollars. They compete against Twitter for your advertising dollars. If it is possible for them to diminish Twitter and reduce the probability of advertising dollars going to Twitter. And at best, it's like, basically you shouldn't take a competitor's word for it. Like, it doesn't.

[Greg]

But don't you think I am blameless? Most news organizations.

[Elon Musk]

Well, maybe a little.

[Greg]

Okay, most news organizations have a co dependent relationship with Twitter. And I can, I could speak on behalf of the industry, but I'll speak on behalf of my own company. We have a big partnership with your company, big distribution partnership. Are there days where I see some of your tweets and I say, I wish I could say stop helping the situation, but should you be held to a different or a higher standard that you're the owner but you also have the most followers and a lot of people think you might be too provocative?

[Elon Musk]

No, I think the same standard should apply to me as it applies to everyone on Twitter, just as it does on positive or negative.

[Greg]

So what do you do?

[Elon Musk]

Same for everyone. Now, the thing that a lot of traditional journalists don't like is they don't like being put on the same platform as the average citizen. They don't like their voice being the same. They're pretty mad about that.

[Greg]

Yes. There are several news organizations who, who don't like your push for democratization and what they believe is the devaluing of the badges because they were differentiated. So is that just a moment?

[Elon Musk]

That's deliberate.

[Greg]

Is that just a moment in time?

[Elon Musk]

No, that's deliberate. I think it's very important to elevate citizen journalism. I think it's very important to hear the voice of the people, the actual voice of the people, not the filtered voice of the people. People. And let the people choose the narrative and let the people determine the truth. And not five editors and chiefs of major publications. Do you want to know what's really going on or do you want their opinion? You know, it's a handful of people, I think. I think we want to know the voice of the people, the true voice of the people.

[Greg]

So let's let me kind of pull you back into what's important to the people in this room. And that's protection for their ad campaigns.

[Elon Musk]

Sure.

[Greg]

So yesterday was a great start. Protection from any of the provocative speech that is labeled, what is your. Does it get better from there? What's your real North Star? Where is Twitter a couple of years from now when I show up on Twitter? Is it just a global town square where I'm talking in number of characters or where does it evolve to what happens in my town square? Commerce.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. I mean, what I've said is that Twitter is effectively an accelerant to an idea I've had for a long time, which is, I call it sort of X. The everything app.

[Greg]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

Which is to have a platform that is so useful that you find it is essential to conduct your life. So that means like, you know, we do obviously payments, we provide, really, really make a good, meaningful communication privately as well as publicly. So that means we need to have direct message system that is, that offers voice calls, video calls, encrypted communications so that your communications are private and Twitter and others cannot spy on them and just be incredibly useful.

[Greg]

So you've got a massive platform, you have a vision that is a spectrum of just daily, open sourced conversation and they can conduct their lives, their business, their commerce, whatever they can do on your platform. That's a pretty big vision. But in the middle should be advertising opportunity. That sounds like a great opportunity. I can talk about my brand, I can get my customers to communicate and then they could also buy stuff. That sounds pretty good, right?

[Elon Musk]

You'll be able to buy things just directly on Twitter. One click, boom, done.

[Greg]

But they need to feel that there is an opportunity for them to influence what you're building that vision. What we're doing here, whether it's me trying to push and prod you on your tweets, for example, you've said you probably shouldn't tweet after 3am well, I've got myself probably good advice for all of us.

[Elon Musk]

I've gotten myself into trouble a few times.

[Greg]

I'm very aware of those. So after 3am you travel all over the world. Lord knows how you handle time zones in space. Will you commit to be a little more specific and not tweet after 3am People in this room would like to see that. It will make them feel more confident.

[Elon Musk]

I will aspire to, to Tweet less after 3am But I mean, it is important that you know, I mean, if I were to say, yes, you can influence me, that would be wrong. That would be very wrong because that would be a diminishment of freedom of speech.

[Greg]

But I want to be specific about influencing. It's more of an open feedback loop for the advertising experts in this room to help develop Twitter into a place where they will be excited about investing more money. Product development, ad safety, content moderation. That's what the influence is.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I think it's totally cool to Say that you want to have your advertising appear in certain places in Twitter and not in other places. But it is not cool to say, to try to say what Twitter will do. And if that means losing advertising dollars, we lose it. But freedom of speech is paramount.

[Greg]

So Twitter 1.0 had a very well populated, much loved influence council. I know, I don't. I think we need to change the name. Elon does not want to be influenced, but it was really a recurring feedback loop from your key stakeholders, your advertisers, where they had recurring access or would have recurring access to you. Would you commit from this stage today to reinstate that council to be named later?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I don't think it should be influence counsel that. And you have to say, I would be wary of that creating a backlash among the public. Because if the public thinks that, you know, their views are being determined by, you know, a small number of CMOs in America, they will be like, I think, upset about that. But feedback, I think is appropriate. And, you know, at the end of the day, if somebody's spending money for their ad campaign, it needs to yield results for their organization or it doesn't make sense. And, you know, that includes the sort of software perception issues as well as the more direct. Does it move the needle on sales. So, you know, there's legitimate concerns that advertisers have that I want to hear. And we're going to move to live Q and A after the prepared questions and perhaps you can ask some of those right here because I think some of these things should be discussed in an open forum, you know. Yeah, so I think having, you know, the reason I'm here is to get feedback, you know, what is this? But feedback, you know, and try to be asked questions. And we're trying to achieve here a sensible, you know, middle ground or try to satisfy a range of things, which is how do we ensure that the public has their voice, even if you don't like the voice at times, but also that you're able to serve your brands and improve the perception of your brands and improve sales as well. At the end of the day, I mean, I think there is. When advertising is relevant to users and especially if the message is entertaining and interesting, it's content. And then the other side of it, if the ad is not relevant to the user and it's perhaps strident or something, then then obviously that's spam. So advertising can go all the way from spam to compelling content. And I really want to focus on obviously the compelling content side of things. Make it relevant, make it interesting, funny, informative.

[Greg]

And I think you're right. I think that's actually where this room can help with the feedback. They're experts in knowing with the right consumer set that they're trying to reach what is relevant, what makes good advertising. And since I think I heard that you committed to continued feedback, it might be a good time like Twitter, which is where it happens in real time, to open up the room to questions. Elon has suggested that he's open. Okay, we have a few, so please ask Elon, you want to go?

[Elon Musk]

Okay, let's go. One of the things I should say that has been sort of really broken for a long time at Twitter is that when you run an ad campaign, you couldn't even do basic things like keywords. Like, honestly, this is. It blew my mind. So we've now added to where you can say, as simple as it sounds, what keywords do you want an ad to appear next to? So if a tweet has a certain, you know, is about a subject, then you should be able to put the ad right there. And I was talking to David Zaslov at, you know, he was saying, look, I just want to put able to put the trailer for White Lotus next to where people are talking about White Lotus. I was like, yeah, that is obviously a good thing to do. That is the right place to put the ad. And so as mind blowing as it is, Twitter did not have that functionality until recently, which is insane, but now it does. So, you know, talking about listening to, you know, key advertiser partners, listen to what David said and like, we're doing it. So now, bingo. Have White Lotus ads next to White Lotus discussions, which is exactly where it should be.

[Greg]

So it's a new beginning.

[Martinas]

All right, all right, we're going to start. Thank you on your side, Elon. Thank you so much. Over to your left here. My name is Jonathan Berry. I'm from the Dunhill family office and the Earth Trust Fund, focused on regenerative innovation and exponential technology. I'm absolutely obsessed with the work that you're doing in the world. Thank you for incarnating in this lifetime and helping all of us ascend to the next level of this experience of life. I'm curious about your thoughts on alignment with AI and what are the strategies that are currently being implemented. I'm currently creating my own alignment protocol which I would love to submit to your team.

[Greg]

I like it.

[Elon Musk]

Well, I wasn't expecting an AI discussion right off the bat. My brother and I have this, this rule that if we're at a party, we're not allowed to talk, to talk about either AI or the simulation because otherwise the conversations go there so often. So I've been thinking about AI safety for a long time because I think this is significant existential threat to humanity. The best thing I can come up with for AI safety is to make it a maximum truth seeking AI maximally curious, have its optimization function be to understand the nature of the universe. If that is its optimization function, I think it will actually want to preserve and extend human civilization because we're just much more interesting than say, an asteroid with nothing on it. So I think, I think, I think my, my intuition, my biological neural net suggests that a maximally curious AI is the safest AI and a maximally truth seeking AI is the safest AI and if you try to, we have to be careful with the alignments stuff or we have to, you know, and I think we, we, we definitely don't want to teach an AI to lie because that, that is a path to a dystopian future. The, I mean the, the essence of, of 2001 a space odyssey was that the AI was given what was basically told to lie. It was, it was, it was told to hide the, the, the fact that it was going to see the monolith. Instead it was taking to the crew to the monolith. So it was both told to take the crew to the monolith and the crew cannot know about the monolith. The conclusion the AI came to was kill the crew and take them to the monolith. So problem solved. So you want to be really careful about any, any kind of deception. And I think in AI we want to program the AI to be as truthful as possible, even. Even if that truth is not politically correct. So thank you. Thank you.

[Maria]

Haylen. Amazing to be here. My name is Martinas, I work in news media. And my question is, you're saying Twitter is where we're going to be getting our information from now on, or social media? Is this the end of centralized publishers, news media, and we're going into decentralized information era? Thank you.

[Elon Musk]

No, that's a good observation. That citizen journalism is essentially decentralized news. Now this will obviously be. If somebody is a great writer for the New York Times or Journal or Post or whatever newspaper, Herald, if they're a great writer, they will still gain a significant following as a function of their excellent writing. So somebody who is an excellent writer will still get disproportionate attention. But I think it is also important for us to decentralize what is written and what narratives are chosen. Because even if everything in a newspaper is 100% correct, they're still choosing what to write about. They're choosing the narrative. So I think it's important for the public to be able to choose narrative as well. So it's not really that traditional publications go away, but really that we give more weight. We enable the voice of the people to rise.

[Jonathan Berry]

Hi Linda Elon. Thank you so much for your insightful talk. My name is Maria. I run PRN marketing company focused on tech and web 3. I live here in Miami, but originally from Russia. I wanted to ask you two questions, if you allow me. First one, why did you make blue tick verification tick on Twitter paid? Is it strictly for profit? Or there was some other logic behind it? And second question is, can I take a selfie with you?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think there might be quite a line on the selfie front, but honestly, selfies are the bane of my existence, so. But sure. So no, the issue with the way that blue checks were handed out historically at Twitter was not in a not always in a sensible way or not always in a good way. And the same check was given out whether you were sort of a government official or a major company or a person. So there wasn't really any distinguishment between what does a blue check mean? And a lot of blue checks were you could have been an intern at a small publication 10 years ago and you still have a blue check. And then a lot of them were for sale and not for sale on the dark web. I'm talking about you could Google blue check for sale and buy a blue check. Anyone could. And there was some corruption within Twitter as well in terms of paying people at Twitter for or blue checks. That was not appropriate. So the question is, how do we clear all of that out and how do we create, within reason, a level playing field so that, like I said, the average citizen can be a journalist and that we really want to judge journalism. We want to judge stories based on the quality of the content. Content, not the publication that is behind it. And there are some incredibly good individuals who maybe couldn't get a job at a major newspaper, but actually they're great writers and they're incredibly truthful and good. So it was really just to kind of level the playing field. And the thing about the, you know, you can get one for like $7 a month if you do it on the web, which is it's not a lot, but it gives us the added element of requiring a credit card and a phone number from a reputable carrier. And so this is a. I mean, we're going to get kind of technical here, but it's a necessary defense against bots. So today, with advanced AI, they can pass every kind of test for a human. So you can actually create on one computer 100,000 accounts, so then that all sound human and pass every human test. So how do you know which one's real? So effectively, by charging a small amount of money and requiring a credit card and a phone number, we increase the cost of a fake account by literally 1,000, if not 10,000. And my prediction is that any social media company that does not require a small amount of money and does not do verification will cease to be relevant. I mean, I can go to talk forever if you want.

[Greg]

One more. One more.

[Elon Musk]

So it's not up to me, it's really up to you guys. I'm happy to talk longer if you want.

[Carol Christ]

Hi, my name is Carol Christ, and I had the great honor to serve as first lady of Florida. And it's an incredible honor to be here with all of you and this beautiful conference, and this is an extraordinary panel and this discussion and the great work you do for humanity, our planet. And I'm just so impressed with everything you're doing at Twitter and how open you are with everything you're doing. I think it's a great service to our country and the world, and I really am very grateful to you for that. And it may be a little depressing, but we do have an election year coming up and it's incredibly important.

[Elon Musk]

Well, not yet. This next year.

[Carol Christ]

Politics, the world is watching and it's an incredible, incredibly important time. A lot is at stake and I would love to know what you. I'm sure you have a lot going on and I would love to hear some more say and what we can look forward to hearing from Twitter. Thank you so much.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I mean, I do think it's very important for elections domestically and internationally that we have an open and transparent platform. That's why I think it's just the open sourcing that algorithm and complete transparency is essential so that people know what's going on. They know that something is not being artificially suppressed or amplified. And so as I mentioned, when we open sourced the recommendation algorithm, now, there's still other elements of Twitter that haven't been open sourced, but will be. The public found many errors in our recommendation platform that we fixed and we'll keep doing that. What really matters is there both the reality and the perception of a platform that the public believes that they can trust. And like you said, if you don't have anything that's not any platform that does not have transparency, I wouldn't trust it worth a damn.

[Greg]

So I think what we heard today is some really important and profound things. First of all, Elon has committed to being accessible to everyone for continual feedback. He's also opened up himself to also participate in the new transparency, transparency and safety rules that they posted yesterday. Just remember, right, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of reach. And if freedom of speech, as he says, is the bedrock of this country, I'm not sure there's anyone in this room who could disagree with that. Could I get a round of applause for that? But I want to be clear, the path here today wasn't without a lot of chatter because this guy is here. There's always a lot of chatter. But I believe if this is a marketing conference for marketing executives that influence culture in this country, it is the responsibility of everybody in this room to offer a helping hand and to say, how can we help? How can we make it better? So I say we're open for solutions. And you got a man who's committed to try his best not to tweet after 3am but open to your feedback. And I'd like to really thank everyone who's spending their time here today.

[Elon Musk]

Thank you.