Speaker 1: From the heart of where innovation, money and power collive
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with
Speaker 1: Emily Jay. Hi'm Emily Chang in San Francisco, and this
Speaker 1: is a special edition of Bloomberg Technology. Twitter is now
Speaker 1: officially owned by Elon Musk, and the news is still
Speaker 1: sinking in. He's already fired a few key top executives,
Speaker 1: announced a new content moderation council and started restructuring. How
Speaker 1: will Twitter under Musk moderate free speech? What is the
Speaker 1: business strategy? Kanye's profile appears to be back? Is Donald Trump? Next?
Speaker 1: We have a premium lineup of guests today, including one
Speaker 1: of the investors with inside knowledge of Musque's plans, along
Speaker 1: with a member of Twitter's founding team. Let's get right
Speaker 1: to it with gloomberg. Ed Ludler, who's been following Musk
Speaker 1: and his coverage of Tesla and spaces for so many
Speaker 1: years and now Twitter. He joins us now outside Twitter headquarters,
Speaker 1: live in San Francisco. So at day one under Musk,
Speaker 1: what happened? You know, not as much as we'd hope
Speaker 1: to be honest, And we know the deal closed last night.
Speaker 1: You know, Equity co investors were informed late night Eastern Time.
Speaker 1: What I'm hearing from sources actually a lot of the
Speaker 1: work we've already reported is ongoing. There are Tesla engineering
Speaker 1: staff inside of Twitter being buddied up or paired up
Speaker 1: with Twitter engineering staff, and they're basically having meetings to
Speaker 1: review the source code behind the Twitter platform. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what's happening minute by minute. You would have seen
Speaker 1: the tweet right and from Elon Musk about Content Moderation Council,
Speaker 1: and so the conversation seems to be moving really quickly
Speaker 1: from how this deal happened and what the deal looked
Speaker 1: like to what does the future of Twitter as a
Speaker 1: platform look like under Elon Musk? And of course content
Speaker 1: moderation and the support of freedom of speech to freedom
Speaker 1: expression is fast becoming what we want to talk about now.
Speaker 1: We know last night he fired a few of the
Speaker 1: key top executives Paraguagal, the CEO, Ned Siegel, the CFO Vidjigade,
Speaker 1: members of the legal team. We also saw people walking
Speaker 1: out of Twitter today with boxes. Are those all people
Speaker 1: getting fired? Yes? So, I mean on the executive departures.
Speaker 1: Sources tell us that for the time being, at least
Speaker 1: Elon Musk has installed himself as CEO of Twitter Private
Speaker 1: Twitter under him. I know that a lot of staff
Speaker 1: were really concerned, for example, by Ned Siegel's departure. Right
Speaker 1: He was CFO for five years, regarded generally as a
Speaker 1: very nice guy. Um. Two individuals walked out of the
Speaker 1: building behind me earlier today. They claimed to be Twitter
Speaker 1: employees who had been laid off. It turns out, according
Speaker 1: to sources, that that was a hoax, or at least
Speaker 1: Twitter staff believe it was a hoax, that they were
Speaker 1: not Twitter employees and therefore not laid off. We phone Twitter.
Speaker 1: We've asked Twitter for comment and to clarify the situation.
Speaker 1: We've asked Musk's team to clarify who those people were,
Speaker 1: and we've not heard back. All Right, Ed Ludlow outside
Speaker 1: Twitter headquarters. Thanks for your reporting, and we're going to
Speaker 1: get back to you a little bit later in the show.
Speaker 1: I do want to bring in Ross Gerber right now,
Speaker 1: president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki. He is an investor
Speaker 1: in Tesla and SpaceX and now Musk's Twitter. So Ross,
Speaker 1: please clarify for us what's your role in the new
Speaker 1: Twitter under Elon Musk, especially given we've talked about this
Speaker 1: a few times this year, you weren't such a fan
Speaker 1: of Elon Musk owning Twitter after all. Yeah. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: has been an extremely painful and difficult process for the
Speaker 1: last six months, more so for Elon than me. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. So when it came down to it last week,
Speaker 1: they asked if we wanted to invest in, and I
Speaker 1: said yes, because you know, I I stick. I stick
Speaker 1: with Elon. You know, He's made me a lot of
Speaker 1: money over the years, and I have great confidence in
Speaker 1: his leadership and an ability to turn Twitter around and
Speaker 1: make it a much better platform. But it was only
Speaker 1: after I heard the business plan that I was convinced
Speaker 1: that this was an incredible opportunity. And and that's why
Speaker 1: I'm backing it. And and I don't really have a
Speaker 1: role at this time. I'm trying to get on the
Speaker 1: either the advisory board or the content moderation board in
Speaker 1: the sense of I think with my background and media
Speaker 1: and communications, and I actually studied free speech at the
Speaker 1: Anniberg School of Communications at Pen actually at the same
Speaker 1: time Ellen was studying at PENN as well. And being
Speaker 1: a liberal Jewish mostly democrat, I think that people would
Speaker 1: be very comforted to know that somebody like myself might
Speaker 1: be involved with this type of decision making. So so
Speaker 1: I've made my pitch to them and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: So you've seen the business plan, you say, what's in it?
Speaker 1: What are Elon Musk's plans for this company to grow it,
Speaker 1: to make money, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: there's really two parts of the plan. There's Twitter one
Speaker 1: point and Twitter two point oh. And Twitter two point oh.
Speaker 1: I don't think Ellen is fully sure how that will look,
Speaker 1: but but it will involve a much bigger vision. But
Speaker 1: Twitter one point oh is really fixing Twitter and making
Speaker 1: it a better platform, and it's around a three pronged approach. First,
Speaker 1: it's cleaning up the platform and creating some sort of
Speaker 1: verification system so users are really people, and that will
Speaker 1: make advertisers and users have a much better platform to
Speaker 1: share information and ideas than the current system where bots
Speaker 1: and you know, sort of attack robots go after everything
Speaker 1: you tweet. So by knowing who the users are and
Speaker 1: creating this verification, I think the platform will be a
Speaker 1: much better place for users. Secondly, it's about creating a
Speaker 1: subscription model so that not all revenues derived from advertising,
Speaker 1: taking some of the power away from advertisers, uh and
Speaker 1: putting the power back into users. And this subscription will
Speaker 1: include many different factors including the verification and many other
Speaker 1: like small benefits like uh, maybe an edit feature kind
Speaker 1: of like what Twitter blue is now. And then the
Speaker 1: third part is really about building the creator community. And
Speaker 1: this is a really a combination of like combining like
Speaker 1: some of the features of YouTube slash Zoom with what
Speaker 1: Patreon is doing, and and a company maybe like only
Speaker 1: Fans where where creators want to be compensated for putting
Speaker 1: great content on platforms. And really YouTube is the best
Speaker 1: at doing this, so most of the other platforms um
Speaker 1: whether it be you know, commerce related like Instagram um
Speaker 1: or just information or entertainment related like TikTok, don't really
Speaker 1: have great monetization for creators. And that's really a focus
Speaker 1: of Ellon, which is getting great creators back on the
Speaker 1: platform and and a way for them to make a living.
Speaker 1: So if they achieve all three of these things and
Speaker 1: getting a cut of transactions and the creator economy as
Speaker 1: well as subscription revue on top of the ad revenue,
Speaker 1: this becomes a much more interesting business. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: a content moderation council that he said he would form.
Speaker 1: He also said there wouldn't be any big decisions until
Speaker 1: that happens. It does look like Kanye West or Yea
Speaker 1: is back on the platform. Does this mean Donald Trump
Speaker 1: isn't coming back anytime soon, isn't coming back before the
Speaker 1: midterm elections? Well, you know, I'm not sure where Elon
Speaker 1: stands with these issues other than he believes and I
Speaker 1: agree as well. And I have to say, there's nobody
Speaker 1: who hates Trump more than me. But I do believe
Speaker 1: in pre speech and I believe if he follows the
Speaker 1: guidelines of the platform, he should be allowed to speak,
Speaker 1: just like the Ayatola and Putin are tweeting as well.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like we can't just arbitrarily decide. So
Speaker 1: I think having transparency through a process, having better algorithms
Speaker 1: to identify hate and bad speech, and holding everybody accountable
Speaker 1: to the same standards is really what melons about, and
Speaker 1: creating a great marketplace for ideas um and whether Trump
Speaker 1: violates those rules or not, he'll be held accountable to
Speaker 1: the same rules as everybody. Now, the reason you aren't
Speaker 1: excited about Ellen being involved in Twitter is because you
Speaker 1: are a longtime Tesla investor, you're also in SpaceX. Are
Speaker 1: you concerned about Tesla? Are you concerned about SpaceX and
Speaker 1: his ability to keep these companies running and growing while
Speaker 1: he now has a third company that he has to
Speaker 1: take care of. Well, I'm not really that concern about Tesla,
Speaker 1: SpaceX and both companies achieving enormous successes and and have
Speaker 1: a very clear path and business plan in front of
Speaker 1: him which Ellen is guiding. Um, My bigger concern was
Speaker 1: him being CEO of Twitter for any extended period of time,
Speaker 1: and that just there's only so much time in the day,
Speaker 1: and can you really achieve his goals at Twitter along
Speaker 1: with all his responsibilities of going to the moon and
Speaker 1: building the biggest, you know, ev tech company in the world.
Speaker 1: So you know, how does one person do this? And
Speaker 1: and I think that's a legitimate concern, And that was
Speaker 1: the one concern I brought up in the conversation, is
Speaker 1: like how long is he really going to be CEO?
Speaker 1: But I think what he's done and all his company
Speaker 1: is very effectively is found great autonomous leaders that really
Speaker 1: can run the business when he's running around doing other
Speaker 1: stuff and he guides people in a very specific manner.
Speaker 1: But I also think his engagement, obviously in different levels,
Speaker 1: will be limited because he had now had three businesses
Speaker 1: instead of two. Well what did he tell you, I mean,
Speaker 1: how long does he plan to be CEO? Well, I
Speaker 1: didn't speak to him directly about this. I spoke with
Speaker 1: his right hand person, Jared Burchnell, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: there were so most people deal with Elon really we
Speaker 1: just don't know, you know, like what will happen next,
Speaker 1: which is really the beauty and horror of dealing with Elon,
Speaker 1: you know. So if you want stability, you know, this
Speaker 1: isn't the guy. But on the other hand, he's going
Speaker 1: to achieve great things. So so I'm not sure. And
Speaker 1: I think he's digging in now to see what kind
Speaker 1: of problem he's got to solve. And and as I've
Speaker 1: said earlier, Milon loves trying to solve the most difficult
Speaker 1: problems in the world and and this is definitely one
Speaker 1: of them. So so he's gonna have to put some
Speaker 1: time into this one. And just the same, I think
Speaker 1: he's got the team in Tesla in place. Tesla has
Speaker 1: a great year in front of them, and I don't
Speaker 1: see that being affected in any way. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the job cuts. I mean, I already you know
Speaker 1: much of the executive team is gone. He had said
Speaker 1: or there was reporting that he was going to fire
Speaker 1: of the workforce. Then he said he never said that.
Speaker 1: So where do you think he really stands on job cuts?
Speaker 1: And you know, how many jobs do you think should
Speaker 1: be cut or should they be cut especially right away? Well,
Speaker 1: I know where he stands from what I was told,
Speaker 1: and he I was never told. In fact, I told
Speaker 1: the Washington Post myself that their number was incorrect and
Speaker 1: they didn't think the article that said, um, there will
Speaker 1: be massive job was what I was told. And and
Speaker 1: so you know, half the people on Twitter are probably
Speaker 1: gonna lose their jobs and and the other half probably
Speaker 1: will not. And what the way to really look at
Speaker 1: it this way is that Ellen is hiring from Twitter
Speaker 1: this new team that will run Twitter and whatever it
Speaker 1: will become. And he's starting with the engineering talent. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of talent at Twitter, and he wants to
Speaker 1: retain and hire these people. And where we'll see most
Speaker 1: of the layoffs are at the top and in the
Speaker 1: project management side, where many of the projects have not
Speaker 1: come to fruition or not great ideas, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: cut a lot of these projects. And so um, when
Speaker 1: you look at the job cuts that they've made already, Um,
Speaker 1: he's already saved himselves. You know, probably a hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars in compensation just from firing for very overpaid Twitter executives.
Speaker 1: So I have no love or um belief in the
Speaker 1: current management team of Twitter. And I think the first
Speaker 1: thing you do is you start from the top and
Speaker 1: you start utting. Um. So that's actually good news for
Speaker 1: most of the people on Twitter, because if you're a productive,
Speaker 1: successful person on Twitter, you're gonna retain your job and
Speaker 1: you should not be worried in the least bit. You
Speaker 1: should be excited about the opportunity to work for one
Speaker 1: of the most incredible entrepreneurs of our time. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Twitter two point oh as
Speaker 1: you call it. What does it look like further out?
Speaker 1: Is it part of this X the everything app thing?
Speaker 1: Do some of Musk's other companies have a role. For example,
Speaker 1: starlink and Starlink have some sort of role in future Twitter. Well,
Speaker 1: not necessarily. I think starlinking is an example of where
Speaker 1: they see Twitter two point oh because when they started SpaceX,
Speaker 1: Starlink wasn't even an idea, and Starlink ended up becoming
Speaker 1: this amazing project out of SpaceX really, and and that's
Speaker 1: where Twitter two point oh is, which was sort of
Speaker 1: like pitched as like, well, we're not really sure what
Speaker 1: it will invent, but we know it will be awesome.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this will be the incorporate ration
Speaker 1: of cryptocurrencies and the digital ecosystem into the commerce, uh
Speaker 1: and creator element of Twitter. So when you actually start
Speaker 1: thinking about trading digital goods and services and digital commerce
Speaker 1: like with cryptocurrencies, and you add in that element to
Speaker 1: Twitter as an overall platform for good services ideas entertainment
Speaker 1: um and such um, it becomes a little bit more
Speaker 1: of Elon's vision of X. And really, where I see this,
Speaker 1: which kind of hit me last night, is maybe he's
Speaker 1: building the future operating system for Tesla as well, for
Speaker 1: all the screens and the millions and millions of cars
Speaker 1: that will now run on this new communication social platform.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot to this that people can put
Speaker 1: together between Tesla, Twitter software, building an operating mobile system,
Speaker 1: and building something that will be great for sharing ideas
Speaker 1: and commerce. Um boy, the potential is unlimited and that's
Speaker 1: why I am investing. All right, Ross garber CEO, President
Speaker 1: of gerber Kasaki. Great to have your inside perspective with us.
Speaker 1: We'll be looking to you for more information on the
Speaker 1: inside track as this role is always happy to help,
Speaker 1: always happy to help. Thank you, all right, thank you, Okay,
Speaker 1: coming up. The deal is done, but Musk's court battles
Speaker 1: aren't over. We're going to talk to you about the
Speaker 1: looming legal challenges he still faces. Next. This is Bloomberg. Well.
Speaker 1: After months spent in a brutal legal battle trying to
Speaker 1: get out of his forty four billion dollar proposal to
Speaker 1: buy Twitter, Elon, Musk still has outstanding matters in Delaware courts.
Speaker 1: He is scheduled to return before the same judge in
Speaker 1: Delaware Chancer Record in November for a separate trial over
Speaker 1: his complimence compensation at Tesla, which could top fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: For more on this, I want to bring in Lawrence Hammermash,
Speaker 1: executive director of the Institute for Law and Economics at
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania's Carry Law School. Larry, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. So we're gonna talk about that,
Speaker 1: But let's talk about what just happened. Did Elon must
Speaker 1: just dodge a huge legal bullet here in closing this
Speaker 1: deal for Twitter. Yeah we'll never know, will we, But
Speaker 1: but it sure was looking ugly for him as the
Speaker 1: as the trial approached. Um, quite apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that he uh avoided having his deposition taken in the case,
Speaker 1: he was going to have to deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of frankly, would seem like contradictory statements about Twitter in
Speaker 1: the last several months, And I for one didn't see
Speaker 1: a way for him to get to the goal line
Speaker 1: in that case, goal line as it was at the
Speaker 1: time getting out of the deal. So as much as uh,
Speaker 1: his turn around and saying Yep, I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: was a shock to me, uh, it kind of made
Speaker 1: sense because I think he was, as we used to say,
Speaker 1: cruising for a person. Do you think this will impact
Speaker 1: the tech m and a landscape going forward? You know,
Speaker 1: will this discourage potential breakups? Well? Uh, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it'll do so any more than the law did before.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been pretty clear, uh from a number
Speaker 1: of cases in Delaware that when push comes to shove.
Speaker 1: If if your deal says you don't have a way out,
Speaker 1: the court's going to do something and is not afraid
Speaker 1: to make you go through with it the specific performance
Speaker 1: remedy that people talk about. So I'm not sure there's
Speaker 1: new law. I'm not sure there's new guidance, but maybe
Speaker 1: there's new reassurance that a deal is a deal and
Speaker 1: it's going to be enforced. So let's talk about these
Speaker 1: other issues that he's facing. What how serious are these
Speaker 1: Tesla other Tesla situations and how significant is it that
Speaker 1: he's got to deal with the same judge who didn't
Speaker 1: make so many favorable rulings on the Twitter deal leading
Speaker 1: up to this. Well, Um, I don't want to puncture
Speaker 1: your balloon, but I think what's left in Delaware is
Speaker 1: not nearly as exciting or as big as as the
Speaker 1: case that we almost just had with with Twitter. But uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're serious, and they're really two cases. H. One
Speaker 1: uh that's scheduled to go to trial soon is uh
Speaker 1: the one involving a compensation package Ellen got from Tesla
Speaker 1: back in a whole slug of stock options in in
Speaker 1: I think twelve tranches, uh, and they were performance based
Speaker 1: in other words, he didn't get the benefit of those
Speaker 1: options unless Tesla met some milestone performances, which they mostly did.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. And yet what there's what's left for
Speaker 1: trial is a stockholders suit claiming that that compensation, that
Speaker 1: equity compensation was just way excessive in you know, in
Speaker 1: the billions of dollars. I don't know what it's really worth,
Speaker 1: but it's worth a lot. So how could this potentially
Speaker 1: impact him given he just shelled out a lot of
Speaker 1: money to buy Twitter? Well, uh it Uh, if he loses,
Speaker 1: it could be significant. Although you know, even a couple
Speaker 1: of billion dollars is a lot less than than uh
Speaker 1: forty four, but it would be significant if he lost. However,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to keep in mind that when
Speaker 1: the judge, who has since retired, decided a motion to
Speaker 1: dismiss the case, he said, Yeah, it's the plaintiff stockholder
Speaker 1: who's going to have to prove unfairness in this case. Uh,
Speaker 1: principally because of the stockholder approval of the pay package.
Speaker 1: Because the stockholder is gonna playing, the stockholder is going
Speaker 1: to have to prove unfairness. Uh. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: a stubble laid down hand and in fact, uh the
Speaker 1: judge who decided the motion to dismiss said, you know,
Speaker 1: they pleaded adequate facts to get by emotion to dismiss
Speaker 1: and to go to trial, but only barely. So. He
Speaker 1: was kind of skeptical even at the outset that even
Speaker 1: if the case went to trial much would come out
Speaker 1: of it. And I haven't seen anything that's changed since then.
Speaker 1: To be honest, this strikes me as a case that
Speaker 1: would make a lot of sense to settle at a
Speaker 1: much smaller level than a million dollars. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we will be looking out for that, among other things.
Speaker 1: Larry Hammerash, executive director of the Institute for Law and
Speaker 1: Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Not all tech companies
Speaker 1: are taking a beating this earning season. Apple actually soared
Speaker 1: as much as eight point one percent in New York trade,
Speaker 1: closing up seven point six for its biggest one day
Speaker 1: gain since July. This thanks to its revenue and profit,
Speaker 1: both topping analysts estimates. In spite of disappointing sales of
Speaker 1: iPhones and services. Has proved to be good enough news
Speaker 1: to avoid the fate of piers like Alphabet, Microsoft, even Meta,
Speaker 1: who've seen their valuation plunge by hundreds of billions of
Speaker 1: dollars this season, and Amazon couldn't escape the downward trend,
Speaker 1: with its market value dipping below one trillion dollars at
Speaker 1: one point. In closing the trading day at its lowest
Speaker 1: since June fourteen. The e commerce giant projected the slowest
Speaker 1: holiday quarter growth in the company's history, while sales at
Speaker 1: its web services business missed estimates. And some other news
Speaker 1: In San Francisco, we want to keep you updated on
Speaker 1: how speaker Nancy Pelosi's office says husband Paul Pelosi has
Speaker 1: had successful skull fracture surgery. This after a man broke
Speaker 1: into Pelosi's home earlier today and attacked him with a hammer.
Speaker 1: The assailant confronted Paul Pelosi and shouted where is Nancy?
Speaker 1: Where is Nancy, before striking him in the head and body.
Speaker 1: According to people familiar with the investigation, police say the
Speaker 1: man is now in custody and is being charged with
Speaker 1: attempted homicide and other crimes. As the world's richest person
Speaker 1: with corporate interests around the globe, Elon Musk is under
Speaker 1: close watch by regulators. Just today, a European Commissioner reacted
Speaker 1: to his acquisition of Twitter by saying the company needs
Speaker 1: to play by the rules. Bloomberg Sarafier here with us
Speaker 1: now to discuss Sarah between his work with Starlink and Ukraine,
Speaker 1: Tesla's presence in China now of course owning Twitter a
Speaker 1: lot to keep tabs on walk us through the political
Speaker 1: impact of this acquisition. I think that this is gonna
Speaker 1: be one of the main things we end up talking
Speaker 1: about with Elon Musk, because this this platform, it's it's
Speaker 1: not so much UM a business problem. It does have
Speaker 1: business problems, but the bigger problems are political ones. It's
Speaker 1: always about fighting in every country to not share data
Speaker 1: on dissidents or um not um take something down that
Speaker 1: a leader doesn't want to have up UM. And I
Speaker 1: think having a business like Tesla operating around the world
Speaker 1: UM gives world leader some leverage over Eason Musk that
Speaker 1: they didn't perhaps have over prior Twitter leaders. So I
Speaker 1: do think that that can be concerning long term UM.
Speaker 1: What we're what we're seeing so far is that Musk
Speaker 1: is trying to take a sort of a measured approach
Speaker 1: to Twitter, maybe more measured than the thought that he
Speaker 1: would at least based on his tweets today, he says
Speaker 1: he wants to create a content moderation counsel to overview
Speaker 1: whether people the permanent bandage to be restored, even though
Speaker 1: previously he said that he doesn't believe in permanent bands.
Speaker 1: He's he sold advertisers that he wants to build Twitter
Speaker 1: to be something good for humanity. UM that he doesn't
Speaker 1: want it to become, you know, a toxic success pool.
Speaker 1: So I think that he is is jumping into the
Speaker 1: deep end and getting initiated with this um really complicated
Speaker 1: political entity that is Twitter, which no one has really
Speaker 1: been able to run in a way that satisfies the public.
Speaker 1: Let's be honest. Do you think given that he just
Speaker 1: owns or runs so many different companies. You've got Tesla
Speaker 1: already under investigation. His tweet to take a private put
Speaker 1: him under investigation. Will his ownership of Twitter with free
Speaker 1: speech in question, take regulatory scrutiny of him to a
Speaker 1: whole new level? You know what? It might? I think
Speaker 1: that it definitely. UM is interesting too if you think
Speaker 1: about the way that Elon Musk does business. He's he
Speaker 1: based on the text messages that leaked earlier this year
Speaker 1: in four documents. It's very personal, it's very direct to you.
Speaker 1: People message him and say, you know, I need this
Speaker 1: or I want this from you, or I have this idea,
Speaker 1: and and he's responding on the fly. And just imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're owning this network that has um
Speaker 1: millions of users, but a much bigger uh impact creator
Speaker 1: than even that, Um, what kinds of things people are
Speaker 1: already asking him for. He must just be overloaded right now.
Speaker 1: And regulators are are no exception to that. We've already
Speaker 1: seen the EU and UM, we've seen politicians around the world,
Speaker 1: you know, try to to bring Twitter CEOs up to
Speaker 1: testify in years past. I think they'll they'll bring up
Speaker 1: Elon Musk as well, ask him about his content moderation plans. UM.
Speaker 1: Right now, he's he's in and favor, he says, you
Speaker 1: you know, wants in act. But I think that he's
Speaker 1: going to have to draw the line some somewhere, he's said,
Speaker 1: and that is going to anger some people. We just
Speaker 1: don't know which people yet. All right, Well, excellent reporting
Speaker 1: from you and your team are Bloomberg Tech editor Sarah Friar,
Speaker 1: which we will continue to watch in the days and
Speaker 1: weeks ahead. Joining us now to continue this conversation. Jason Goldman,
Speaker 1: one of the founding members of Twitter, former White House
Speaker 1: Chief Digital Officer under President Obama from for as always
Speaker 1: the insider outsider perspective. Jason, you have been helping us
Speaker 1: make sense of this for the last several months. How
Speaker 1: are you feeling now that the deal is done? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we've arrived at actually a version
Speaker 1: of sense that you could you could write down, but
Speaker 1: we did arrive at least at a season finale, a
Speaker 1: conclusion of this particular chapter. The deal is done, and
Speaker 1: now we now we get to see what sort of
Speaker 1: eon is going to do with Twitter. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we've heard predictions of the death of Twitter. It's certainly
Speaker 1: the end of an era, But how much do you
Speaker 1: think will actually change? So I think that for a
Speaker 1: long period of time people have been predicting the death
Speaker 1: of Twitter, and I think it's it's unfair to say
Speaker 1: that something is going to change today. There's going to
Speaker 1: be sort of a mass revolt, uh, and the product
Speaker 1: will die tomorrow. However, you know, there's a many different
Speaker 1: versions of death on the web. You know, my Space
Speaker 1: still exists, it's just not a cultural institution that matters
Speaker 1: in the technological world or the cultural world. Um so
Speaker 1: it's going to take a long time, I think slower
Speaker 1: than people think for product changes to roll out onto
Speaker 1: the platform. But the problem is that mistakes can begin
Speaker 1: almost right away, whether that's you know, content moderation or
Speaker 1: user safety or privacy. Even if it's not a conscious
Speaker 1: change in policy, mistakes will happen because there's going to
Speaker 1: be tremendous brain drain, you know, your guests at the
Speaker 1: top of the hour set up, and there's just gonna
Speaker 1: be organizational chaos that prevents good decisions from being made.
Speaker 1: So the leadership team is gone. We talked about that
Speaker 1: the workforce may go if ross Gerber is correct. Who
Speaker 1: were the winners and losers here, Well, you know, you
Speaker 1: talked about the executives to go. I would definitely start
Speaker 1: by talking about the about Vigia, who's the you know,
Speaker 1: the chief legal person at the company ran policy for years. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Vigia was specifically targeted by Ellen in the
Speaker 1: wake of this deal as someone that he didn't like,
Speaker 1: his decisions, he didn't support, and then his legion of
Speaker 1: fans like baraged her with you know, racist and hateful
Speaker 1: content and through this enduring, you know, six months odyssey,
Speaker 1: she completely kept the company on track. It was a
Speaker 1: game of brinksmanship in which she didn't blink. We know
Speaker 1: from back channel that he tried to renegotiate the deal.
Speaker 1: She kept the company on pace to close it at
Speaker 1: the price that was promised. And even when he was
Speaker 1: doing maneuvers such as you know, ironically posing as a
Speaker 1: national security threat, they kept driving the company forward to
Speaker 1: this close. Uh. And you know, I think that shows
Speaker 1: tremendous resolve and as a tremendous victory, certainly for shareholders. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's something that should be commend ended. Um. And
Speaker 1: of course, as we talked about before, the other winners
Speaker 1: certainly involved all the legal fees for outside counsel that
Speaker 1: they're going to be that we're generated from this. So congratulations,
Speaker 1: congratulations to those folks in their Hampton's residences. You said,
Speaker 1: the best that Ellen could do here was to remove
Speaker 1: himself from all decision making, and now he's the CEO
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. So what's the best thing he
Speaker 1: could do now? So I think, like you know, the
Speaker 1: the idea, the thing of announcing there's going to be
Speaker 1: a content moderation panel is actually a smart move. He's saying, look,
Speaker 1: I don't stop dm ng me and sending me all
Speaker 1: of your you know, sad requests about how you don't
Speaker 1: have as many followers as you think you should. I
Speaker 1: don't want to answer all of those requests. We're going
Speaker 1: to form a panel and figure that out. The problem
Speaker 1: is is how much do we really believe that this
Speaker 1: is a serious idea. First of all, Twitter already has
Speaker 1: an external Trust and Safety council that they can go
Speaker 1: to for for first questions and support, So I guess
Speaker 1: he's just layering that one beneath another committee, which is
Speaker 1: a classic corporate move. So a um. But then also
Speaker 1: this morning, as as recently as seven hours ago, he
Speaker 1: was replying to someone named you know whose name is
Speaker 1: is a is a version of cat excrement on Twitter
Speaker 1: about what problems they were having with their follower graph
Speaker 1: and saying he was going to look into it. It
Speaker 1: just seems unlikely that he's going to be able to
Speaker 1: constrain himself, uh and keep himself out of of participating
Speaker 1: in these kind of decisions. And we know that he
Speaker 1: just likes to announce things and say that things are coming,
Speaker 1: and that there's gonna be a super app, and the
Speaker 1: there's gonna be digital payments, all the stuff that Ross
Speaker 1: ended up believing in UM. I just don't think that's
Speaker 1: going to stop, and that he'll end up sort of
Speaker 1: announcing these things that don't ultimately come to fruition. What
Speaker 1: are your biggest fears and how likely do you think
Speaker 1: your biggest fears will be realized? So I think the
Speaker 1: stuff that Sarah was talking about is the is the
Speaker 1: biggest concern because he now exists in a world in
Speaker 1: which the Chinese Communist Party has tremendous leverage over him
Speaker 1: because he's building the giga factory in China. The business
Speaker 1: in China is incredibly important to Tesla's bottom line. Tesla
Speaker 1: is the source of his wealth. If China and the
Speaker 1: CCP want to have information on dissidents in Taiwan and
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, he's going to have a much harder time
Speaker 1: resisting those demands than any other social media company, any
Speaker 1: other Internet company before, because they simply didn't exist in
Speaker 1: these markets. Twitter didn't exist in China, Facebook didn't exist
Speaker 1: in China. Like that, they didn't have the same exposure.
Speaker 1: And Ellen not only has exposure in terms of business.
Speaker 1: He has real on the ground assets that are at
Speaker 1: risk not only in China but in other authoritarian regimes
Speaker 1: around the world. Visual is one of the people that
Speaker 1: was sort of keeping the line there and protecting users
Speaker 1: around the world, and those kind of mistakes are really
Speaker 1: possible and really can happen. Uh And and that's where
Speaker 1: we're talking about. You know, we like to have fun
Speaker 1: with is this the death of Twitter and what's going on,
Speaker 1: but there's actual, real user safety and user health issues
Speaker 1: that are going to be at risk here. The other
Speaker 1: thing that's happening that we know is an increase in
Speaker 1: hate speech, is an increase uh in you know, defamatory
Speaker 1: languag on the site, which has always been a problem
Speaker 1: for Twitter. But we see an increase in that already
Speaker 1: because people sort of sense that there's a bat signal
Speaker 1: out that says it's okay to act this way on
Speaker 1: Twitter now because Ellen's espoused this free speech viewpoint, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be difficult for people whore at risk
Speaker 1: on Twitter. But it's also going to be difficult for
Speaker 1: his business interests because advertisers simply don't want to be
Speaker 1: in a place that looks like a cess pit now.
Speaker 1: People are already being reinstated, Kanye West, for example. You know,
Speaker 1: Ellen has said no big decisions will be made until
Speaker 1: this Content Moderation Council is formed. How soon do you
Speaker 1: think Donald Trump is reinstated on the platform? Is he reinstated,
Speaker 1: does it happen before the mid terms? Does it affect
Speaker 1: the mid terms? I don't think it. I don't think
Speaker 1: it affects the mid terms. I think he will end
Speaker 1: up doing it outside of the council's decision. I think
Speaker 1: it would just be something he does because of you know,
Speaker 1: some whim or some reason. I don't think the council
Speaker 1: is a super serious thing at this point. Like you know,
Speaker 1: I think he will continue to preserve his prerogative to
Speaker 1: make decisions like that as he sees fit. But I
Speaker 1: also think that the reinstatement of Donald Trump isn't the
Speaker 1: most important issue. Like like we it's easy to focus
Speaker 1: on that because it's a big topic and it's something
Speaker 1: that gets outside attention, particularly from you know, folks with
Speaker 1: my background working in politics. But the type of user
Speaker 1: safety issues and the type of user harassment issues that
Speaker 1: happen all the time really happened in the eaches, and
Speaker 1: not in like that kind of big that kind of
Speaker 1: big moment. They happen with complaints between users, people feeling threatened,
Speaker 1: people's personal information being revealed, and the kind of decisions
Speaker 1: that folks are going to have to make it the company,
Speaker 1: and now they're going to have to do it without
Speaker 1: senior leadership and presumably without with much fewer resources than
Speaker 1: they had previously. And again, I think that's not only
Speaker 1: bad for the world, I think that's what's going to
Speaker 1: hurt his business prospects here. I think he's going to
Speaker 1: be in a situation where he's losing two billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year on interest payments on the debt, as well
Speaker 1: as costs and running the company. And it's only going
Speaker 1: to create a downward spiral because he's created a place
Speaker 1: that just looks abandoned and neglected. So it's the clock
Speaker 1: to sting. Then, I mean, how long do you think
Speaker 1: he keeps he holds onto Twitter four. I think he
Speaker 1: eventually relinquished it with like my I don't know how long,
Speaker 1: But I don't think you know he's he's obviously very rich,
Speaker 1: less rich than he was before he started all this nonsense.
Speaker 1: But I think he will eventually get tired of spending
Speaker 1: billions of dollars a year out of pocket to service
Speaker 1: interest at that is, half of which have floating rate. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's going to end up moving off of Morgen Sandley's
Speaker 1: books to some kind of you know, distressed that fund. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's going to have to continue to service that that
Speaker 1: as well as paying to do all these wonderful things
Speaker 1: that were talked about. And imagine at the top of
Speaker 1: the hour, you don't just get to create an only
Speaker 1: fans out of Twitter or YouTube out of Twitter. Imagine
Speaker 1: digital payments out of Twitter. By bringing in a bunch
Speaker 1: of Tesla engineers to review the code, that takes a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of energy and a tremendous amount of resources
Speaker 1: to actually pull off. You know, there's been ridiculous predictions
Speaker 1: about how quickly Ellen can change the course on this.
Speaker 1: If you remember some of the all In guys were
Speaker 1: talking about in April when the deals announced that with
Speaker 1: just a few test engineers, Ellen could remove the spam
Speaker 1: problem from Twitter over the weekend. Well, you know they
Speaker 1: were on site yesterday. We'll give them the three day weekend.
Speaker 1: We'll see if spam is still around on Monday. I'm
Speaker 1: going to guess that it is, like it's not actually
Speaker 1: easy to change these the trajectory of these things, and
Speaker 1: the company moreover is going to go through this completely
Speaker 1: chaotic transition where it's essentially learning how to operate from
Speaker 1: day one. Except it's already a going concern with thousands
Speaker 1: of employees. It's it's just not going to end well
Speaker 1: for him in this particular scenario. Last quick question, Jason,
Speaker 1: are you going to keep tweeting? Oh? Of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: you I will send the last tweet if need be.
Speaker 1: I am not I am not leaving the site. Um.
Speaker 1: But again, I exist in a very privileged space on
Speaker 1: the site, like I don't get messed with by you know,
Speaker 1: by by these these ellen stands. The only time where
Speaker 1: I see trolls and hate, which I did see some today,
Speaker 1: is when I get retweeted by a woman tech reporter
Speaker 1: specifically that because then all that attracts all of these
Speaker 1: all of these folks on the platform. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep tweeting. I think that there will always be
Speaker 1: a place for tweets in the world. In some way,
Speaker 1: I just think it's going to be a much diminished
Speaker 1: place as a female journalist who covers tech. I appreciate
Speaker 1: that answer. Jason Coleman, uh founding team member at Twitter
Speaker 1: for more, White House chief Digital Officer, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for your helping us try to make sense of
Speaker 1: this journey over the last year. Joe's Coin, the cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: based on a meme of a shiba inu, is soaring
Speaker 1: after Musk's acquisition of Twitter. The coin, which can be
Speaker 1: used to buy testless swag, is up in the last week.
Speaker 1: That is fitting for a cryptocurrency that was pumped up
Speaker 1: by many in the blockchain community, which of course thrives
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Bloomer Shinali Bossik here to explain. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a good question, Shali. Would crypto be so
Speaker 1: disruptive if it weren't for Twitter and crypto Twitter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and look at the price action alone in the days
Speaker 1: moving up to this deal closure. Here you do have
Speaker 1: Chi up almost twenty over seven day period, ten percent
Speaker 1: over twenty four hour period. It's getting back down a
Speaker 1: little bit now it's essentially flat, but you've seen the
Speaker 1: most of the games. You also see doge point at
Speaker 1: almost forty percent over a seven day periods of even
Speaker 1: bigger rise there. But to your point, would it be
Speaker 1: disruptive without Twitter? It's a huge place of discourse of
Speaker 1: course when it comes to cryptocurrencies and communities around cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: But think about how much social media itself on other
Speaker 1: platforms also have helped really fuel certain tokens and the
Speaker 1: discourse around them. Everything from TikTok to read It of
Speaker 1: course has played a huge role as well as Um
Speaker 1: as well as Discord. I would add Discord to that
Speaker 1: list of course too, although there are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about the direction Discord is going to in terms
Speaker 1: of building crypto communities. But Emily, I think what's interesting
Speaker 1: here is not just you know, the crypto community a
Speaker 1: rallying around Elon Musk or even certain coins itself, but
Speaker 1: what happens to crypto from here and where where does
Speaker 1: it go in terms of how it fits into the
Speaker 1: broader crypto sorry, broader Twitter environment. What can Elon Musk
Speaker 1: do to make Twitter more crypto friendly since we know
Speaker 1: how much she seems to love it. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: what's important here is it's not really just about the discourse.
Speaker 1: A lot of this here. Remember Twitter really leaned into
Speaker 1: crypto under Jack Dorsey, and then late last year and
Speaker 1: early this year they really really focused on using the
Speaker 1: Lightning network and Strike to be tipping users over the
Speaker 1: Lightning network. Now, remember Elon Musk. It's really interesting to
Speaker 1: think about what this means in terms of either what
Speaker 1: it means for a super app, but he also came
Speaker 1: from the PayPal mafia. Here. We know he's friendly when
Speaker 1: it comes to cryptocurrencies as a whole. We know that
Speaker 1: he's very steeped in the payments world as well. Can
Speaker 1: Twitter really be a more significant means of saying sending
Speaker 1: payments cross border? And is that a priority? It's something
Speaker 1: we haven't seen a whole lot of movement on since
Speaker 1: the initial announcements. And where does it fall in the
Speaker 1: grand span of his plans here when content moderation and
Speaker 1: other things for Twitter are a more immediate concerns. Indeed,
Speaker 1: lots of looming questions. Shali bass As always, thank you,
Speaker 1: have a good weekend. Up next, we're gonna go back
Speaker 1: to Twitter headquarters where Ed Ludlow has been standing by.
Speaker 1: What's the latest in the last hour? He will tell
Speaker 1: us this is Gloomberg. Let's get back to Bloomer. Sad
Speaker 1: Ludlow who's been at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco all day.
Speaker 1: No elon sightings right add to this point, no no
Speaker 1: elon sidings. All I know that's going on in the
Speaker 1: building behind me is that senior engineers within Twitter's product
Speaker 1: teams have been summoned to meetings, and in those meetings
Speaker 1: there are other Tesla engineers. Some of the meeting appointments
Speaker 1: did have Elon Mosque listed as a participant, and they've
Speaker 1: they actually been asked to bring print outs paper, physical
Speaker 1: paper of the last thirty days of the source code
Speaker 1: they've worked on for Twitter. And my understanding, the whole
Speaker 1: point of this exercise is to help under Musk understand
Speaker 1: how Twitter works, the platform, how the underlying code actually
Speaker 1: works for Twitter as we know it. Ellen has been tweeting.
Speaker 1: He's been making what looked to be jokes, but you know,
Speaker 1: in typical Ellen fashion, tweeting things that are you know,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. Yeah, difficult separate
Speaker 1: fact from fiction. What we know is individuals came outside
Speaker 1: of Twitter's headquarters behind me. They posed as Twitter employees
Speaker 1: and claimed that they've been laid off sources inside Twitter,
Speaker 1: and you know, images share with me of discussions on
Speaker 1: internal Slack channels, said that this was a hoax. These
Speaker 1: are not Twitter employees. We put multiple requests for comment
Speaker 1: into Elon Musk and his teams. We've put multiple requests
Speaker 1: for comment into Twitter, and as his standard with Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: there was no comment forthcoming. But he did tweet a meme,
Speaker 1: and this is often the case he resorted to to
Speaker 1: sort of meme and ridicule. You know, we talked to
Speaker 1: Russ Gerber earlier in the shows, one of the investors
Speaker 1: in Twitter under Elon Musk, even though he didn't love
Speaker 1: the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter at all, because
Speaker 1: he's an investor in Tesla, in SpaceX, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, part of you know, supporting Elon is knowing
Speaker 1: you are in for an unpredictable ride and and you
Speaker 1: know you just have to accept that. You just don't
Speaker 1: know how this is going to end. You know, for
Speaker 1: those who are sticking around, why are they sticking around
Speaker 1: and what are they preparing for? Yeah, because Ellen has
Speaker 1: a good track record of products improvement and innovation. Look
Speaker 1: at what SpaceX has done to change the commercial space industry.
Speaker 1: Lots of Twitter insiders I've spoken to are excited by
Speaker 1: the prospect of the company being owned by Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: The difficulty is that the uncertainty outweighs what they know
Speaker 1: about the changes that are coming for the products and
Speaker 1: the company. The threat of layoffs is real, and a
Speaker 1: lot of folks inside Twitter that work in that building
Speaker 1: and have done for many years are worried for their livelihoods. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of changes to come
Speaker 1: in the next couple of days. Right now, the focus,
Speaker 1: I'm told by sources is Elon Musk under trying to
Speaker 1: understand how the Twitter platform and the code that underwrites
Speaker 1: all of it really works. Rosco were also said he
Speaker 1: thinks the number of layoffs will be more like rather
Speaker 1: than seventy five quickly. Do we have any confirmation on that?
Speaker 1: Know all I can tell you. According to sources earlier
Speaker 1: this week, Mosque denied two staff that were gathered that
Speaker 1: he knew where that seventy layoff figure came from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, mort come at Ludlow outside of Twitter headquarters.
Speaker 1: We're going to keep on this story, of course, in
Speaker 1: the days and weeks ahead. And that does it for
Speaker 1: the sedition of Bloomberg Technology Monday. We've got Pinterest CEO
Speaker 1: Bill Ready, Pinterest way up today on the back of
Speaker 1: their results. We'll ask him why. Mrs Bloomberg