WEBVTT - Big Stories of 2023: X - The ex-Twitter 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:12.639 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.040 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.040 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:21.880 tech are You. We are talking about some of the 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.120 biggest stories in tech over the last year, and today 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.960 we're looking back at a huge train wreck of a 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:33.240 story that of how the platform formerly known as Twitter 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:38.760 currently known as a disgrace. I'm sorry as X has 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:42.000 navigated the year. And before I get into it, I 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:44.800 want to give a huge shout out to the folks 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.479 over at the Verge. They have a collection of stories 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.239 gathered under the banner the Year Twitter Died. So seriously, 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:56.920 I'll be hitting some highlights of what has gone on 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:00.840 over the course of actually the last two years, because 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.520 we have to do some background on this, but to 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:06.480 really get into the muck, I recommend checking out the 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:08.840 articles that are part of the Year Twitter Died over 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:12.119 at the Verge. They're really good and they go into 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:16.680 a lot more analysis and even opinion, So check those out. 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:21.319 All right, let's set the scene, all right. Last year 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:25.160 in twenty twenty two, folks began to notice that Elon 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.520 Musk was appearing to accumulate a significant amount of Twitter stock, 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:35.120 like around nine percent of all outstanding shares by early spring, 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:37.680 the rumor mill was a buzz that Musk might be 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.320 making a move to purchase Twitter, which is a or 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:45.200 at the time was a publicly traded company now. At 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:49.520 one point, Musk actually received an offer for a seat 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:53.400 on the board of directors, and he considered taking it. However, 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.040 taking that position would mean that Musk would have to 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:59.720 agree to not buy more than fourteen point nine percent 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:02.280 of the company stock, he would not be allowed to 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.200 own any more than that, and it would also mean 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:08.080 he would actually have to agree to be more careful 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:13.440 about what he said publicly about Twitter. Well, neither of 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:18.000 those things really suited Musk, and he declined the offer. Instead, 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:22.280 Musk made an unsolicited bid for the company itself. He 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:25.880 offered up a deal that would see shareholders receive fifty 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.120 four dollars twenty cents per share. Now, at the time, 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:32.680 Twitter stock was trading at around forty five dollars per share, 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.800 so this would be a significant bump in investments. If 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.359 you're an investor and you own, you know, one thousand 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.360 shares in Twitter and it's going from forty five dollars 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:47.440 to fifty four. That's great. That's like a nine thousand 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:51.440 dollars profit from what you had already held. That's great. 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.799 So Musk's offer was kind of flirting at the edge 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.720 of a hostel takeover attempt, and he also announced when 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.040 he had secured fun from various partners who would contribute 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:06.680 to his purchase of this. Because while Musk is, or 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.400 at times has been, the most wealthy person in the world, 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:15.800 that wealth is tied into other assets. It's not like 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:18.680 he has a Scrooge make Duck vault full of gold 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.440 coins that he goes swimming in. Most of his money 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.519 is tied up in stocks in other companies, so it's 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:27.519 not something that he can just like take forty four 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:29.720 billion dollars out of the bank and slap it down 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.320 on the table and buy Twitter. So the board of 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:36.280 director said they would consider the offer. They also prepared 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.960 a measure to protect Twitter should Musk actually pursue a 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:44.280 hostile takeover, in a type of protection called a poison pill. 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.360 To get into that would take a little too much time, 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:49.800 but let's just say that they were kind of hedging 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:54.480 their bets anyway. From that point things went bonkers. The 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:59.280 board agreed to Musk's offer, whereupon Musk appeared to suddenly 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:04.080 develop second thoughts. By mid May, so like a month 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:07.520 after this had really gotten started, Musk was trying to 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:11.200 get out of the deal he had proposed, and he 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.360 cited all sorts of concerns, saying that things at Twitter 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.039 weren't as peachy keen as he had been led to believe, 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.840 that the platform was absolutely riddled with bots, and that 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.800 this had driven up Twitter's value to a level that 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:32.200 wasn't realistic. But the problem was Musk's agreement had ceded 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.279 his rights to due diligence, like he had agreed to 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:38.880 just skip due diligence, so he was kind of stuck. 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:41.800 It's like agreeing site unseen that you're going to buy 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.640 a house and you sign a contract. Then you show 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:46.920 up and you find out the houses in shambles, but 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.040 we've already signed the contract. You gave up your rights 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:54.360 in the agreement. Well Over the following months, Musk repeatedly 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:57.039 made statements saying things at Twitter were really not good, 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:01.480 the company was garbage, that he didn't want to buy it, 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:04.280 and meanwhile the board of directors were taking legal action 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:06.720 to force Musk to follow through on the deal. And 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:08.960 you know their point was, Hey, you said you're going 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.360 to buy this. Even if you're not gonna buy it, 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:13.680 you're gonna owe us a billion dollars because that's what 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.120 the agreement says. If you back out, you've got to 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:20.800 pay a billion for that privilege. And you are sabotaging 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.640 the company, right, you are saying all these terrible things 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:25.720 about the company in an effort to get out of 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:29.800 this deal. We're going to make you follow through. Ultimately, 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.800 Musk did follow through on the deal, but only after 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:34.920 it was clear there was no way for him to 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:39.320 get out of the hole he himself had dug. Once 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:42.960 he realized, oh no, the consequences of my own actions 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.559 are inevitable, he kind of accepted it and went ahead 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:50.320 and purchased the company. So in October twenty twenty two, 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:54.479 Elon Musk acquired Twitter, and it didn't take long at 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:57.080 all before he started making huge moves. He cleared house, 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.560 He fired essentially the board of directors in the executive 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:04.039 team over at Twitter. He also fired about half of 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:08.039 Twitter's workforce right out of the gate, and made demands 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:12.200 that led to thousands of other employees resigning because they 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:17.400 refused to work under the circumstances that he was demanding, 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:22.440 and Musk reigned over a significantly damaged Twitter. This kind 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.440 of sets the scene for twenty twenty three. Now, even 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:29.480 before twenty twenty three got started, Twitter was already facing 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:31.479 a challenge when it came to revenue. The company has 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:36.840 always struggled with revenue and profitability. Even when Twitter was 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:41.960 going gangbusters, it wasn't really a profitable company. But according 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.120 to Musk himself, Twitter was losing around four million dollars 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.400 per day back in November of twenty twenty two, and 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.719 advertisers were starting to show signs of caution upon Musk's 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.760 acquisition of the company, And this, as it would turn out, 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.400 would be a tiny preview of what was to come 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.640 in twenty twenty three. So in January twenty twenty three, 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:07.320 Twitter had around two thousand, three hundred employees. Before Musk 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:10.880 took the company over, it had seven four hundred folks 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.680 working there. So now they were down to less than 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:18.160 half of their workforce from just a few months earlier. Meanwhile, 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.880 Elon Musk had these huge dreams he wanted implemented. He 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.440 wanted to transform Twitter into something that had been on 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.640 his mind for years, a sort of everything app, similar 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:34.600 to China's we Chat app, where you could communicate, you 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.160 could conduct commerce, you could do all sorts of things. 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.760 His version of the app had its roots way back 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.320 in his early days as one of the co founders 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:49.160 of the company that would eventually become PayPal. His version 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.840 back then was to be called x, But Musk wouldn't 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:55.640 see it come to fruition because some of the other 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.640 folks at the company that would become PayPal decided that 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.400 Dusk was a bit much and they muscled him out 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.760 of the company. Apparently Musk had been determined to prove 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:10.440 them wrong ever since. Anyway, Musk wanted to transform Twitter 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.680 into something beyond what it already was. But that is 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.280 really hard to do, even if you haven't just gone 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.680 ahead and reduced your workforce by more than half. Just 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.840 keeping Twitter running was a challenge, let alone building the 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:28.600 elements that would turn it into an everything app. Perhaps 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:32.400 this drive took too much attention and led to situations 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.520 that if Musk had been a little more attentive, could 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.440 have been avoided. But seeing as how Musk typically reacts 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.719 poorly to pretty much every situation he's ever put in, 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:46.160 I'm not convinced. In March twenty twenty three, Musk stated 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:49.000 that he figured Twitter at that point was worth around 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:54.360 twenty billion dollars. That had to be a blow, because, again, 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:57.640 at fifty four dollars twenty cents per share, the price 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.760 that Musk paid when he bought company, it brought the 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.920 company up to around forty four billion, So, just like 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.720 the workforce, Twitter's value was reduced by more than half 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:14.199 since Musk's takeover. Worse yet, Fidelity gave an even more 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:18.160 drastic estimate, valuing the company down to fourteen point four 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:22.559 one billion, so like a third of what Musk had 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:27.480 paid for it. Beyond the monetary value, some users were 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.600 questioning the practical value of Twitter. Once upon a time, 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.280 owners of Note could have their accounts verified by Twitter 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.880 and they would receive a little blue check mark, and 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.640 this mark alerted other users on Twitter that that account 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.880 legitimately represented who or what it claimed to, whether that 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:49.920 was a celebrity or a news organization or a politician, 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.520 a government agency, what have you. But Musk changed that 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:57.839 and in twenty twenty two he introduced a paid for 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:02.000 check system and for eight a month, initially twenty bucks 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.240 a month, but he walked that back because people freaked 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:07.720 out about it. Anyone could get a check mark. Suddenly 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.520 the verification element of check marks was out the window, 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:13.680 and in fact, several mischief makers took the opportunity to 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:18.800 create new accounts that impersonated famous people or brands or 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.040 government agencies. They paid for the check mark so it 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.400 looked like they were the verified account representing that entity, 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.280 and then they started posting all sorts of stuff, including 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:34.680 really awful stuff. This damaged Twinter's reputation, particularly among brands 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:38.040 which weren't keen on some Yahoo on the site pretending 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.559 to represent them. It was one of many questionable decisions 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:45.400 that would lead us to where we are today. We'll 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.640 talk more about some of those questionable decisions, but right 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:50.960 now we have a decision that's not questionable, and that 0:10:51.160 --> 0:11:03.240 is to thank our sponsors. We're back. So one thing 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.320 that Musk has also done repeatedly is kind of position 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.960 himself as a champion of free speech. You might find 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:14.200 that his parameters of what constitutes free speech are somewhat subjective. 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:19.199 Hate speech seemed to increase and flourish on the platform 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.680 a matter that led more than one organization to accuse 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:27.360 Twitter of failing to prevent or mitigate the problem. Musk's 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:32.520 response typically is to threaten lawsuits against organizations complaining about 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:37.559 hate speech on the platform. Meanwhile, more advertisers were rethinking 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:42.520 their relationship with Twitter, with several pausing spending on any 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:47.080 advertising money for Twitter campaigns. The situation got bad enough 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.440 that Musk was convinced he needed to find a new CEO, 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:55.240 mostly to help bring advertisers back to the platform. Now, 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.800 Musk had said his plan was only to act as 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:01.200 interim CEO from the very beginning. He said that Susie 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:04.320 found a suitable replacement, that person would be put in 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:07.360 charge and he would step away. This was something that 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:12.160 was necessary because shareholders and other companies like Tesla were 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.600 becoming frustrated that Musk's attention was on this social platform 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:20.120 instead of say, his car company, and that their investments 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:22.959 in the car company were suffering as a result because 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.840 the company wasn't really going in any good direction. So 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:30.000 there was this pressure on Elon Musk to name a 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:34.760 successor over at Twitter, and he did sort of. He 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:39.000 named Linda Yakarino, a former executive with NBC Universal, who 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:43.160 was known for having strong relationships with advertisers, which makes sense. 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:47.040 She worked with advertisers and brands in a high profile 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.440 media company, so she seemed like an ideal choice at 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.679 least as far as repairing Twitter's relationship with brands and 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.880 ad companies would go. But Yakarino has found herself somewhat 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.040 hampered by the fact that Elon has stick on with Twitter, 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:05.079 and by some accounts at least essentially is still running 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.360 the show over there. So in other words, the common 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:12.320 perception is that Yakarino is over there to try and 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.520 smooth things out with advertisers and brands, but not to 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:20.000 actually run the company. That would be Musk's purview. Now. 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:22.959 I don't know if that's true. I don't know if 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:26.720 that's a reflection of what is actually happening over at X, 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.760 but it is the common perception anyway, whether she's calling 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.480 the shots or not. She hasn't really been able to 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.760 stop the migration of advertisers from the company. Occasionally you'll 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:41.440 hear about one tentatively coming back, but more frequently you 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.959 hear about them leaving now. Back in the spring, Musk 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:51.839 also rebranded Twitter as X Corp. The platform was still 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:55.240 called Twitter at this point. That would change over the 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:59.360 summer when Twitter shed its old name and adopted X 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:01.320 as it's new name, and it also got rid of 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.320 all the Twitter branding and the logos and everything that 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:08.520 had defined Twitter for more than a decade. This move 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:11.319 confused a lot of people. It's generally believed that it's 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.520 a bad idea to toss aside a widely recognizable brand 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.240 and to start from scratch. It certainly led to everyone 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:22.000 using the phrase X formerly known as Twitter. I still 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:26.040 hear that, and it's been six months since the change. Anyway, 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.520 There's a lot of value that's built up in a brand. 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:31.360 I think part of the reason people say X formerly 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:34.360 known as Twitter is that they missed the old Twitter, 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.760 and it's kind of them indicating like, the thing I'm 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.200 talking about now is not the same as the thing 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:45.840 that I enjoyed using, you know, two years ago. Anyway, 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.840 they decided, for whatever reason to throw all that value out, 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:54.720 possibly because Elon Musk has some level of obsession over 0:14:54.840 --> 0:15:00.720 the brand X. The changes kept coming. In August, tweet Deck, 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.680 which had started off as a third party Twitter client, 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:08.200 and then later Twitter acquired tweet deck went from being 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.840 freely available to anyone to being locked behind a paywall 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:16.760 so only X subscribers can access the tweet deck tool. 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:19.880 This was a huge hassle to folks who managed multiple 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:23.880 accounts on X, myself included. I had my own account, 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.160 I had tech Stuff's account, I had a few others, 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.280 and it was really easy to manage from a single 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:33.200 view in tweet deck, but putting it behind a Twitter 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.960 subscription was a drag. Part of the reason it was 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.680 a drag is that by this point, the Twitter or 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:44.080 rather X check mark was no longer looked at as 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.720 verification or even a social badge of honor. It was 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:51.040 quite the opposite. Actually, people started to look at that 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:53.720 check mark as a sign that you were kind of 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.200 a stooge. At least that was the general perception among 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:01.960 a subset of Twitter's population or X's population. In fact, 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.480 some accounts that retained the check mark because they just 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:08.200 had so many followers that musk allowed them to continue 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.800 having the check mark. They would proclaim, Hey, this isn't 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.320 my choice. I didn't subscribe to X. They just gave 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:17.400 me the check mark, and I have nothing to do 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:22.920 with it. So it became the opposite social status than 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:26.560 what it had used to be this past summer, Musk 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:29.040 also announced that non subscribers would have limits to the 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:31.160 number of posts they would be able to see in 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.720 a day. Now. The official story for this is that 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:36.880 they would cut down on data scriping across the platform, 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.680 though skeptics figured it was an effort to drive more subscriptions. 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:45.040 Musk also introduced a revenue sharing plan for certain Twitter users. 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.280 You again would need to be subscribed to Twitter to 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:53.400 qualify for this. Musk also generously indicated that he would 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.880 put any money his own account earned back into the pool, 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:03.360 because obviously, Musk has the most followed account on the platform. Now, 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.280 keep in mind that investigations indicated that a ton of 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:10.320 musks followers appear to either be inactive or potentially bots. 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.560 Most have fewer than a dozen posts credited to them. 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.560 Many of them have no followers of their own. They 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:21.040 appear to be passive accounts and arguably serve no value 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.360 other than to inflate Musk's own follower numbers. Let's see 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:29.680 what else. X also changed its API, its application programmer interface. 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:32.359 It got rid of all the free options replaced it 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:35.919 with tiers of paid service. The top tier for enterprises 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:41.080 costs a blistering forty two thousand dollars a month. This 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.280 led to several developers saying they would have to call 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.320 it quits on their Twitter related apps or they would 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.639 just go bankrupt trying to run them. Musk also welcomed 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:52.439 back folks who had previously been banned on the platform, 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.240 giving them a space for that free speech he values 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.040 so much. Again, your mileage may vary with Musk's dedication 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.040 to free speech. If you criticize Musk, you might find 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:07.359 it's not that free anyway. These questionable decisions would include 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:10.520 reinstating the account of Alex Jones, which was a decision 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:14.000 that was so shocking I'm sure it convinced advertisers that 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:16.840 had been on the fence about leaving to just pick 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.560 up their bags and go. At that point. The company's 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.760 financial situation, i think it's safe to say, is in shambles. 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:25.760 Throughout the year, there were stories of the company failing 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.880 or refusing to pay bills for stuff like office space, 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:33.680 which led to evictions and lawsuits. X employees have brought 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.600 legal action against the company too, saying they've been denied 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:42.280 their guaranteed severance The National Music Publishers Association has sued 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:46.000 X for two hundred and fifty million dollars, alleging multiple 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:50.520 incidents of copyright infringement. The EU has launched an investigation 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:53.080 into the company to determine if X is failing to 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:57.520 follow EU law with regard to policing hate speech. The 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.639 companies on track to post much lower recaps new numbers 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.040 this year than from last year, which in turn was 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.720 already a drop from the year before. Pretty Much every 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:09.240 story coming out of X right now is negative, and 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:11.800 I'm sure Vegas is going to start taking bets on if, 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:15.800 or maybe even when the company will collapse. So can 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.520 X make it through twenty twenty four and out the 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.600 other side? I personally believe it would be much easier 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:25.199 to achieve that if someone convinced Musk to just step 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.639 back from the company entirely, But I'd be surprised if 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:32.360 he actually does it. I don't know. The company does 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:34.920 have a lot of staying power. I mean, it stuck 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:38.720 around for years without making any sort of profit, but 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.320 it just I don't know. The perception seems to be 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:45.760 that X now is just a toxic environment and that 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:50.680 it's destroying itself from within, so we'll see. I think 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:53.040 it's pretty sad, especially for all the people who lost 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:56.000 their jobs in the wake of Musk taking over. But 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:59.840 who knows, maybe it will transform itself again. We'll have 0:19:59.880 --> 0:20:02.760 to see what happens in twenty twenty four. In the meantime, 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:06.520 I hope all of you are well, and I'll talk 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:16.480 to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:21.800 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:27.439 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.