I disagree that "Twitter wasn't *their* [progressive lefties'] site". Twitter was the platform where you could undisturbedly spam everyone's threads with fake crypto giveaway scams, but the words "Ellen Page" would get you banned. It wasn't a platform that happened to attract woke lefties; it was a platform by woke lefties for woke lefties. And because of its outsized influence at least in the US (where it has become a fake reality for journalists, a fake focus group for politicians and a fake feedback channel for companies), it would bias the entire society in their direction, something that is no longer happening after Elon's takeover. (Mastodon isn't going to replace it; its decentralized nature prevents it from being mistaken for the whole world. It's actually a good case of free speech without free reach!)
So, thank you Elon; this was worth it, even if Twitter disappears in a puff of smoke and ashes tomorrow.
Amen. I feel like in general--and somewhat to my surprise--Jesse and Katie failed to understand Elon’s motivation, which AFAICT is largely to break shit. Like Katie kept saying that blue checks no longer confer any status--I suspect *that was the point*, that Elon, like many nerds of his generation, preferred the old Internet of near-total anonymity, where your words had to stand by themselves and not supported by your IRL credentials. Or complaining that he’s not acting like the CEO of a major company--no but he’s acting exactly like the CEO of TWITTER. He’s like, the embodiment of Twitter. The only way he could be more Twitter is if he were Trump. Shitpoasting is exactly what the platform always been about, people taking it too seriously is the problem.
I do feel for the people who lost their jobs. But I also think that Twitter had become quite a sinister influence on public discourse, politics, and its users' wellbeing.
It's a fundamentally flawed platform which brings out the worst in everyone. And it appears to me that investors and political organisations were buying into it in order to leverage its undue influence on public conversation.
I doubt Elon will fix that. But even if he makes a mess of it, reducing its power may be a net good for society.
Prayed each night for its downfall but never said how. Hardly know much about him but he will be venerated in my home if such a task is achieved whether he meant to or not. In all seriousness though, it is a win win in my eyes - he either improves it or it goes under. Within the realm it operates, I personally don't see how it could have gotten worse.
I was a production engineer at Facebook for seven years. It's SRE with slight philosophical differences on how to interact with software engineers.
People that make these headcount estimates of Twitter could keep running with low hundreds of employees are way off base. That might kind of make sense if they didn't own their own infra, and you just had people maintaining front-end bits and business logic running on something like AWS.
But they do own their own infra. As far as I can tell, they have at least three datacenters, and hundreds of thousands of servers. Problems become very different when you run at a massive scale like Twitter. You discover you need whole teams to take care of problems that didn't even exist when the product had half as much traffic.
Also, I'm kind of disappointed in the recycled anti-Musk takes I was hearing on the podcast. There are interesting angles to take that aren't favorable to Musk, but Katie and Jessie seemed to be taking the liberal consensus of "Musk is a crazy person or Nazi" at face value.
For example, the way the deal was structured requires massive restructuring of the company. They were already losing money, and Musk's purchase added a billion dollars in debt service per year. Maybe he's a crazy person for structuring the deal this way, or in how he's handling the cuts, or maybe he's intentionally trying to scare away all but the True Believers. He was able to attract geohot to come work on Twitter things, and that guy is a genius.
While I said that those low hundred headcount estimates were far too low, there likely is a ton of bloat at Twitter. If they're anything like Facebook they've accumulated lots of career-minded folks that don't really care about what they work on. High salaries attract top talent, but they also attract people that want to do as little work as possible to draw a high salary. They grind leetcode, ace the interview, and then figure out how little they can do to keep their jobs and still get promoted. If you're lucky you won't find yourself depending on the output of such a person, because they'll slow you down. However, that's hard to avoid. When I started at Facebook I never encountered such people, but when I finished I'd say it was most of the people we were hiring.
Also, agreed that it's awful how Musk spreads memes without attribution. Why doesn't he just retweet the originals?
Thank you for the valuable perspective. I get torn a lot, I do generally feel bad for folks losing jobs, but I also feel like successful companies attract a lot of freeloaders. Eventually that has to end
Always good to have an informed tech opinion, total breath of fresh air!
Should note that the "only a few hundred employees" line that people are pushing is hyperbole. There are still thousands and thousands of employees left at Twitter.
Thanks for that. I kind of have that estimate of low hundreds in my mind because I didn't know how much of their own infrastructure they own. I imagine transitioning to AWS (as suggested by his buddies on the All In Podcast a while ago) would save a ton more on employees, though that transition would likely require a lot of smart people to make themselves irrelevant.
Like you said, it's super disappointing to hear Off The Shelf opinions on this pod. I was really looking forward to an episode where K&J discuss the Twitter thing because they're amazing an unwinding ridiculous drama, and this Twitter thing looks super dramatic to me.
For that kind of a lift you'd not only need to spend a boatload on the engineering effort to migrate, you'd also need to coordinate with AWS to ensure that they'll have the capacity to accommodate you, and then somehow flip your datacenter assets so it's not a complete loss. The big players probably aren't interested in buying because the headache of having special formerly-Twitter datacenters that deviate from the standard Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Facebook/etc way of doing things probably isn't worth the additional compute/storage they can provide.
You'd also be paying a premium to AWS from then on, and have to coordinate with them on any new rollout that changes your hardware footprint, because you're too big to just expect your capacity requests to be fulfilled.
Big players continue to build and operate their own datacenters because it's worth it.
At the scale of Twitter it must be worth it. But I think, in spirit, some of the idea about getting rid of a lot of the staff makes sense if they can focus on providing value and offloading functionality on to external systems. Maybe they offload on to the credit network for verifying that someone is at least real enough to own a credit card, reducing pile-ons by reducing anonymity, making money via subscriptions instead of ads. Shrug. I've never really used Twitter so I kind of don't care :)
I think we're going to need more than a few weeks to accurately determine this. Especially in an environment when media is literally flooded with highly motivated and, at times, hysterical "reporting" on the subject
Old Twitter management were even bigger destructive assholes. While Twitter might feel like a drop in the bucket of corporate control over the "wild west" Internet we miss so much, they were a very big drop.
I’m probably posting too early since I’m only 20 minutes in, but I think it’s likely the mess since the Elon takeover has been all about finances. Twitter was a poorly run company that ironically has Donald Trump to thank for their only 2 profitable years ever in 2018 & 2019. There are even rumors that they were on the verge of insolvency as early as 2016 prior to the Trump hysteria that buoyed it in a similar way to cable news orgs.
Not that insolvency was really something most people at Twitter seemed to think about. Based on tweets by former staffers...seems like they expected to be able to lose $200M every year forever (since becoming a public company they come out at -1.2B). This entitlement culture seems as if it was deeply entrenched.
This is not unique to Twitter, and a similar reckoning is in store for A LOT or SV companies that have lived for years even decades off VC investments. This is however probably the first such reckoning to be live tweeted. I actually think some of the crazy emails like “2PM 10th Floor” was more likely a process to identify leaks to the media, but obviously don’t know.
End of the day, I would never want to work for Elon Musk even though I respect some of the things he’s been able to accomplish. I also would have never wanted to work for Steve Jobs, who when all is said and done was probably a worse boss and person than Elon but has always managed to get a pass on awful behavior. At the end of the day, the whole ordeal seems like a very public reckoning between polar opposite extremes. I think Twitter was probably filled with a lot of overpaid people who wanted to believe they were saving the world and weren’t ever going to help make it into a sustainable company. I expect many didn’t even do that much (no idea how Twitter could have had almost 5K employees in the US).
Likewise Musk is (self-admittedly) on the spectrum, and expects employees to be as “hardcore” as he is which is just not realistic. Similar stories have come out of Space-X. I doubt many people singing Elon’s praises would tolerate working for him. I think Jesse is right that people embrace Musk more as the enemy of my enemy and it doesn’t need to go further than that.
It’s a shit show, but honestly given the state of Twitter over the last 6 years, could it really have gone any other way? Would someone other than Elon been able to come in and make a single change without facing a gauntlet of hysterical bullshit? I doubt it.
The end of free money, which had up until now incentivised growth at all costs in tech companies, is vital yet woefully under-appreciated context to this whole story
Yeah, I’m still waiting for a piece detailing exactly this. The perfect storm of free money and the mainstreaming of the smartphone created a climate in Silicon Valley where profitability & sustainability were an afterthought AT BEST. It enabled a LARP for people in the top 5% pay brackets that they were crusaders for good: working to “change the world” instead of for “profits”. It was always a lie, but it definitely made it an easier & more noble lie to tell themselves.
Now that the free money is gone for good, and the novelty of the smartphone has worn off, reality is going to crash in like the Kool Aid Man.
As I understand it: For over a decade, the culture of Silicon Valley investment has been to pour billions into unprofitable companies on the prediction that they will become profitable once they monopolize their market. Except now investors are realizing that strategy rarely works.
It appears to me that many people were investing in Twitter not for financial return. But for political capital. Because they realized it had undue power to influence public discourse. And a large portion of its staff were employed for those political reasons rather than technical.
I would say no, but most workplaces understand the ebb and flow. I worked IT in Finance years ago and during the good times it sounds as if it were very similar to SV firms like Twitter. After a bad year though? Those things were gone and that was just part of it. A lot of SV companies like Twitter skip straight to the excess and feel entitled to that regardless of actual performance. Based on the lamenting I’ve seen on Twitter it genuinely seems like many of the loudest voices felt entitled to all the perks money can buy while they lost millions of dollars of other people’s money (since they were a public company) year in year out.
PS I agree with the general sentiment - I’m not happy about people losing their jobs. That said, Silicon Valley is close to the bottom of places I am worried about unionizing. Excess is built into the culture right now. They are the least exploited, and if you pay attention what’s happened to SF because of how SV has been drowning in VC funds - the entire industry has hurt actual working class people in SF way more than they have benefitted them. It’s a tough issue, but this reckoning with reality has been long overdue.
They are definitely overcompensated, but outside of pay here (were?) a few:
*Beer in Tap (in office)
*Paid meals every day
*Stocked kitchen - free snacks, drinks, etc
*Paid Happy Hours
*Paid commuting passes
*Paid parking (in SF)
Do I object to these? Not really, but seems a little excessive for a company that was never actually making any money doesn’t it? I guess I would not feel like I was in a position to complain publicly that any of these were taken away while working for a company that is in a bad financial situation.
I'm surprised nobody is talking about the "Elon is Snape" conspiracy theory. It goes like this: Musk is the biggest green energy mogul in the world, and by going anti-woke / constantly owning the libs online he has turned the adoption of electric vehicles, and of green energy more broadly, into a cause that right wingers and populists will actually, enthusiastically support. He has broken the "green energy = left wing" cultural association, single handedly making it politically possible for humanity to save itself from the coming climate change apocalypse! Imagine Musk weeping silently as he hits send on lib-owning shitpost after lib-owning shitpost, knowing that despite the harm he is causing to marginalized communities (and his own soul) with every tweet, this is the *only" way to save the human race...The bravest person I know.
I’m kind of here for the crunchy right wing dictatorship just because I’m really curious to see how that timeline works out (only if nobody gets hurt tho)
Why does America have so many Christian, well, weirdos? (Not to be judgy, but yeah.) Is it a case of *too much* religious freedom crossed with individualism?
Oh wow this is crazy. I actually did run into one of these types of families who all wore home made prairie dresses and ran an organic farm one time. I didn’t know there were more of these types of people
After what I'd seen from Jesse on Twitter regarding both Musk and Israel, I was relieved to hear him being fairly nuanced in his take on both. Which affirms what we mostly knew about Twitter already: it doesn't convey nuance very well. I am definitely a "pervert for nuance" but can't remember who said that, or why, in the Park Slope episode.
Can't seem to activate the like button for some weird reason, so I'm just gonna reply to tell you that is really funny. I love how witty BARPod listeners are. They draw a good crowd.
I thought Katie was a bit off-base on this. Management tells companies to move to X location (including moving from working at home) all the time. Even public services companies.
It's happened to me twice, having to move physical location because one office is closing, and then having to return to work after working from home after two years. I don't see why this is a big deal to be honest.
Having a large-recognised company on your resume is huge currency; I doubt many will be overly disadvantaged. The one thing I find grossly unfair is the time window of employees saying they wanted to stay on. It's not uncommon for people to go on holiday and turn off their work email or be out with Covid or whatever. The time window to reply was disturbing.
So many gender-critical women who said fairly innocent things were banned. Some did rely on Twitter to drive business to small businesses (indeed Meghan Murphy among them). So perhaps it's a balance of some people being disadvantaged but others getting back the opportunities of most.
I dunno, eccentric CEOs is nothing new. CEOs shaping policy around their personal ethos is nothing new.
Wow! Mention Musk and Israel and for some reason the comment section goes to sh*t. At least all of the new subscribers can pay for more pizza and Moose toys :)
It feels harsh and humorless to me, too? Some of this vibe was present in the comments on Katie’s Julie Bindel interview, too. But I thought that was because feminist stuff is both plagued by internecine conflicts and beset by anti-feminists.
Thia, I think you’re one of the lovely conservatives in this crowd (if I’m not confused) and it is good to know I’m not alone in sensing a vibe shift. As a left-liberal dismayed at growing authoritarianism on both sides of the aisle, I really value the ability of people in this group to disagree in good faith and with lively humor. I’m distressed at the gotcha comments aimed at Katie in these comments, some of which seem bent on strawmanning her remarks.
We shouldn’t genuflect to our hosts or each other. But let’s steelman arguments when we disagree. Let’s stay funny and weird. Let’s please not become Bari Weiss’s comments section. We all deserve better - and so does Bari!
That said, I’m a notorious crazy cat lady and I believe Moose deserves *all* the toys. New subscribers, welcome to the last Internet bastion of civil but weird conversation across differences! Please join us in being civil and weird, or weird and civil. I promise the water is warm and the pizza is well-cheesed.
Crazy cat ladies unite! Yes, the last couple of episodes have produced some nasty and painfully humorless responses. We can all disagree, hopefully politely, about many things (yes I am conservative-ish on most things at least from the average perspective here) but hopefully we can all come together on wishing all the new subscribers (read Moose toy funders) will hang out a bit and pick up the vibe before taking a poop in our lovely little sandbox. This Substack in particular is an unusually civilized place both to each other and to our hosts. It is much more fun and informative to hear other people’s point of view and best arguments rather than just shouting into the void until all of the sane commenters flee.
Please, if crazy cat ladies can love dogs, can’t we all resist our inner dickhead just for the time we’re here? Pardon my French ;)
This episode is why I subscribe and pay for the privilege. You’ve saved me the bother of looking into Mastodon and finding a rationale for avoiding like the plague.
Twitter, as is any publicly listed company, is required to act in the interests of its shareholders. When Musk made an offer to purchase without due diligence and Twitter’s stock fell, the company had to force the sale.
The 7,500 employees for a microblogging service is very high. It’s not technically difficult - less than a few hundred people could keep the the site running.
The financial requirements on the loan requirements for the purchase are set. There isn’t a ton of wiggle room.
I’m amazed Musk is doing rapid A/B testing in broad daylight. People aren’t used to this. The tech market is contracting with the economy. Competitors have hiring freezes and very short lists of ex-Twitter folks are considered for hire.
I know what he’s doing with the A/B testing and I’m still shitting my pants. That guy is taking on a huge amount of Risk with nerves of steel.
I do think the unspoken reason he reduced headcount so much is that he has a high debt servicing that he now has to pay for his financing of twitter. That’s going to be hugely expensive. He has to get cash flow positive really quick and with losing so many advertisers so quickly that’s going to be really hard. I am going to sign up for an account once the verification is back up.
Bingo, my thoughts exactly. And this is not only a twitter thing. I work in one of the biggest companies in the world, and im telling you, in my service, we could halve the workforce and it would have a beneficial effect on the bottom line.
I noticed in her comment about James Lindsay being reinstated, which she wasn't into because she finds him "frustrating." So does she have principles, as she sounded like when she pointed out the people at Journohub.whatever seem to lack (in letting George Takei count as a journalist), or not? If you can't tolerate frustrating people why be on Twitter to begin with? Also, she's often mentions that she's blocked by a bunch of people. All she'd have to do to be in a James Lindsay free Twitter is to block him & mute tweets that mention him.
I took that more as that she personally is annoyed that she'll have to read more Lindsay tweets eventually, not that he actually shouldn't be allowed back on
Yeah, you're likely right. I'm just tired of other people clutching pearls about the people being let back on the site, and perhaps I'm reading more into what she said than I should.
I think you’re spot on here. I have a feeling due diligence likely got an accurate picture of actual revenue/financials, but likely after getting into the weeds there was a realization that the POTENTIAL revenue was nothing like what was represented.
Just content moderation for actually-illegal material is hundreds or thousands of people (though many of them need to be non-US-based). I agree the engineering ought to be fairly straightforward; the question is whether it actually is. Tolerance of or incentives for bad, overcomplex design can lead to a situation where every component is both obviously too complex and also nearly impossible to replace.
Hahaha. Only so many design patterns: spaghetti style to cover incompetence, fiefdoms for job security, using the shiny new unproven thing to pad a resume, and old fashioned kick backs.
Compliance and moderation would definitely need localized teams. If the 5k contractors terminated last week were mostly content moderation, then seriously WTF?
By most reports their moderation in non-wealthy countries was atrocious, same as Facebook.
Too busy banning middle-aged American and British ladies for saying that women don’t have dicks I guess.
I don’t think the layoffs were mostly moderation. Personally I would have gone hard at all the PM jobs, not that they’re completely useless, but they are usually overpaid, often overstaffed, and that overstaffing leads to time-consuming make-work that has to pull in lots of other people to make sure it’s visible. Those are also jobs that can be done by any ambitious, reasonably intelligent person who knows generically how to organize work (“first we write down all the things we need to do, then we see which things depend on other things, then we keep track of which of them are getting done” - this shit is not rocket science, any construction supervisor knows it (although unlike many PMs they usually know how to do the actual work too)).
And yeah, then thin out the N layers of engineering management who don’t do any engineering work. I’d go to a 1:8-12 ratio at the bottom level and then more like 1:30 above that. It’s super common to have these skinny management chains where the higher-level managers have just a handful of other manager reports. The fuck are they all doing? Jobs for the boys, I think.
Being a PM is so nebulous the range is pretty wild. All the way from designing entire flow and architecture to “I haven’t done any actual work in eleven years.”
It is sometimes, but also project or program, and the distinction isn’t always clear. It’s often close to “producer” in the ad and TV world, which is to say “the person responsible for making sure that all the things that need to get done actually get done, even if they have to do them themselves”. Which is a very respectable position. But you only need so many of those people relative to the number of engineers, designers, sysadmins, etc.
In this case my understanding is that because the offer was so far over marker cap the likelihood is that investors would have sued management and they would have been liable.
Katie's statement that Eli Lilly's stock price plummeted because of the fake "insulin is free" account is not born out by the timing of the stock price moves.
The tweet was sent around mid-day on Thursday, Eli-Lillys stock price actually rose slightly that afternoon (along with similar sector stocks). The drop in share price on the following day (24 hours after the initial tweet) was part of a pharma-sector wide drop in share price, along with other non-growth stocks like defense.
The origin of the "Eli Lilly's share price tanked after fake tweet" all traces back to a thread by Rafael Shimunov a long-time activist (and obviously a blue-check).
Not sure if Katie saw that thread or just read one of the many news reports that, in true Twitter 1.0 style, all relied solely on Shimunov's thread as the source of truth with zero attempt on each journo's part to verify.
Happy to provide links if Katie (or Jesse) want to to check this out for themselves.
Which they should, because it's a perfect example of why this whole "opening up the blue-check to the plebs will spread misinformation" is so bogus. Blue-check twitter is already the primary source of misinformation out there. And the status attached the check-mark is a big reason behind why many journalists will just uncritically repeat their tweets as if it's verified news.
Being in favour of free speech doesn’t mean you are obliged to platform Alex Jones.
The guy has just been found liable in defamation cases in two states. Free speech doesn’t compel you to enable someone else’s defamation. Social media platforms were right to boot him.
Was this Musk’s stated justification for why Jones would not be allowed back? No. Free speech is complex and people often have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. Musk clearly doesn’t get it. But I’m not so sure Katie does either when she acts as if a commitment to free speech means everyone should be open to Alex Jones and gets to shit talk their boss publicly.
Speech has consequences and so does censorship. The tension is constant.
And when Katie sounded annoyed that James Lindsay was reinstated because he's "frustrating" (all she has to do it block him and mute mentions of his name).
The part about how she thinks employees should be able to talk shit about their boss publicly was really odd to me, but I'm Gen-X. My parents always told me not to rock the boat if I was in it. Katie: "but it's just a private Slack channel." A private channel run by the company? and you want to shit post about them? Is she high? (everyone: "probably"). Maybe that former open culture at the company is why Twitter higher ups went along when their staff felt unsafe when people said things they disagree with on the site.
Yeah I don’t get why people feel entitled to talk shit about their colleagues and BOSSES on company channels. Because why? Free speech? The entitlement is crazy.
I hate to reduce it to "kids these days" but there definitely has been a generational shift away from any kind of hierarchy. Kids raised to be treated as "equals" by their parents, to call their teachers and profs by their first names (and complain to the principal/dean/manager) if they're not shown sufficient respect, get into the workplace and don't seem to realise there is a ranking of power.
(The element of "bring your whole self to work" has also dissolved the idea of professionalism or public presentation - further exacerbated by the whole hoodie and sweats vibe of SV, plus WFH. People don't shift modes between work/private).
Yeah good point. Keep your politics and personal opinions AWAY from your colleagues during office hours. Nobody wants to see your "whole self" there, gross.
“Bring your whole self to work” is often not great for work but *always* detrimental to one’s whole self. We all deserve privacy and healthy boundaries. BYWSTW erodes those boundaries.
I think you misheard what Katie said around criticizing your boss publicly. Her claim was that an employee should be able to criticize their boss in good faith on the company Slack, not drag them publicly.
Katie: '... but you can't claim to be a champion of free speech, and then fire people for criticizing you personally. And, I think there is a difference between tweeting "Elon sucks balls" on Twitter, I don't think you can tweet that the boss "sucks balls" on Twitter and expect to have your job. But, if people were criticizing his decisions in good faith, on Slack, and he fired 'em for that, that is not being a champion of free speech.'
I think Katie did a really poor job this episode, she spent a lot of time repeating the laziest, most ignorant commentary we've already heard from so many media outlets (and Jesse didn't push back enough on those points), but she did not take the position that an employee should be able to "shit post about" their boss without repercussions, she specifically mentioned the importance of good faith.
My statement was a correction of a mistaken assessment of Katie's position on criticizing one's own boss publicly.
I don't think my estimate of the probability that good faith criticism occurred is particularly valuable or interesting, it would be a mostly uninformed guess. I am disappointed that neither host seemed to have the time or the inclination to do the journalism around these claims and then share with us what they found.
I'm not sure what was actually happening, the words Katie used around that particular topic made it sound like she was repeating something she had heard but didn't look into. That's a great example of why I think this episode was really half-assed. Aren't Jesse and Katie supposed to comb through the pedantic details so we don't have to? I know that's a large part of why I'm subscribed.
I'm with you on the employees part, torn on the Jones part. Did Jones ever tweet anything false? If not, he just doesn't get to tweet because he committed a crime elsewhere? Is it just defamation, or are there other crimes you could be guilty of that would cost you access to Twitter?
Because defamation is a good pace to draw the line when you set your free speech boundaries.
And we all have our lines. You, for example think it’s okay to “punish” people for shit talking the boss in public. And so do I.
But you don’t think people like Alex Jones should be “punished” for systematically tormenting the parents of murdered children for years. I OTOH do.
What explains your position that shit talking the boss can not be tolerated but tormenting the parents of murdered children must be tolerated by social media companies in the name of free speech?
If you shit talk your boss, your boss fires you. This is in the context of a Slack conversation, right? At *work*, you insult the person you *work* for. So they give you the classic *work* punishment, a firing. You broke the boss' rules in the boss' jurisdiction.
If you do something *illegal*, the *law* punishes you. That's their jurisdiction.
If you break the rules of a *social media* company, it makes sense that you get banned from the *social media* website. It's their jurisdiction.
But if you break the *law*, why would you get punished by a *social media* company? It's not their jurisdiction. If Alex Jones was making posts about the kids on Twitter, it makes sense to ban him. But AFAIK it was through his website, so it shouldn't have any standing on his Twitter account.
Why should Twitter be granting access based on their character judgements of individual users? That's the problem with Musks' decision here, it's not based on any objective rule, it's just that whoever commits a crime that he personally finds offensive, he bans. That's giving unaccountable social media companies a lot of power
There’s nothing wrong with factoring “moral repugnance” into free speech questions. The juries that awarded huge settlements to the plaintiffs in the Jones cases did so because they found his lies so morally repugnant.
We don’t live in a vacuum. And, yes, people differ on what they find morally repugnant. That’s why free speech is such a complex issue.
Do you really think social media companies have some sort of free speech obligation to platform Jones?
Did you respond to the wrong comment? I never said that there is something "wrong" with "factoring in" moral repugnance into free speech questions. I said,
"It’s the moral repugnance of Jones’s actions that is driving support for the banning, which isn’t a great reason *in and of itself.*"
Interesting miss on this episode, but just want to call out one thing. "According to NPR 50 of the top advertisers on twitter stopped working with them, due to potential bad press." That's a rough quote from the episode.
What do you imagine the correspondence from NPR was to the various advertisers (would be a shame if something were to happen to your brand wouldn't it?) ? Do you think there were likely other groups reaching out to advertisers regarding their continuing to use twitter? In most cases, this would be the story I would expect to hear on this show.
I get Musk is polarizing, I get capitalism is bad, but this episode really was lacking a lot of the "it's complicated". I think Katie built up too much steam and Jesse got cowed after raising some light questions early on.
I think I remember reading there was an exodus of advertisers in September (before Musk took over) because advertisers were notified their ads may have been served in the same space as child abuse/porn “content”. Maybe that isn’t correct, but it would have been nice for them to actually look into it - seems kind of funny both Katie & Jesse would think NPR is all of a sudden a reliable source given how thoroughly they’ve documented NPR’s tenuous track record as of late.
I disagree that "Twitter wasn't *their* [progressive lefties'] site". Twitter was the platform where you could undisturbedly spam everyone's threads with fake crypto giveaway scams, but the words "Ellen Page" would get you banned. It wasn't a platform that happened to attract woke lefties; it was a platform by woke lefties for woke lefties. And because of its outsized influence at least in the US (where it has become a fake reality for journalists, a fake focus group for politicians and a fake feedback channel for companies), it would bias the entire society in their direction, something that is no longer happening after Elon's takeover. (Mastodon isn't going to replace it; its decentralized nature prevents it from being mistaken for the whole world. It's actually a good case of free speech without free reach!)
So, thank you Elon; this was worth it, even if Twitter disappears in a puff of smoke and ashes tomorrow.
Amen. I feel like in general--and somewhat to my surprise--Jesse and Katie failed to understand Elon’s motivation, which AFAICT is largely to break shit. Like Katie kept saying that blue checks no longer confer any status--I suspect *that was the point*, that Elon, like many nerds of his generation, preferred the old Internet of near-total anonymity, where your words had to stand by themselves and not supported by your IRL credentials. Or complaining that he’s not acting like the CEO of a major company--no but he’s acting exactly like the CEO of TWITTER. He’s like, the embodiment of Twitter. The only way he could be more Twitter is if he were Trump. Shitpoasting is exactly what the platform always been about, people taking it too seriously is the problem.
Co-signing this.
I really hope Elon buys TikTok next.
I do feel for the people who lost their jobs. But I also think that Twitter had become quite a sinister influence on public discourse, politics, and its users' wellbeing.
It's a fundamentally flawed platform which brings out the worst in everyone. And it appears to me that investors and political organisations were buying into it in order to leverage its undue influence on public conversation.
I doubt Elon will fix that. But even if he makes a mess of it, reducing its power may be a net good for society.
100%
Agreed although my stock in Tesla is asking whyyyyy? It’s AI. Sentient. Surprised we didn’t speak longer
If Musk destroys Twitter, he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Prayed each night for its downfall but never said how. Hardly know much about him but he will be venerated in my home if such a task is achieved whether he meant to or not. In all seriousness though, it is a win win in my eyes - he either improves it or it goes under. Within the realm it operates, I personally don't see how it could have gotten worse.
I was a production engineer at Facebook for seven years. It's SRE with slight philosophical differences on how to interact with software engineers.
People that make these headcount estimates of Twitter could keep running with low hundreds of employees are way off base. That might kind of make sense if they didn't own their own infra, and you just had people maintaining front-end bits and business logic running on something like AWS.
But they do own their own infra. As far as I can tell, they have at least three datacenters, and hundreds of thousands of servers. Problems become very different when you run at a massive scale like Twitter. You discover you need whole teams to take care of problems that didn't even exist when the product had half as much traffic.
Also, I'm kind of disappointed in the recycled anti-Musk takes I was hearing on the podcast. There are interesting angles to take that aren't favorable to Musk, but Katie and Jessie seemed to be taking the liberal consensus of "Musk is a crazy person or Nazi" at face value.
For example, the way the deal was structured requires massive restructuring of the company. They were already losing money, and Musk's purchase added a billion dollars in debt service per year. Maybe he's a crazy person for structuring the deal this way, or in how he's handling the cuts, or maybe he's intentionally trying to scare away all but the True Believers. He was able to attract geohot to come work on Twitter things, and that guy is a genius.
While I said that those low hundred headcount estimates were far too low, there likely is a ton of bloat at Twitter. If they're anything like Facebook they've accumulated lots of career-minded folks that don't really care about what they work on. High salaries attract top talent, but they also attract people that want to do as little work as possible to draw a high salary. They grind leetcode, ace the interview, and then figure out how little they can do to keep their jobs and still get promoted. If you're lucky you won't find yourself depending on the output of such a person, because they'll slow you down. However, that's hard to avoid. When I started at Facebook I never encountered such people, but when I finished I'd say it was most of the people we were hiring.
Also, agreed that it's awful how Musk spreads memes without attribution. Why doesn't he just retweet the originals?
Thank you for the valuable perspective. I get torn a lot, I do generally feel bad for folks losing jobs, but I also feel like successful companies attract a lot of freeloaders. Eventually that has to end
Always good to have an informed tech opinion, total breath of fresh air!
Should note that the "only a few hundred employees" line that people are pushing is hyperbole. There are still thousands and thousands of employees left at Twitter.
Thanks for that. I kind of have that estimate of low hundreds in my mind because I didn't know how much of their own infrastructure they own. I imagine transitioning to AWS (as suggested by his buddies on the All In Podcast a while ago) would save a ton more on employees, though that transition would likely require a lot of smart people to make themselves irrelevant.
Like you said, it's super disappointing to hear Off The Shelf opinions on this pod. I was really looking forward to an episode where K&J discuss the Twitter thing because they're amazing an unwinding ridiculous drama, and this Twitter thing looks super dramatic to me.
For that kind of a lift you'd not only need to spend a boatload on the engineering effort to migrate, you'd also need to coordinate with AWS to ensure that they'll have the capacity to accommodate you, and then somehow flip your datacenter assets so it's not a complete loss. The big players probably aren't interested in buying because the headache of having special formerly-Twitter datacenters that deviate from the standard Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Facebook/etc way of doing things probably isn't worth the additional compute/storage they can provide.
You'd also be paying a premium to AWS from then on, and have to coordinate with them on any new rollout that changes your hardware footprint, because you're too big to just expect your capacity requests to be fulfilled.
Big players continue to build and operate their own datacenters because it's worth it.
At the scale of Twitter it must be worth it. But I think, in spirit, some of the idea about getting rid of a lot of the staff makes sense if they can focus on providing value and offloading functionality on to external systems. Maybe they offload on to the credit network for verifying that someone is at least real enough to own a credit card, reducing pile-ons by reducing anonymity, making money via subscriptions instead of ads. Shrug. I've never really used Twitter so I kind of don't care :)
"Maybe they offload on to the credit network for verifying that someone is at least real enough to own a credit card"
This is exactly what Twitter Blue is intended to do
I think Elon is starting to retweet more. Prior to this, he would save the image, sometimes crop out sources, and tweet.
Two things can be correct:
1. Musk is running Twitter badly, and:
2. A good chunk of his opposition (those that suffer from protest disorder and the neocons) are morons.
"Musk is running Twitter badly"
I think we're going to need more than a few weeks to accurately determine this. Especially in an environment when media is literally flooded with highly motivated and, at times, hysterical "reporting" on the subject
More things can coexist:
Elon is a destructive asshole.
Old Twitter management were even bigger destructive assholes. While Twitter might feel like a drop in the bucket of corporate control over the "wild west" Internet we miss so much, they were a very big drop.
I’m probably posting too early since I’m only 20 minutes in, but I think it’s likely the mess since the Elon takeover has been all about finances. Twitter was a poorly run company that ironically has Donald Trump to thank for their only 2 profitable years ever in 2018 & 2019. There are even rumors that they were on the verge of insolvency as early as 2016 prior to the Trump hysteria that buoyed it in a similar way to cable news orgs.
Not that insolvency was really something most people at Twitter seemed to think about. Based on tweets by former staffers...seems like they expected to be able to lose $200M every year forever (since becoming a public company they come out at -1.2B). This entitlement culture seems as if it was deeply entrenched.
This is not unique to Twitter, and a similar reckoning is in store for A LOT or SV companies that have lived for years even decades off VC investments. This is however probably the first such reckoning to be live tweeted. I actually think some of the crazy emails like “2PM 10th Floor” was more likely a process to identify leaks to the media, but obviously don’t know.
End of the day, I would never want to work for Elon Musk even though I respect some of the things he’s been able to accomplish. I also would have never wanted to work for Steve Jobs, who when all is said and done was probably a worse boss and person than Elon but has always managed to get a pass on awful behavior. At the end of the day, the whole ordeal seems like a very public reckoning between polar opposite extremes. I think Twitter was probably filled with a lot of overpaid people who wanted to believe they were saving the world and weren’t ever going to help make it into a sustainable company. I expect many didn’t even do that much (no idea how Twitter could have had almost 5K employees in the US).
Likewise Musk is (self-admittedly) on the spectrum, and expects employees to be as “hardcore” as he is which is just not realistic. Similar stories have come out of Space-X. I doubt many people singing Elon’s praises would tolerate working for him. I think Jesse is right that people embrace Musk more as the enemy of my enemy and it doesn’t need to go further than that.
It’s a shit show, but honestly given the state of Twitter over the last 6 years, could it really have gone any other way? Would someone other than Elon been able to come in and make a single change without facing a gauntlet of hysterical bullshit? I doubt it.
The end of free money, which had up until now incentivised growth at all costs in tech companies, is vital yet woefully under-appreciated context to this whole story
Yeah, I’m still waiting for a piece detailing exactly this. The perfect storm of free money and the mainstreaming of the smartphone created a climate in Silicon Valley where profitability & sustainability were an afterthought AT BEST. It enabled a LARP for people in the top 5% pay brackets that they were crusaders for good: working to “change the world” instead of for “profits”. It was always a lie, but it definitely made it an easier & more noble lie to tell themselves.
Now that the free money is gone for good, and the novelty of the smartphone has worn off, reality is going to crash in like the Kool Aid Man.
Some good descriptions in here of the basic economic problems the tech corporate model is starting to face
(author is bearish twitter for subjective reasons I don't necessarily agree with)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-11-15/the-easy-money-era-is-over-and-the-crypto-bubble-with-it
good points here.
As I understand it: For over a decade, the culture of Silicon Valley investment has been to pour billions into unprofitable companies on the prediction that they will become profitable once they monopolize their market. Except now investors are realizing that strategy rarely works.
It appears to me that many people were investing in Twitter not for financial return. But for political capital. Because they realized it had undue power to influence public discourse. And a large portion of its staff were employed for those political reasons rather than technical.
I would say no, but most workplaces understand the ebb and flow. I worked IT in Finance years ago and during the good times it sounds as if it were very similar to SV firms like Twitter. After a bad year though? Those things were gone and that was just part of it. A lot of SV companies like Twitter skip straight to the excess and feel entitled to that regardless of actual performance. Based on the lamenting I’ve seen on Twitter it genuinely seems like many of the loudest voices felt entitled to all the perks money can buy while they lost millions of dollars of other people’s money (since they were a public company) year in year out.
PS I agree with the general sentiment - I’m not happy about people losing their jobs. That said, Silicon Valley is close to the bottom of places I am worried about unionizing. Excess is built into the culture right now. They are the least exploited, and if you pay attention what’s happened to SF because of how SV has been drowning in VC funds - the entire industry has hurt actual working class people in SF way more than they have benefitted them. It’s a tough issue, but this reckoning with reality has been long overdue.
They are definitely overcompensated, but outside of pay here (were?) a few:
*Beer in Tap (in office)
*Paid meals every day
*Stocked kitchen - free snacks, drinks, etc
*Paid Happy Hours
*Paid commuting passes
*Paid parking (in SF)
Do I object to these? Not really, but seems a little excessive for a company that was never actually making any money doesn’t it? I guess I would not feel like I was in a position to complain publicly that any of these were taken away while working for a company that is in a bad financial situation.
I'm surprised nobody is talking about the "Elon is Snape" conspiracy theory. It goes like this: Musk is the biggest green energy mogul in the world, and by going anti-woke / constantly owning the libs online he has turned the adoption of electric vehicles, and of green energy more broadly, into a cause that right wingers and populists will actually, enthusiastically support. He has broken the "green energy = left wing" cultural association, single handedly making it politically possible for humanity to save itself from the coming climate change apocalypse! Imagine Musk weeping silently as he hits send on lib-owning shitpost after lib-owning shitpost, knowing that despite the harm he is causing to marginalized communities (and his own soul) with every tweet, this is the *only" way to save the human race...The bravest person I know.
Just for that, I'm going to give one of my children the middle name "Elon."
Although just "Musk" has a certain ring to it...
As someone with Geolibertarian tendencies, I do appreciate environmentalism being decoupled from socialism.
Nobel-worthy. ;)
I’m kind of here for the crunchy right wing dictatorship just because I’m really curious to see how that timeline works out (only if nobody gets hurt tho)
Whether it’s a success or failure, at least it’ll be efficient
Why does America have so many Christian, well, weirdos? (Not to be judgy, but yeah.) Is it a case of *too much* religious freedom crossed with individualism?
I hope you know I was just being cheeky and meant no disrespect. :0
Can you explain what a constitution based on creed as opposed to ideology is...? Do you mean religious creed or something else?
Oh wow this is crazy. I actually did run into one of these types of families who all wore home made prairie dresses and ran an organic farm one time. I didn’t know there were more of these types of people
After what I'd seen from Jesse on Twitter regarding both Musk and Israel, I was relieved to hear him being fairly nuanced in his take on both. Which affirms what we mostly knew about Twitter already: it doesn't convey nuance very well. I am definitely a "pervert for nuance" but can't remember who said that, or why, in the Park Slope episode.
I think the only thing more annoying than Musk is all the people dickriding him obsessively.
This is how he has so many kids
Can't seem to activate the like button for some weird reason, so I'm just gonna reply to tell you that is really funny. I love how witty BARPod listeners are. They draw a good crowd.
One day, surely, he will choose one weird, crypto-obsessed, excessively online man to be his official BFF and/or bride.
I read "dickriding" in the sense of someone who won't get of your ass, "stop riding my dick man".
It seems everyone who replied interpreted this as someone who is literally having sex with him (a fan / brownnoser).
I didn't even think it was an ambiguous phrase.
Seriously I think I took it the wrong way.
It is like a train, or more like a metro, operates better in tunnels.
https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-22-2015/joV0eL.gif
This is a valuable comment
What if you have the killer combo: a great mind AND exceptional feet with exquisite toe cleavage?
True about Israelis being hot. The officer checking my passport on arrival was so handsome I nearly lost my balance.
Remember those sea salt kiosk women that used to trap you in malls. Israel is full of those women, and they all have guns.
The IDF has a distinct advantage in the propaganda stakes
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/israel-defense-force-idf-tiktok-thirst-trap-1174211/
I thought Katie was a bit off-base on this. Management tells companies to move to X location (including moving from working at home) all the time. Even public services companies.
It's happened to me twice, having to move physical location because one office is closing, and then having to return to work after working from home after two years. I don't see why this is a big deal to be honest.
Having a large-recognised company on your resume is huge currency; I doubt many will be overly disadvantaged. The one thing I find grossly unfair is the time window of employees saying they wanted to stay on. It's not uncommon for people to go on holiday and turn off their work email or be out with Covid or whatever. The time window to reply was disturbing.
So many gender-critical women who said fairly innocent things were banned. Some did rely on Twitter to drive business to small businesses (indeed Meghan Murphy among them). So perhaps it's a balance of some people being disadvantaged but others getting back the opportunities of most.
I dunno, eccentric CEOs is nothing new. CEOs shaping policy around their personal ethos is nothing new.
"Musk allegedly gave them like 15 hours to be back in the office"
Allegedly is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here
Wow! Mention Musk and Israel and for some reason the comment section goes to sh*t. At least all of the new subscribers can pay for more pizza and Moose toys :)
It feels harsh and humorless to me, too? Some of this vibe was present in the comments on Katie’s Julie Bindel interview, too. But I thought that was because feminist stuff is both plagued by internecine conflicts and beset by anti-feminists.
Thia, I think you’re one of the lovely conservatives in this crowd (if I’m not confused) and it is good to know I’m not alone in sensing a vibe shift. As a left-liberal dismayed at growing authoritarianism on both sides of the aisle, I really value the ability of people in this group to disagree in good faith and with lively humor. I’m distressed at the gotcha comments aimed at Katie in these comments, some of which seem bent on strawmanning her remarks.
We shouldn’t genuflect to our hosts or each other. But let’s steelman arguments when we disagree. Let’s stay funny and weird. Let’s please not become Bari Weiss’s comments section. We all deserve better - and so does Bari!
That said, I’m a notorious crazy cat lady and I believe Moose deserves *all* the toys. New subscribers, welcome to the last Internet bastion of civil but weird conversation across differences! Please join us in being civil and weird, or weird and civil. I promise the water is warm and the pizza is well-cheesed.
Crazy cat ladies unite! Yes, the last couple of episodes have produced some nasty and painfully humorless responses. We can all disagree, hopefully politely, about many things (yes I am conservative-ish on most things at least from the average perspective here) but hopefully we can all come together on wishing all the new subscribers (read Moose toy funders) will hang out a bit and pick up the vibe before taking a poop in our lovely little sandbox. This Substack in particular is an unusually civilized place both to each other and to our hosts. It is much more fun and informative to hear other people’s point of view and best arguments rather than just shouting into the void until all of the sane commenters flee.
Please, if crazy cat ladies can love dogs, can’t we all resist our inner dickhead just for the time we’re here? Pardon my French ;)
LET US SHAKE OUR FISTS AT THE HEAVENS!!!!11!!1!!!
This episode is why I subscribe and pay for the privilege. You’ve saved me the bother of looking into Mastodon and finding a rationale for avoiding like the plague.
Twitter, as is any publicly listed company, is required to act in the interests of its shareholders. When Musk made an offer to purchase without due diligence and Twitter’s stock fell, the company had to force the sale.
The 7,500 employees for a microblogging service is very high. It’s not technically difficult - less than a few hundred people could keep the the site running.
The financial requirements on the loan requirements for the purchase are set. There isn’t a ton of wiggle room.
I’m amazed Musk is doing rapid A/B testing in broad daylight. People aren’t used to this. The tech market is contracting with the economy. Competitors have hiring freezes and very short lists of ex-Twitter folks are considered for hire.
I know what he’s doing with the A/B testing and I’m still shitting my pants. That guy is taking on a huge amount of Risk with nerves of steel.
I do think the unspoken reason he reduced headcount so much is that he has a high debt servicing that he now has to pay for his financing of twitter. That’s going to be hugely expensive. He has to get cash flow positive really quick and with losing so many advertisers so quickly that’s going to be really hard. I am going to sign up for an account once the verification is back up.
Katie had a great opportunity to do some journalism here and she failed.
What is an appropriate headcount for twitter?
How does twitter headcount compare to other companies (hint WAY high).
What did all these people actually do?
Are other tech companies laying off now? (yep). If so, why?
etc.
etc
etc.
I am really disappointed in the superficial analysis.
Bingo, my thoughts exactly. And this is not only a twitter thing. I work in one of the biggest companies in the world, and im telling you, in my service, we could halve the workforce and it would have a beneficial effect on the bottom line.
I noticed in her comment about James Lindsay being reinstated, which she wasn't into because she finds him "frustrating." So does she have principles, as she sounded like when she pointed out the people at Journohub.whatever seem to lack (in letting George Takei count as a journalist), or not? If you can't tolerate frustrating people why be on Twitter to begin with? Also, she's often mentions that she's blocked by a bunch of people. All she'd have to do to be in a James Lindsay free Twitter is to block him & mute tweets that mention him.
I took that more as that she personally is annoyed that she'll have to read more Lindsay tweets eventually, not that he actually shouldn't be allowed back on
Yeah, you're likely right. I'm just tired of other people clutching pearls about the people being let back on the site, and perhaps I'm reading more into what she said than I should.
Totally agree the people are generally being absolute babies about it
My reading as well.
I think she gave a good high level for majority of audience. I think a lot of us are IT dorks though and we weren’t the intended audience.
I think you’re spot on here. I have a feeling due diligence likely got an accurate picture of actual revenue/financials, but likely after getting into the weeds there was a realization that the POTENTIAL revenue was nothing like what was represented.
The debt financing is going to be the major hurdle because if they’re ad based they’re going to get hardest in the recession.
Just content moderation for actually-illegal material is hundreds or thousands of people (though many of them need to be non-US-based). I agree the engineering ought to be fairly straightforward; the question is whether it actually is. Tolerance of or incentives for bad, overcomplex design can lead to a situation where every component is both obviously too complex and also nearly impossible to replace.
I mean: https://youtu.be/y8OnoxKotPQ
Hahaha. Only so many design patterns: spaghetti style to cover incompetence, fiefdoms for job security, using the shiny new unproven thing to pad a resume, and old fashioned kick backs.
Compliance and moderation would definitely need localized teams. If the 5k contractors terminated last week were mostly content moderation, then seriously WTF?
By most reports their moderation in non-wealthy countries was atrocious, same as Facebook.
Too busy banning middle-aged American and British ladies for saying that women don’t have dicks I guess.
I don’t think the layoffs were mostly moderation. Personally I would have gone hard at all the PM jobs, not that they’re completely useless, but they are usually overpaid, often overstaffed, and that overstaffing leads to time-consuming make-work that has to pull in lots of other people to make sure it’s visible. Those are also jobs that can be done by any ambitious, reasonably intelligent person who knows generically how to organize work (“first we write down all the things we need to do, then we see which things depend on other things, then we keep track of which of them are getting done” - this shit is not rocket science, any construction supervisor knows it (although unlike many PMs they usually know how to do the actual work too)).
And yeah, then thin out the N layers of engineering management who don’t do any engineering work. I’d go to a 1:8-12 ratio at the bottom level and then more like 1:30 above that. It’s super common to have these skinny management chains where the higher-level managers have just a handful of other manager reports. The fuck are they all doing? Jobs for the boys, I think.
Being a PM is so nebulous the range is pretty wild. All the way from designing entire flow and architecture to “I haven’t done any actual work in eleven years.”
I can never read PM as anything other than Product Manager.
It is sometimes, but also project or program, and the distinction isn’t always clear. It’s often close to “producer” in the ad and TV world, which is to say “the person responsible for making sure that all the things that need to get done actually get done, even if they have to do them themselves”. Which is a very respectable position. But you only need so many of those people relative to the number of engineers, designers, sysadmins, etc.
Tesla was sued for overpaying Musk by a shareholder. There are hundreds of these suits every year, though I get the sense most settle.
In this case my understanding is that because the offer was so far over marker cap the likelihood is that investors would have sued management and they would have been liable.
Katie's statement that Eli Lilly's stock price plummeted because of the fake "insulin is free" account is not born out by the timing of the stock price moves.
The tweet was sent around mid-day on Thursday, Eli-Lillys stock price actually rose slightly that afternoon (along with similar sector stocks). The drop in share price on the following day (24 hours after the initial tweet) was part of a pharma-sector wide drop in share price, along with other non-growth stocks like defense.
The origin of the "Eli Lilly's share price tanked after fake tweet" all traces back to a thread by Rafael Shimunov a long-time activist (and obviously a blue-check).
Not sure if Katie saw that thread or just read one of the many news reports that, in true Twitter 1.0 style, all relied solely on Shimunov's thread as the source of truth with zero attempt on each journo's part to verify.
Happy to provide links if Katie (or Jesse) want to to check this out for themselves.
Which they should, because it's a perfect example of why this whole "opening up the blue-check to the plebs will spread misinformation" is so bogus. Blue-check twitter is already the primary source of misinformation out there. And the status attached the check-mark is a big reason behind why many journalists will just uncritically repeat their tweets as if it's verified news.
Being in favour of free speech doesn’t mean you are obliged to platform Alex Jones.
The guy has just been found liable in defamation cases in two states. Free speech doesn’t compel you to enable someone else’s defamation. Social media platforms were right to boot him.
Was this Musk’s stated justification for why Jones would not be allowed back? No. Free speech is complex and people often have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. Musk clearly doesn’t get it. But I’m not so sure Katie does either when she acts as if a commitment to free speech means everyone should be open to Alex Jones and gets to shit talk their boss publicly.
Speech has consequences and so does censorship. The tension is constant.
And when Katie sounded annoyed that James Lindsay was reinstated because he's "frustrating" (all she has to do it block him and mute mentions of his name).
The part about how she thinks employees should be able to talk shit about their boss publicly was really odd to me, but I'm Gen-X. My parents always told me not to rock the boat if I was in it. Katie: "but it's just a private Slack channel." A private channel run by the company? and you want to shit post about them? Is she high? (everyone: "probably"). Maybe that former open culture at the company is why Twitter higher ups went along when their staff felt unsafe when people said things they disagree with on the site.
Yeah. I mean a department meeting is "private" but it's probably not the place to let rip with how much you hate your employer.
Yeah I don’t get why people feel entitled to talk shit about their colleagues and BOSSES on company channels. Because why? Free speech? The entitlement is crazy.
I hate to reduce it to "kids these days" but there definitely has been a generational shift away from any kind of hierarchy. Kids raised to be treated as "equals" by their parents, to call their teachers and profs by their first names (and complain to the principal/dean/manager) if they're not shown sufficient respect, get into the workplace and don't seem to realise there is a ranking of power.
(The element of "bring your whole self to work" has also dissolved the idea of professionalism or public presentation - further exacerbated by the whole hoodie and sweats vibe of SV, plus WFH. People don't shift modes between work/private).
Yeah good point. Keep your politics and personal opinions AWAY from your colleagues during office hours. Nobody wants to see your "whole self" there, gross.
“Bring your whole self to work” is often not great for work but *always* detrimental to one’s whole self. We all deserve privacy and healthy boundaries. BYWSTW erodes those boundaries.
I think you misheard what Katie said around criticizing your boss publicly. Her claim was that an employee should be able to criticize their boss in good faith on the company Slack, not drag them publicly.
Katie: '... but you can't claim to be a champion of free speech, and then fire people for criticizing you personally. And, I think there is a difference between tweeting "Elon sucks balls" on Twitter, I don't think you can tweet that the boss "sucks balls" on Twitter and expect to have your job. But, if people were criticizing his decisions in good faith, on Slack, and he fired 'em for that, that is not being a champion of free speech.'
I think Katie did a really poor job this episode, she spent a lot of time repeating the laziest, most ignorant commentary we've already heard from so many media outlets (and Jesse didn't push back enough on those points), but she did not take the position that an employee should be able to "shit post about" their boss without repercussions, she specifically mentioned the importance of good faith.
Being honest how much criticism of Musk on the internal slack channel do you really think was being done "in good faith"?
My statement was a correction of a mistaken assessment of Katie's position on criticizing one's own boss publicly.
I don't think my estimate of the probability that good faith criticism occurred is particularly valuable or interesting, it would be a mostly uninformed guess. I am disappointed that neither host seemed to have the time or the inclination to do the journalism around these claims and then share with us what they found.
I'm not sure what was actually happening, the words Katie used around that particular topic made it sound like she was repeating something she had heard but didn't look into. That's a great example of why I think this episode was really half-assed. Aren't Jesse and Katie supposed to comb through the pedantic details so we don't have to? I know that's a large part of why I'm subscribed.
I'm with you on the employees part, torn on the Jones part. Did Jones ever tweet anything false? If not, he just doesn't get to tweet because he committed a crime elsewhere? Is it just defamation, or are there other crimes you could be guilty of that would cost you access to Twitter?
We’re talking about civil proceedings not criminal. Two juries decided Jones was liable for his actions and ordered the maximum damages.
I’m not sure why you think that “just defamation” is fine. The law has protected people against libel and slander for centuries for very good reasons.
Defamatory speech is, by its very nature, untrue.
Right, and the law should. Why should a social media company punish somebody for breaking the law?
Because defamation is a good pace to draw the line when you set your free speech boundaries.
And we all have our lines. You, for example think it’s okay to “punish” people for shit talking the boss in public. And so do I.
But you don’t think people like Alex Jones should be “punished” for systematically tormenting the parents of murdered children for years. I OTOH do.
What explains your position that shit talking the boss can not be tolerated but tormenting the parents of murdered children must be tolerated by social media companies in the name of free speech?
If you shit talk your boss, your boss fires you. This is in the context of a Slack conversation, right? At *work*, you insult the person you *work* for. So they give you the classic *work* punishment, a firing. You broke the boss' rules in the boss' jurisdiction.
If you do something *illegal*, the *law* punishes you. That's their jurisdiction.
If you break the rules of a *social media* company, it makes sense that you get banned from the *social media* website. It's their jurisdiction.
But if you break the *law*, why would you get punished by a *social media* company? It's not their jurisdiction. If Alex Jones was making posts about the kids on Twitter, it makes sense to ban him. But AFAIK it was through his website, so it shouldn't have any standing on his Twitter account.
Why should Twitter be granting access based on their character judgements of individual users? That's the problem with Musks' decision here, it's not based on any objective rule, it's just that whoever commits a crime that he personally finds offensive, he bans. That's giving unaccountable social media companies a lot of power
Jones broke Twitter’s rules. That’s why they banned him just like an employer fires employees who break their rules.
In both cases, the companies were operating within the law.
The only difference is you like the employers’ rules and you don’t like the social media companies’ rules.
Why shouldn’t social media companies be able to set a rule saying we don’t permit defamatory speech? Traditional publishers have done it for years.
Excellent points. It’s the moral repugnance of Jones’s actions that is driving support for the banning, which isn’t a great reason in and of itself.
There’s nothing wrong with factoring “moral repugnance” into free speech questions. The juries that awarded huge settlements to the plaintiffs in the Jones cases did so because they found his lies so morally repugnant.
We don’t live in a vacuum. And, yes, people differ on what they find morally repugnant. That’s why free speech is such a complex issue.
Do you really think social media companies have some sort of free speech obligation to platform Jones?
Did you respond to the wrong comment? I never said that there is something "wrong" with "factoring in" moral repugnance into free speech questions. I said,
"It’s the moral repugnance of Jones’s actions that is driving support for the banning, which isn’t a great reason *in and of itself.*"
I love the substack app for the most part, but it doesn't always make it clear who is commenting on what lol
Interesting miss on this episode, but just want to call out one thing. "According to NPR 50 of the top advertisers on twitter stopped working with them, due to potential bad press." That's a rough quote from the episode.
What do you imagine the correspondence from NPR was to the various advertisers (would be a shame if something were to happen to your brand wouldn't it?) ? Do you think there were likely other groups reaching out to advertisers regarding their continuing to use twitter? In most cases, this would be the story I would expect to hear on this show.
I get Musk is polarizing, I get capitalism is bad, but this episode really was lacking a lot of the "it's complicated". I think Katie built up too much steam and Jesse got cowed after raising some light questions early on.
I think I remember reading there was an exodus of advertisers in September (before Musk took over) because advertisers were notified their ads may have been served in the same space as child abuse/porn “content”. Maybe that isn’t correct, but it would have been nice for them to actually look into it - seems kind of funny both Katie & Jesse would think NPR is all of a sudden a reliable source given how thoroughly they’ve documented NPR’s tenuous track record as of late.