Hey, everybody, welcome back to the.
Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss.
The critical crossroads? That shape?
SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink.
And I'm your host Will Walden. One more thing before we start
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Elon Musk's X, which is formerly Twitter as we all know, is kind
of reverting right now to its foundational elements.
According to observations from insiders at Twitter.
A project manager from Twitter shows that the efforts to
transform X into a significantly different platform have not
really materialized yet. It was a Gaber Excel, and it
looks like they're sticking with the fundamentals for now.
Now, remember when Twitter was just Twitter?
It was just a social media app. You posted it on your wall,
posted some photos, posted some news with some hashtags, maybe a
video, maybe a vertical video if you're feeling saucy.
And then other people commented on it, shared it, liked it,
things like that. And it seems like this is still
the case. It's mainly used as a social
media site where you share news, photos, videos.
And it also seems like X is playing catch up to a lot of
other social media apps, mainly Facebook.
Facebook has all the things that Twitter X wants to become except
for, except for the banking aspect of it.
They do have like a Facebook feature where you can send money
back and forth and tip, but they don't have like a bank you can't
have. It's not a true sense of the
says the word bank, which Elon Musk's want.
Elon Musk wants to integrate into Twitter X, so that's where
Elon is right now. They're kind of stuck in this
holding pattern, catching up with everybody else 1st and then
possibly passing them. But one of the other things that
they they missed out on is the blue verification checkmarks.
Some people that were very relevant and you know,
controversial figures or famous people or people with status had
blue verification checkmarks just by default because they
were influential and people with substantial verified following
were very prominent on the platform.
So Elon Musk recently reattached high profile users to their
checkmarks. This comes after considerable
staff reductions as well, including trust and safety team
back in 2022. So back then they took away
checkmarks. They took away the trust and
safety team. They got rid of everybody.
They fired hundreds of people from Twitter.
Total reorg of the place. Now to enforce or to enhance.
Sorry, Platform Safety X is now reportedly establishing a new
Content Moderation center in Texas.
It has appointed 2 senior executives to lead moderation
efforts. Now it looks like possibly X is
going to move operations to Texas.
This is a shift towards advertiser confidence
restoration, which waned a lot after the rise in hate speech on
X slash Twitter after Elon took over.
Now there's a thing called metaphors.
David Camp is part of this, and he sees that these developments
as efforts to win back advertisers who departed due to
the platform's content management issues.
And Musk's initial disregard for conventional business practices
aimed at AD revenue stability is seen as contributing to the
platform's challenges. Right now, a lot of the
advertisers left. I think it was 70.
Some odd percent of the high profile advertisers just shut
down their accounts, left town, and didn't advertise on X once
Elon took over. Now, despite these changes,
Musk's erratic communications and controversial statements
have continued to impact XS reputation as a reliable
advertising partner, according to Camp.
Two, it complicates efforts to stabilize the platform's revenue
streams. And if somebody's head of a
company and they're making controversial statements, it's
difficult for advertisers to get behind that platform because
they never know what the CEO is going to say.
Musk has a wild management style, and public statements
have been contentious, and they're often undermining
efforts to rehabilitate the platform's image right now.
And this has led to a persistent loss of ad revenue, millions and
millions and millions of dollars, and challenges in
attracting and also retaining the advertisers that they have
now, the user base. Some are very loyal oil, but
reports indicate a significant decline in X's global user base
since Musk took over. Musk himself has acknowledged A
substantial drop in advertising revenue under his leadership as
well stated that on numerous occasions.
And the effectiveness of reinstating traditional
verification methods and enhancing content moderation as
strategies to regain advertiser trust remains uncertain.
We don't know what's going to happen.
Elon doesn't know what's going to happen, but maybe there's
been meetings behind closed doors of what the advertisers
want. Yakarino may have been talking
to advertisers, I'm sure she has, about what the advertisers
want and how they want to protect themselves from Elon and
his rebel ways. Now the platform's reliance on
user habituation rather than new feature implementations points
to challenges in innovation and user engagement.
I mean, what have we really gotten so far since Elon took
over, We had to pay for check marks.
And you? We have Grok of course, but
there's other AI chat bots out there that's already been
already been done. Abd if you will.
We had higher bitrate video, 4K video, streaming video, which
they were working on before. Facebook already has it, YouTube
already has it all their social media networks already have this
and they already have everything.
So there's not much more than Elon has added to this in the
time that he's had Twitter. It's been a few years now and he
was boasting of an everything app, banking book, an Uber, all
the things that you could do, order a pizza, whatever,
whatever it is. He wanted this to be the
everything app, but it seems like things have just caught up
to regular social media sites. Actually, they haven't even
caught up yet. Elon integrated monetization
with Twitter with X when you live stream or when you post
videos was so that was a that was a pretty decent deal.
Hasn't really attracted many high profile users to the
platform for that yet. But you know, you never know
what's going to happen in the next six months with this
platform. So we've done some tests on on
the platform and we do get some interactions on X with our
videos, but nothing like nothing like on our YouTube channel.
You can check out our YouTube channel at Space News Pod and
also at the Elon Musk Podcast. Now, these comparisons aren't
just between social media sites here.
That's around Musk and his other ventures too, like the cyber
truck. Criticisms of the cyber truck's
design and functionality mirror concern concerns about Musk's
leadership and its impact on X2. There are a lot of things wrong
with the cyber truck when it launched, a lot of things that
were promised, never delivered, sort of like full self driving
promised, never delivered. It's not fully complete.
It's still at a a very, it's in a broad test stages.
But when Elon said something like, yeah, we'll have full self
driving in two years, that was 10 years ago.
So yeah, things that Elon says, he's very optimistic about those
things. And there are financial
pressures right now on X as well.
You know, problematic launches. Tesla stock is actually going
down because of the things that Elon says.
Right now, challenges are exacerbated by Musk's personal
brand, which is increasingly seen as detrimental to business
interests on X and at Tesla. And Musk's approach to platform
management, particularly his handling of verification changes
and content moderation, has sparked controversy among the
users. Some high profile individuals
have publicly disavowed unsolicited verification badges,
emphasizing his disagreement with Musk's policies.
Now, the issue of unsolicited verification badges.
If you don't ask for one, if you don't buy one and you get one,
what? How do you How do you get that?
It's up in the air. Nobody really knows.
But it's raised questions about Musk's intentions and the
criteria for receiving a blue check mark.
We played for our check mark because it gives us verification
that we're an actual person. The backlash from users who
received verification without consent shows that X has ongoing
struggles with user trust and engagement.
It shows that they don't have a clear path forward and that
management doesn't have a clear road map of the exactly what
they want to do with certain features.
Now, efforts to clarify the verification process and the
criteria for premium features have done little to alleviate
user concerns, though the confusion surrounding these
policies shows that there are challenges in strategies from
Elon Musk and the leadership there at X Now Musks latest
decision to verify accounts based on subscriber count or
premium service subscription has been met with mixed reactions.
This approach to verification has been criticized for
undermining the original purpose of the blue check mark and also
alienating some users. I think Elon doesn't care about
alienating users though. I mean, look at some of his
posts. He alienates probably half of
the platform every time he posts.
And legal challenges with Musk includes defamation lawsuits
stemming from his social media activity.
And this is personal and professional.
It's risky, and it could damage X.
These issues show that Musk's personal persona and his
business ventures sometimes shouldn't intertwine.
He likes freedom of speech, though, and he wants X to be the
platform of free speech. Now, the case brought against
Musk by Ben Brody, which stems from Musk's unfounded
allegations on X, shows that legal and reputational hazards
of Musk's impulsive social media behavior could be a detriment to
the platform. It's part of a broader pattern,
controversial actions by Musk that have legal and financial
implications. Now, Musk also asserts during a
deposition that X is the most accurate, timely and truthful
place on the Internet. I don't know if I agree with
that. I don't know.
Have you seen? I've seen a lot of bots, seen a
lot of bots. Those bots are not truthful.
There are a lot of people saying a lot of things that are not
factually correct. So the way he says it, most
accurate, timely and truthful place on the Internet.
If the data doesn't back it up, it's not truth.
That's all there is to it. I've seen a lot of untruthful
people or bots. I'm not sure what they are on
Twitter, and I'm not. I'm not here to bash X or
Twitter or Elon at all. I'm just telling you what I
know. And you know, I'm here to report
the I'm here to report for you. That's it.
So the dissonance between Musk's statements in a platform's
reality shows that X is under a challenge right now.
What are the values of X? What are the practices of X?
Something may change, and that's OK You're supposed to move fast
in tech, move Fast forward, right?
Fail forward as they say. So I think Elon's doing good
work. I just wish there was a road map
that we could all follow to see when things are going to be
enhanced and what new things are going to be added.
Hey. Thank you so much for listening
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