Elon Musk's Twitter: the Good and the Ugly

foreign [Music] musk bought Twitter it was a sinking uh are we gonna have a job oh my God you are what are we gonna do it was four months away from bankruptcy and filled with massive problems so the gravity was separation pass uh not well understood on top of that he had to overpay tremendously for it cannibalizing the value of his other companies and on top of all that every decision he makes is publicly scrutinized he's fixing a sinking ship in front of a theater of people who all have an opinion on how to do it while against the race of time it wasn't decision he didn't have to do it was one that didn't make sense but he did it anyway and ever since the Takeover elon's moved fast unlike anything we've ever seen especially with the company in that size he's running Twitter like a startup and boy oh boy is he right sometimes but wrong others in this video we'll deconstruct elon's decision from his push to free speech to his paddle against the Bots and see just how he's kept this thing alive thus far okay okay I never realized how intense these intros are until a couple days later when I re-watch and I go wow we should all chill out for a second let's let's all take a moment before we get into the actual meat of the video I wanted to take a quick second and just say thank you seriously you know I've tried to do YouTube for the past two years quite inconsistently and badly but my last video was really my first win I've ever had on the platform not only from a views and results number but also just the feedback that I got from it I truly was shocked with how many people really appreciated the storytelling and all the different small bits that I did my goal is to take interesting topics and present them in an interesting Manner and my last video really felt like I used every tool in my creative toolbox so again thank you for all the comments it was truly a one-of-a-kind feeling all right anyway though let's get back to one of those moments we know is going to be in history books for our kids Elon Musk buying Twitter so elon's made a ton of moves since buying Twitter like nine months ago but first we need to talk about his takeover because it wasn't any peaceful ordeal Elon and the former CEO Park agrawal basically had this seven month long public fight it went something like this yo Mr CL guess what now that I own 10 of the company better put me on the board [Music] all right fine Elon I guess you can join thanks man but let me ask you something is Twitter like dying like look at all these top accounts that are barely even posting [Music] listen man can you just chill I get you can say that but we're struggling internally already really distracting and it's not helping let me ask you something Mr CEO what have you done for Twitter this week what have you done for Twitter at all you know what I'm not gonna join the board I'm gonna buy Twitter myself buy it then [Music] hold on wait if I'm gonna pay 44 billion dollars for this it better be what you say it is how many Bots are on this thing anyway not many according to who where's your proof I can't disclose that for legal reasons just trust me no you you know what screw it deal is off oh no way you talk smack about is our stock price fell you know what take this oh yeah guess what take this foreign [Music] contract law is free to change his mind craft the company disrupt its operations destroy stockholder value you know what we want to just do the deal on original terms yeah sure [Music] so as of October 4th 2022 Twitter was all elons he successfully did the largest tech takeover ever but really his fight started now he soon learns that the status of Twitter hasn't been great in fact in the last 6 out of eight years Twitter has been unprofitable they've been losing money and when Elon bought the platform the situation got only worse the gravity of the situation is perhaps uh not well understood point which uh the company the transaction closed uh Twitter was tracking to lose over three billion dollars a year and had one billion in the bank so that's four months to death so this is your starting position uh how would you feel many of us see Twitter as this super influential platform because a lot of celebrities and government officials are on there but when you compare Twitter's monthly active users to Instagrams or Facebooks or all the other social media platforms it's not high Twitter is actually quite small on top of that its growth has been slow and advertisers have never seen it as a great platform so when you take this starting position and mix elon's crazy work culture you get what Twitter is today [Music] it's active for the news we need to address the world in 20 minutes is Elon Musk doing a good job at Twitter is he making the platform better 20 minutes shoot I don't even know where to start there's so much to consider we need to build our board [Music] okay so what are the problems he's facing well we know Twitter isn't profitable true but what else um spam that's right when he bought Twitter there was a ton of spam hence why he tried to pull out of buying Twitter altogether yep according to my research he claimed that when buying Twitter 20 of all users were spam interesting so what did he do well simply he just removed all the boss in the spam wait really why didn't Twitter do that earlier why did it take Elon to do that well Elon claims that previous management was incentivized by user growth so they never actually looked at who the users were great so that's like a gold star for Elon yeah but also this is what Elon Musk introduced one of the most controversial updates in social media history so the introduction of Twitter blue was quite heated but let's start with why Elon Musk decided to implement it in the first place many people think it was just a money grab which makes sense it costs eight bucks a month and that's partially true I mean Elon doesn't want a hundred percent of Twitter's Revenue to be from ads but the reality is subscriptions wouldn't be that much revenue the example Elon gives is if a million people were to pay a hundred dollars per year that's only a hundred million dollars extra in Revenue when compared to the 4.5 billion dollars they make from ads it's a drop in the bucket elon's bigger reason is that this is the only way to prevent a huge AI takeover of the platform but allowing only paid verified accounts to rank to the top of conversations keeps the platform human he also mentions that the Legacy verification system was flawed in that people would pay tens of thousands of dollars for the blue check so a harder reset is necessary yo Detective yo Detective hello what are you doing whatever but as you can expect there's also downsides of Twitter blue one being the infamous example of Eli Lilly just days after rolling out Twitter blue someone made a parody Count of this company Eli Lilly and honestly it did look quite real they later tweeted out that insulin would be free and this sent the company's valuation to drop by 15 billion dollars just buy one tweet so yikes on that so what do we think was Twitter blue a good decision or a bad one what do we tell the people I don't know I don't know I guess we can go back to it we only have 15 more minutes and by the way I thought of another problem that Elon is trying to tackle [Music] so this is the number one reason why Elon bought Twitter in the first place according to him he wants to make a digital Town Square basically a place where anyone can voice their opinion on an equal playing field he says this is the only way to have a true democracy we've got something wrong and over time I think if Twitter is the best source of Truth it will succeed and if and if we are not the best source of Truth we will fail now this sounds nice and dandy right free Ze in a vacuum we all want the ability to say what we want to but we don't live in a vacuum so there are some intricacies [Music] yo it's tattoo when do we get to the point where Elon fires everybody yo chill I'm getting there don't don't ruin the surprise you see the steps of free speech weren't easy in fact in elon's words he said that it was actually quite painful because he had to fire a lot of employees and especially after how he was criticized for it people said It felt haphazard that he was uncaring imagine waking up and going to the office and all of a sudden your key card is locked or the Gmail account that you've been working in you can't access anymore but on the flip side Elon said he had to again Twitter only had four months until bankruptcy so what else is Elon gonna do he had to fire all 5 000 people in that manner he couldn't look them in the eye and didn't have time unless drastic action was taken no one would have had a job so what are we gonna tell the world that this was a good decision or a bad one I don't know man it's too tough well time is ticking we need to make up a decision the world is asking we have five minutes remaining I mean okay what do we have on misinformation or hate speech oh it's on the holograminator oh yeah yeah here we go most infamous clip of them all that you know we have spoken to people who who have been sacked that used to be in content moderation and they just say they just there's not enough people to police this stuff particularly around um particularly around hate speech is that something you're talking about I mean you use Twitter right do you see a rise in hate speech personally my uh for you I would see I get I get more of that kind of content yeah personally content you don't like or or what do you mean to describe a hateful thing yeah a Content that will solicit a reaction something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist those kinds of those kinds of things so you think if something is slightly sexist it should be banned I'm asking for specific examples and you just said that if something is slightly sexist that's hateful content does that mean that it should be bad well you've asked me you've asked me whether my feelings whether it's got less or more I'd say it's got slightly more right can you name one example I honestly don't need I I honestly I can't name a single example I'll tell you why because I don't actually use that for you said you've seen more hip-hop content but you can't name a single example not even one I'm not sure I've used that fee for the last three or four weeks and then how did you see that contest right you can't give us something and I'm saying then I I say so that you don't know what you're talking about really yes because you can't be a single example of hateful content not even one tweet and yet you're claimed that the April content was high dang ah yeah dang shoot man I don't know if this is good or bad either I mean look at how many things this is connected to detective I don't know if we're getting anywhere oh what about his fight against media buys I mean no one likes bias right yeah I guess he did open source the algorithms basically showing everyone how things are recommended like YouTube and straight talk don't do that true that's pretty big and how can we forget about the Twitter files that was like one of the biggest things that happened on Twitter no I didn't forget about that but that's also highly debated some people say that it's great that Twitter unveiled those internal documents and others say that it promoted conspiracy theories I don't have a clear answer well we need an answer detective how about the fact that the Twitter Engineers rework the code to decrease the CPU usage by 80 or all the Creator monetization tools detective look at the big picture the world is waiting for your answer is Elon Musk doing a good job is Twitter 2.0 even better we're out of time we gotta go on stage detective detective what's the answer is Elon a good CEO detective we're depending on an answer we need to know now we need to know um but maybe that's the point regardless of what decisions Elon makes on Twitter there will always be people arguing on both sides of whatever he does and honestly the reason I wanted to make this video was not to convince you if Elon Musk is a good CEO or a bad one for Twitter you can make up your own mind on that but instead share that the more I grow up the more I realize that the way we just analyzed Elon is the same way people will analyze you whatever you say or do people will have an opinion on you oh you want to leave school and start a clothing brand oh you want to move cities you want to break up with this person switch careers learn a new subject or go on a solo trip around the world people will always judge but at the end of the day you're the only one who has the big picture it's easy to look at any one of these and make an opinion but the moment you look at the bigger web things get more complicated from dropping out of school to moving to La then moving to New York City and every topic that I want to create on people have opinions and honestly I let this affect me greatly in the past I let people's opinions dictate how I go about things but living like that is very limiting and sure my problems are not as high stakes as elons but to see him sail through the turbulent side of opinions and make his decisions transparent it's impressive I look at this as history happening live so as we watch this ship rebuild and half the people around you are saying one thing and the other half the opposite you have three options you can listen to the good you can listen to the bad or you can let all the noise around you disappear and appreciate the show up ahead [Music] it's a cut no you you know what screw it deal is off oh that was good how many companies have you built none none [Music] oh my God this is day 17 of making this video it was due three days ago yeah got a we got a shaky Road up ahead but we're gonna make it we're gonna make it thanks for subscribing

Channel: Tejas Hullur

Views: 7,218

Keywords: elon musk, elon musk twitter, elon musk twitter news, twitter stock, elon musk twitter deal, social media, elon musk interview, elon musk interview bbc, elon musk documentary 2022, elon musk bbc, elon musk fires twitter employees, elon musk twitter sink, elon musk completes twitter deal & fires top executives, elon musk terminates twitter deal, tejashullur, tejas hullur, tejas hullur nickelodeon, video essay

Id: 3Bvwzz2So2o

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023