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ERICA PANDEY: Hi. I’m Erica Pandey, host of this season of How It Happened. We waited a bit to drop our last episode as we've been watching and reporting on Elon Musk's leadership of Twitter. A few months in, a narrative has started to emerge. 

It's been tumultuous. Both Musk critics and supporters have found plenty of reasons to root against him and to cheer him on. And as we watched Musk's takeover play out, it seemed to mark a clear, unmistakable milestone in his career. Axios tech managing editor Scott Rosenberg has watched Musk's ascent since the 1990s. 

SCOTT ROSENBERG: I think someone like Elon Musk — has had so many victories in his career that he sort of reaches the point of feeling invulnerable, right? Like he can't lose. And this is the logic of every sort of conquering emperor, right? You just keep adding provinces to your empire. Elon Musk makes companies — that's what he does. 

ERICA PANDEY: But every empire reaches a tipping point. It grows so large that it becomes unruly, unrule-able even. It's possible that Musk's takeover of Twitter will be that point for him.

It's not just the chaos his reign brought to Twitter. Tesla's stock is falling, his biotech company Neuralink is reportedly under federal investigation, SpaceX is facing a complaint from former employees filed with the National Labor Relations Board. 

No one can put out multiple fires at once. Musk, a CEO numerous times over, likes to run his companies himself. Right now, each one is facing a unique set of challenges. 

SCOTT ROSENBERG: There's this kind of chaos and indecision that's communicated which actually undercuts the vision of Elon Musk as this superhero who can work miracles. Because instead what we're seeing is a kind of slow motion train wreck a lot of the time. 

ERICA PANDEY: Across this season, we've charted the rise of Elon Musk, business titan and tech mogul. We've examined his tolerance for risk, his impulsive behavior online, and the devoted fanbase he's cultivated as he's conquered industry after industry: from online payments to electric vehicles, to space and biotech.

In this episode: We'll go deeper on Musk's first months at Twitter. He's disrupted Twitter as we knew it, and it remains to be seen if it's for better or for worse, and that depends on who you ask. At the same time, his actions have called into question his leadership at the rest of his companies. 

There's always been a debate about how to view Musk, his achievements, and his behavior. It's never been louder than it is right now.  

From Axios, this is How it Happened: Elon Musk vs. Twitter. Part Five: Cracks in the Empire

ERICA PANDEY: Musk stepped into the role of Twitter CEO with a Must-Do list. He said he wanted to change how Twitter handled content moderation. He said he wanted to change how the platform makes money and he made a bet on subscriptions. And he wanted to add new features to Twitter to dramatically expand the platform's role in our lives. 

That was a long list to walk in the door with, it has only become longer, because Musk introduced new problems to Twitter himself. 

From the jump, there were Twitter users, political figures and fellow Silicon Valley titans applauded Musk's fearlessness in laying off staff and his relaxed boundaries on free speech, including letting people previously banned for hate speech back onto Twitter. 

We reached out to Musk and his companies for comment and they did not respond. 

As Musk settled into his new job in November, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings gave an interview at the New York Times DealBook conference. In that interview, he called Musk: 

REED HASTINGS ARCHIVAL: ... The bravest, most creative person on the planet. I mean, you know, what he's done in multiple areas is phenomenal. Um, you know, his style is different than like, I'm trying to be like a really steady, respectable leader. You know, he doesn't care.

ERICA PANDEY: But many of us at Axios who have been covering Musk were shocked by some of the things he did in the immediate aftermath of his takeover. Especially because the chaos wasn't playing well with some important audiences.

SARA FISCHER: Elon Musk started to really get in trouble with advertisers. 

ERICA PANDEY: Sara Fischer, media reporter for Axios. Musk himself said in November that fleeing advertisers caused a quote "massive drop in revenue." 

SARA FISCHER: He started to tweet misinformation. Advertisers were becoming frustrated because their points of contact at the company were getting fired or resigning. So to watch him decimate Twitter's ad business is shocking to me because somebody who wants to really move fast and break things knows you need some money to do it.

SCOTT ROSENBERG: So far, pretty much everything that Elon Musk has done at Twitter has been an improv act, 

SCOTT ROSENBERG: ... And if he continues with that, I think he will only cause more chaos and sort of destruction of value at the company. And as an observer of social media and of Elon Musk, I don't think he has yet really taken Twitter seriously as a company or as a platform for human communication.

ERICA PANDEY: For Rosenberg, there was an early tell that Musk wasn't going to recalibrate his use of Twitter, which is often irreverent and can even be irresponsible for a figure of his stature, with a following of his size. A conspiracy theory about an attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul Pelosi that had been circulating on the far-right made its way to Musk. And he shared it.

SCOTT ROSENBERG: So on the weekend right after Musk took over Twitter, he just casually sent out this tweet about Paul Pelosi in a way that was so colossally irresponsible, it would've been irresponsible for him to do this as not as the owner of Twitter, right? Just as somebody with a huge following, it would be a bad thing to do.

But he did this within 48 hours of assuming the role as owner and effective CEO of Twitter. 

And I think everyone, not only at Twitter, but the world at that moment sort of backed up a second and thought, Wait, is this, is this what we're gonna be dealing with now that Elon Musk owns Twitter? Two months later, the answer is absolutely yes. 

SPEAKER ON YAHOO FINANCE: The fact that Musk tweeted a totally unfounded tweet about Paul Pelosi last week and then deleted it ... I don't know if that bodes well. 

ERICA PANDEY: Meanwhile, Musk also decimated Twitter's workforce. 

SPEAKER ON BLOOMBERG TV: Chaos at Twitter continues. They may have fired too many workers, may have fired the wrong ones. Maybe fired them too soon.

SPEAKER ON BLOOMBERG TV: A bit of a reversal here. Twitter is bringing back dozens who were fired….

ERICA PANDEY: On Nov. 16, Musk sent a note in the middle of the night telling all employees there would be a new work culture and that could opt-in or opt-out and lose their jobs. My Axios colleague Zach Basu is reading the letter. 

Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade. 

Twitter will also be much more engineering-driven. Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway. At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense. 

If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below:

Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance. 

Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.

SARA FISCHER: That whole resignation wave of people who didn't respond yes to Elon Musk's hardcore was pretty significant. And you know, there's pictures going viral of beds and Twitter, and that's riled up regulators in San Francisco who wanna make sure that corporate housing is being used for the right stuff. 

Most of their big lawyers and the folks that are responsible for keeping Twitter out of trouble with regulatory compliance, etc., are all out.  

ERICA PANDEY: There was product chaos when a new process to verify users on the platform went awry. 

SPEAKER ON NBC NEWS: Wall Street is watching pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly today. Its stock plummeted last week after someone impersonated the company on Twitter. Said it would make Insulin ... free. 

ERICA PANDEY: It was hard to keep up with all of the headlines coming  out of Twitter. Cable networks and news outlets covered the minute to minute drama.

SPEAKER ON YAHOO FINANCE: Elon Musk is making more waves after his Twitter takeover tweeting that Apple is threatening to withhold Twitter from its app store.

SPEAKER ON CNN: Late last night, Twitter's owner and chief Twit Elon Musk said that Trump who has been banned since inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is now back on the platform. 

SPEAKER ON CNN: Musk tweeted at 6:44 last night with two popcorn emojis. He alerted his 119 million followers to a long thread called the Twitter files posted by CK journalist Matt Taibbi. Taibbi said that it was the first installment in a series quote based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter. Musk promised that more is coming today. 

ERICA PANDEY: There was one news cycle where I felt Musk was really flexing his power over the platform and articulating a very specific vision of free speech: one that seemed to actually exclude journalists.

In December, the Twitter accounts of several prominent journalists who cover Musk were suddenly suspended. First, Musk banned the account ElonJet, which tracks the location of his private plane. Musk said this account threatened his privacy and safety and violated Twitter's guidelines. But then, journalists reporting on ElonJet getting banned lost their own accounts. And then, at least one journalist reporting on other journalists getting banned also got banned.

To Musk's fans, banning journalists from Twitter felt like a fresh interpretation of Twitter's free speech rules. The suspensions were viewed as justified to those who didn't trust the mainstream media. 

But to others, it looked like a zero-tolerance regime, with new rules meant to serve the new CEO above anyone else. 

SPEAKER ON ABC NEWS: Breaking news overnight, Twitter suspended multiple journalists from prominent outlets including the Washington Post, the NYT, and CNN, Elon Musk claimed a violation of policy. 

ERICA PANDEY: The suspended journalists tried to press him on why they were banned, in a Twitter Spaces conversation and he offered one defense, then quickly dropped off the call. 

TWITTER SPACES AUDIO: Oh, I think, I think Elon has, uh, has left.

ERICA PANDEY: The day after the Spaces with the banned journalists, Musk tweeted this: 

@elonmusk: So inspiring to see the newfound love of freedom of speech by the press 🥰

ERICA PANDEY: This kind of open trolling of the mainstream media seemed to many on the right as payback to what they saw as quote-unquote "liberal shadow-banning" — they felt social media algorithms had been stacked against them, de-amplifying their posts to favor liberal perspectives. Taken together his individual actions and decisions raised a question: was all this chaos a means to an end?

DAN PRIMACK: I do believe that when new owners come into a company, they often view there as being value in shaking things up, particularly if it's become a stale and kind of complacent company.

ERICA PANDEY: Dan Primack, business editor at Axios. 

DAN PRIMACK: There was a group of people who viewed Twitter as something that needed to be burned down to be rebuilt, not just tinkered with not just. Playing around the edges, but really had the, some creative destruction here. 

And Musk, I think, to a certain part, was part of that group. And if that's your belief, then when there is destruction, whether that be in terms of employees or even certain technologies or even reputations, what so many people kind of flinch at and say, "Oh my God, what's happening there?" These people look and say, "Yeah, that's what we have to do."

When you speak to folks, including investors, in Twitter or in Elon Musk's version of Twitter, they always go back to: "He ran SpaceX and Tesla like this to some extent."

ERICA PANDEY: Sure, his successes at Tesla and SpaceX can cast Musk's management of Twitter in a new light, but the chaos at Twitter is arguably overshadowing those very same successes. 

DAN PRIMACK: Until April, Elon Musk was best known for SpaceX and for Tesla, and for every now and then being a little bit eccentric or, or being a bit of a troll on Twitter, but I think even the trollish on Twitter was, was very much overshadowed by what he had done at Tesla and SpaceX. I think that's way, way down on the resume. 

I think right now, if you ask people, "What does Elon Musk do?" Twitter would be in the first sentence, if not the first word, of what most people would respond, and it hasn't gone great. Even Musk, you know, keeps talking about how the company is in tough financial shape. He's gone from wunderkind to kind of a little bit of a laughing stock when it comes to Twitter.

ERICA PANDEY: That perception could be because this is all playing out on a split screen: On one side are headlines about Musk's decisions regarding Twitter, and on the other are his tweets that continue to often come across as crass or out of touch. 

TOM NICHOLS: He seems not to understand that running a company is not the same thing as being the most visible and obnoxious executive in a company.

ERICA PANDEY: Tom Nichols is an author and academic focusing on international affairs and political leadership. He wrote a book on the death of expertise, examining figures who came into power because they rebuked conventional wisdom.

TOM NICHOLS: I think Twitter was perhaps his biggest mistake because this was the one place he was going to have complete control and be in charge instead of being a kind of wealthy regent who tasks things out to experts. In this case. He said, "OK, I'm gonna get my hands right into it. I'm gonna plunge my hands into this problem." And he's completely screwed it up because he really has no idea what he's doing.

ERICA PANDEY: Musk's disruption is celebrated by some, but in the eyes of Nichols and others, Musk has been flailing. And from their perspective that appearance is taking a toll on perhaps his most valuable entity: the Elon Musk brand. 

SCOTT ROSENBERG: I think Musk's brand has always been this kind of superhero world-changing tech CEO who was going to convert the auto industry to electric vehicles and bring humanity to Mars and save human civilization. And he's tried to tie his acquisition of Twitter to that by talking about how he is going to preserve the public square and make it safe for free speech and the future of human consciousness.

But what people are seeing as his brand, at least since he's been running Twitter, has become much more chaotic, much more partisan, much more tied to almost like a robber-baron CEO who comes in and fires three-quarters of the company and says, "You have to sleep in the office now. And the only way we will survive is if you are hardcore with me."

ERICA PANDEY: Musk is giving so much time and energy to Twitter — and that has consequences.

TOM NICHOLS: It will become tiring and exhausting and it's already hurting his other business. 

ERICA PANDEY: That's where we're going. How the drama at Twitter is impacting his other companies — and whether he can sustain an empire that has become this large. 

========================================================================

ERICA PANDEY: We're back. When Musk took over Twitter, it became another province in his already massive empire. 

SCOTT ROSENBERG: Musk's Empire now is huge, right? Its heart is Tesla, but he also owns SpaceX, which has become a hugely important company. He owns Neuralink, which is trying to embed chips in the human body. He owns the Boring Company, which is digging tunnels under cities.

ERICA PANDEY: Musk runs his empire in a unique way. He tends to share resources between his companies, spreading his leadership as CEO across all of them, for example. But this means that shocks in one part of his empire reverberate throughout the others — each of which faces its own challenges. Let's start with Tesla. 

JOANN MULLER: Tesla is facing some pretty serious problems. If it were any other car maker, I think the CEO would be intensely focused on trying to correct the course and, and it would be all hands on deck. 

ERICA PANDEY: Joann Muller, Axios transportation reporter. She's watched as Tesla's stock has plummeted. It is down roughly 46% in the last six months. And the company missed its deliveries goal for 2022. 

Tesla alone accounts for about 10% of all retail investors' portfolios. That's according to a Vanda Research report. At one point,  the stock’s downturn had erased nearly $78 billion of individual investors' wealth. 

This isn't hedge funds or index funds. This is mostly average people who are investing their money by themselves. Muller says the stock's fall is a reflection of a few things. 

JOANN MULLER: Tesla is seeing some pretty significant weakening demand in China, which has been, you know, one of their biggest markets. On top of all of that, you have all the COVID shutdowns that have affected production. So that in itself is a giant headache. 

The other thing is that Tesla is also having issues ramping up production in Germany and in their new plant in Austin, Texas, and they're trying to put in some really new high tech manufacturing processes and they're having trouble getting it right and, and this, too, is a major headache for any automaker, and they've had some logistics snafus that have delayed the delivery of vehicles.

So you have macro issues, you have Tesla issues, and then you have the Twitter chaos and the leadership vacuum that I think people are fearing. 

ERICA PANDEY: And then, of course, there's this other thing: By the end of 2022, Musk sold off roughly $23 billion worth of Tesla stock, possibly using his profits from that to fund the Twitter acquisition. But flooding the market with that much Tesla stock at once has driven down its price. As you might imagine, some of Tesla's investors have concerns about how things are going. 

In 2018, one shareholder sued Musk over his financial compensation package from Tesla. There were specific concerns that he was over-paying himself, but it opened the floodgates for other kinds of criticism. Recently, a Tesla investor filed a separate complaint, alleging that Musk has done irreparable damage to the company's reputation. Musk is also facing an additional lawsuit related to his 2018 tweet that he had secured funding to take Tesla private. As of this recording, that suit's trial has just begun. 

In November, Musk appeared in court in Delaware for the compensation lawsuit where he denied having a role in putting together his compensation package, which is potentially worth more than $55 billion. 

Elon Musk vs. Twitter Part V: Cracks in the Empire

Listen to the latest episode of  Axios' How it Happened podcast

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As Elon Musk has thrown himself into running Twitter day-to-day and rebuilding the platform in his vision, his other companies have struggled with challenges of their own.

Why it matters: Musk's acquisition of Twitter could mark a major milestone in his career — the moment his cross-industry empire became too big and too complicated for him to run every company. 

What's happening: Each of Musk's companies is facing serious challenges. 

Tesla is facing a series of lawsuits, including one that went to trial this week over a 2018 tweet saying he secured funding to take the car company private, sending its stock price on a roller coaster ride.

Separately, a Tesla shareholder sued Musk over his compensation package from the company, which is potentially worth more than $55 billion. Musk denies having a role in putting it together. 

And a Tesla investor filed a complaint alleging that Musk has done irreparable damage to the company’s reputation.

Meanwhile, the Tesla stock price has fallen nearly 46% in the last six months. 

Now, a growing number of competitors are threatening Tesla's global EV dominance and putting it in an unfamiliar position — one of defense, Axios' Hope King reports.

SpaceX is facing a National Labor Relations Board investigation into a wrongful termination complaint filed by several former employees. 

They were fired after writing a letter that expressed concern about the impact of Musk's tweets on the company's reputation and environment. 

The Boring Company, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, has dropped the ball on several agreements to build out transportation infrastructure for American cities.

Neuralink, Musk's brain technology company, is reportedly facing a federal probe after roughly 1,500 test animals died. 

The big picture: There are still investors, not to mention other CEOs and fellow Twitter users, who believe in Musk's takeover of Twitter and who see him as a once-in-a-generation entrepreneur. 

In a recent interview at the New York Times Dealbook conference, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings described Musk as "the bravest, most creative person on the planet." Hastings added, "What he's done in multiple areas is phenomenal."

Yes, but: To some observers of Musk's empire, it doesn't seem he can give each of his companies the attention it needs from its chief executive if he's so focused on Twitter. 

What they're saying: Author and academic Tom Nichols tells the Axios How It Happened podcast, "It will become tiring and exhausting and it's already hurting his other business."

What to watch: whether Musk follows through on the results of a poll he conducted of Twitter users last month — 57.5% said he should step down.

Editor's note: This article has been corrected to say that a Tesla shareholder sued Musk over a compensation package potentially worth more than $55 billion, not $55 million.

Elon Musk vs. Twitter: Cracks in the Empire

As Musk has thrown himself into running Twitter, the challenges facing his companies have mounted.

Illustration of a cracked cellphone with the twitter logo in the center

Elon Musk

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Our media reporter Sara Fischer unpacks the challenges at Twitter that Musk could inherit — and what he might do about them in the latest episode of How it Happened: Elon Musk vs. Twitter podcast. She takes listeners inside Twitter to understand how the platform has struggled with content moderation over the years.  

SPEAKER ON MSNBC: Elon Musk struck a deal to buy Twitter at a price of roughly 44 billion bucks. 

But the question is, What's he gonna do with it? 

RICH GREENFIELD: I mean, you've got one of the most innovative product people worth more money than anyone else on planet Earth.

KATE KLONICK: Elon Musk doesn't know anything about free speech and doesn't know anything about governance. In my mind, he's just a random person who happens to have billions and billions of dollars.

SARA FISCHER: I’m Sara Fischer, the media reporter at Axios and your guest host of this episode of “How it Happened.” Erica Pandey will be back with the next episode. 

As of this taping, Oct. 21, we know it’s more likely than not that Musk will own Twitter, a crucial global platform that has been the site of social movements and also a hotbed for misinformation. 

What exactly is he taking on? And what is his vision for changing it? 

In this episode, I'm going to be sharing my reporting to take you inside Twitter. You'll meet former Twitter employees, financial analysts, and a major player in the social media landscape who once advised President Trump. 

I’ll take you through the ways this platform impacts geopolitics, the engineering and business challenges that have beset Twitter for years, and the tension between free speech ideals and the urgent problems that arise when anyone can say anything — even threats of violence.

And you’ll learn why Elon Musk thinks this platform matters and what we know currently about how he wants to change it.

ELON MUSK ARCHIVAL: I think there's, there's the, the risk civilizational risk, uh, is decreased. If Twitter, the, the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform.

FISCHER: From Axios, this is “How It Happened: Elon Musk vs. Twitter. Part IV: Musk’s Must-Do List”

Musk bid on Twitter at a moment of company stagnation and lack of direction. It's been a dark period for Twitter. But it wasn’t always this way. 

Twitter was launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and a handful of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who were all building a completely different startup at the time. Dorsey is largely credited with the idea of a free app that could let users share short status updates with one another. 

After making a splash at a tech festival in 2007, Twitter quickly accrued a massive user base of global celebrities, businesses and government leaders, making it one of the hottest Silicon Valley startups of the aughts. People from all over the world flocked to this platform.  

We reached out to Musk for comment on this series, and he declined. We reached out to Twitter as well, and the company declined to offer comment. 

As Twitter became a global phenomenon, its promise and its pitfalls came down to a defining issue: free speech. 

Free speech is an ideal, but in practice, it’s limited to some extent everywhere. The question is, how? And how much? Twitter’s global reach only makes this more complicated. 

On one hand, it operates in many countries where free speech is lightly regulated and a free and independent press can thrive, like the U.S.

On the other, it also operates in countries where free speech is not tolerated, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In those countries, citizens have been persecuted for speaking out against the government. 

SPEAKER ON AL JAZEERA ENGLISH: Ever since July 2016, when an attempted coup failed to depose Erdoğan, Turkey has imprisoned more journalists than any other country in the world.

FISCHER: You’ll recall the Arab Spring, which started in late 2010. 

SPEAKER ON AL JAZEERA AMERICA: [Crowds protesting] The protests in Tunisia grew as quickly as the anger, and soon calls for reform were as loud online as they were on the streets.

FISCHER: It was considered the first of many social movements amplified on Twitter that led to regime changes and to policy changes.

Speech isn’t just speech. It mobilizes people to action, including sometimes violence. Speech online is connected to actions in real life.

Early social media presented itself as a place for free speech, including Twitter. But completely unregulated, unmoderated speech? That’s never been the case. Twitter has rules that users must follow. For example, it bans threats of violence, terrorism, self-harm and the exploitation of minors. Disciplinary action can range from Twitter removing a tweet to kicking a user off the platform. 

According to TIME, between July 2020 and December 2020, the company took disciplinary action against a record-setting 1.1 million accounts. On Jan. 8, 2021, after the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol building, Twitter cited these rules as the reason for kicking former President Donald Trump off the platform.

SPEAKER ON CBS THIS MORNING: Mr. Trump lost his primary megaphone overnight when Twitter permanently shut down his personal account.

FISCHER: So far, Twitter has treated most users equally; everyone has the same free speech protections and the same free speech rules on Twitter.

But it has a really big exception for Tweets from elected and government officials. 

Let’s say an elected official, like a head of state or member of congress, tweets in a way that violates the platform’s policies. 

Instead of removing the tweet, as Twitter would with most users, Twitter will typically leave up the tweet BUT place it behind a notice that warns users that the content has violated a rule and that the user must make an informed decision to click through to see it. 

They do this because of the public interest and, at times, the necessity to know what an elected official is saying. But even this exception had … an exception. 

In the U.S., Twitter faced public criticism for years for leaving former President Trump on the platform. The criticism increased in intensity as Trump’s rhetoric devolved into calls to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Twitter eventually suspended his account after the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Of course, this decision faced blowback, too. Fox at that time… 

SPEAKER ON FOX NEWS: Just days after Donald Trump called for breaking up the Big Tech monopolies in order to preserve democracy, the Big Tech monopolies have silenced him. 

FISCHER: In fact, a lot of the interest around Musk owning Twitter quickly boiled down to Donald Trump. Musk has said he’d reverse Trump’s Twitter ban. 

Here he is at the Financial Times’ Future of the Car Summit in May of 2022, just weeks after initially offering to buy Twitter.

ELON MUSK ARCHIVAL: I, I do think that, uh, uh, it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was, that was a mistake, um, because it, uh, it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice. He is now going to be on Truth Social, um, as will, uh, a large part of the, sort of the, the right in the, in the United States. 

Um and so I think this could end up being frankly worse than having a single form where everyone can debate. Um so um I guess the answer is that I would reverse the perma ban. I'll say I'm not, I don't own Twitter yet. So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, cuz what if I don't own Twitter?

FISCHER: Of course, Donald Trump and other banned users have plenty of other options to participate in public discourse without Twitter. Trump has launched his own social media platform called Truth Social where he has over 4 million followers.

ELON MUSK ARCHIVAL: This is the point that I'm trying to make, which is perhaps not getting across is that banning Trump from Twitter, didn't end Trump's voice. It will amplify it among the right. And this is why it is morally wrong and flat-out stupid.

FISCHER: Musk is saying kicking Trump off of Twitter creates social media silos. 

And Musk has tweeted about Trump and Twitter, of course. My colleague Zach Basu is reading Musk’s tweets. Here are some from earlier this year.

@elonmusk:Truth Social (terrible name) exists because Twitter censored free speech.

@elonmusk: Even though I think a less divisive candidate would be better in 2024, I still think Trump should be restored to Twitter.

FISCHER: And he’s tweeted about Twitter’s relationship with free speech, seeming to implicitly reference events like Trump being removed from the platform. 

@elonmusk:Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?

FISCHER: Jason Miller, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, now runs GETTR, a social media platform that bills itself as a quote-unquote "free speech" alternative to Twitter.

JASON MILLER: I was one of those people who admittedly never thought that the Silicon Valley tech platforms would go and completely deplatform a sitting president of the United States. 

FISCHER: GETTR rose in prominence as conservatives began to question whether Twitter had a liberal bias, especially after Trump was suspended from the platform. Miller still remembers that moment. 

MILLER: And I remember it just completely blew my mind that what message was sent about free speech rights, not just in the United States and around the world, but even taking a step back, realizing that once a sitting president of the United States, regardless of what you think about President Trump, if you like him, if you hate him, uh, if you're a different country and you could care less. But the message that sends is that really the guardrails are off now for the Silicon Valley tech companies, that they can deplatform and kick anyone off that they want at any time for purely political reasons. And there are no repercussions. 

FISCHER: Here’s how Twitter explained the decision at the time in its own statement, quoted here on NBC News:

SPEAKER ON NBC NEWS: Twitter run by CEO Jack Dorsey saying, after close review of the president's recent tweets, it banned him due to the risk of further incitement of violence.

FISCHER: Fast forward a year and a half. Dozens of social media apps like Truth Social and GETTR have launched in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection. They’re looking to ensure that banned users have their own outlet for expression. 

These Alternative apps are collectively averaging roughly a million downloads per month, according to research from mobile analysis firm Apptopia. 

They brand themselves as tolerant of all political ideologies and are seen as having more lax enforcement of content moderation rules. 

According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center on the seven most prominent alternative social media apps, all seven emphasized quote un-quote “free speech.” It also found that roughly two-thirds of all users on these apps identify as Republican or lean Republican.

Which brings us back to Musk, who is concerned about social media silos — and what he has said publicly about free speech as a principle. It's unclear at times if Musk is talking about free speech or capturing the spectrum of political ideologies.

He spoke about the need for what he calls a public, digital town square in an appearance on the “All-In Podcast” in May. 

ELON MUSK ARCHIVAL: I think there's a need for a public town square, digital town square that, uh, where people can debate, uh, issues of all kinds, um, including the most substantive issues. Um, and in order for that to be the case, you have to have something that is as broadly inclusive as possible, that has as much of the, the, the people on the platform as possible, uh, where it's, uh, it feels, uh, balanced from a political standpoint. Uh, it's not biased one way or the other. Um, and where the system is transparent.

FISCHER: He’s talked about wanting a degree of free speech that is accessible to anyone, anywhere. Here he is at the TED2022 conference in April. 

ELON MUSK ARCHIVAL: My strong, intuitive sense is that, uh, having a public platform that is maximally trusted, um, and, and, and, and broadly inclusive, um, is extremely important to the future of civilization.

FISCHER: Here’s the big problem. Musk has also undercut that sentiment, even as he tries to describe how it would play out if Twitter were under his control. 

ELON MUSK ARCHIVAL: I think, uh, obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. Um, so to obviously there, there are some limitations on free speech, uh, in, in the U.S. And, and of course, uh, Twitter would have to abide by those, uh, rules.

FISCHER: On one hand, Musk is saying that around the world, Twitter will be a safe haven for free speech. But on the other, he also says it will also adhere to the laws of the countries that its users exist in.

Those things don’t necessarily go hand in hand. This will force him to make tough decisions. Just like those now facing Twitter's current owners.

Here’s Kate Klonick, a lawyer and academic at St. John’s University focused on governance of online speech.

KATE KLONICK: The First Amendment protects individual speech against government restriction. So it is really just about the government's ability to stop you from speaking, not about private citizens’ ability to stop another private citizen from speaking. 

One of the things that you're seeing is that because the United States it has the First Amendment and because the Supreme Court has traditionally had a very broad kind of absolute ban on a lot of forms of regulation on freedom of expression, you have other countries that are not so restrictive, passing laws that are having effects in their territorial boundaries.

And essentially, one of the things that we're going to kind of see play out over time is the amount of influence that these different countries have. If it makes a lot of sense for the platform to change its overall rules to accommodate the high watermark of another country and what they're demanding for content moderation, then maybe that's something that they'll start to do and moving away from kind of a more free-speech protected environment. You're getting all of these different rules in all of these different places, and it's not clear how, if there are kind of legal restrictions, these will play out jurisdictionally over time. 

So it's one thing to have a philosophy about what's allowed on Twitter. It's a completely different thing to try and enforce whatever rules you put in place.

And that’s been Twitter’s most painful problem. They call it content moderation. Basically, it’s how to set rules, how to enforce them, what to do when they’re violated, and how many warnings users are given after breaking rules before they are suspended entirely. 

These are questions that every platform is struggling with — and even if they can set clear rules, scale is a huge challenge. Artificial intelligence is not in a place to handle these issues entirely, and so human review of content is still crucial, but the volume of content being created at any given moment overwhelms the pace of human review. 

JENNA GOLDEN: And I think that a lot of the companies, Twitter, Facebook, Google to name a few, really started to evaluate, is this worth it? Do we have the man- or womanpower internally to manage all of the content and to really give it the look that we need to give it?

FISCHER: Jenna Golden is the former head of political advocacy sales at Twitter. 

GOLDEN: I believe the company now has maybe close to 5,000 employees. When I started, we were less than 1,000 employees. When I left, we were probably close to 3,500 employees. I left the company in July of 2017. So if you think about the amount of content, billions of tweets that are pumping through Twitter on a daily basis and the company taking a moment to step back and say, if we really wanna do this right, and if we really want to be able to look at every piece of content and make sure that it passes the rules and the smell test, can we even possibly do that? Do we even have the resources to do it? And I think the answer was no. And I think in addition to that, this is just a messy space and it is really hard to figure out the rules.

FISCHER: Kate Klonick on where Musk fits into all of this. 

KLONICK: Elon Musk doesn't know anything about free speech and doesn't know anything about governance.

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