Elon Musk: Chief Twit with Corporate Bro and Hari Kondabolu | 30

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Speaker 1 It's October 2022 in downtown San Francisco, and billionaire mogul Elon Musk is about to shoot a hilarious video to get some major lulls.

Speaker 1 He's gleefully standing outside of Twitter HQ, holding a small porcelain sink. The white basin looks like it weighs about 25 pounds, and Musk, who definitely works out, awkwardly tries not to drop it.

Speaker 1 A security crony does breathing exercises to keep from laughing. The guard holds open the HQ doors.
Musk marches in, gripping his comedy prop.

Speaker 1 Musk hoists the sink up to Twitter's front desk, but giggles overtake him. He spins away with a devilish grin on his face.

Speaker 1 The video is posted to Musk's Twitter account with the caption, entering Twitter HQ. Let that sink in.

Speaker 1 With this bizarre and incredibly stupid gesture, Musk finally confirms a much-anticipated purchase of Twitter that's been months in the making.

Speaker 1 Nobody knows exactly what Musk's takeover will look like, but nobody expects anything good.

Speaker 1 Employees are anticipating layoffs. Advertisers are apprehensive.
But the SpaceX and Tesla exec seems energized. He has a lot of great

Speaker 1 ideas. And now everyone will have to listen to them.
Except within two weeks, Musk will nearly bankrupt the multi-billion dollar company.

Speaker 5 Tonight, the world's richest man has just bought Twitter for $44 billion.

Speaker 7 The Silicon Valley Titan trying to placate Twitter advertisers, saying he's buying the platform to help humanity and doesn't want it to become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.

Speaker 5 Now, analysts are telling us that with advertisers' jumping ship, it's possible that Twitter, often called the world's public square, could go the way of AOL or MySpace and become obsolete.

Speaker 5 We

Speaker 5 are

Speaker 5 on a

Speaker 5 same

Speaker 5 kingship.

Speaker 1 From Wondery and at Will Media, this is The Big Flop, where we chronicle the greatest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time.

Speaker 1 I'm your host, Misha Brown, social media superstar, except on Twitter, because I refuse to call it X, at Don't Cross a Game Man.

Speaker 1 And today, we're talking about Elon Musk just winging it during the first two weeks of his twitter takeover

Speaker 1 on our show today we have a comedian and entrepreneur who you'll all know for his spot-on takes on corporate culture as corporate bro. It's Ross Pomerance.
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 Just honored to be here to discuss Elon. We got a lot to discuss.

Speaker 1 Also on the show, we have a comedian and political commentator. His newest special, Vacation Baby, is out now on YouTube and you can watch it for free.
So go check it out. It's Hurry Kondabolu.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 Thanks, Misha. I'm really excited.
I've worn my Mets hat since the podcast is the big flop.

Speaker 3 So here we go.

Speaker 1 Mets fans everywhere canceling us.

Speaker 3 That's perfect. And I'm a huge Braves fan, so I was going to ask you to take it off, but I guess that does fit the theme.

Speaker 6 No, no, trust me. This should make you feel good.

Speaker 3 It makes me feel great.

Speaker 1 So I guess before we get into Elon's takeover of Twitter, what was your relationship to Twitter prior to the takeover?

Speaker 6 Oh, my God. I mean, I think it was obsessive.
Every thought all of a sudden had to be shared. I feel mixed about it because I was so obsessed with it.
It was not good.

Speaker 6 And now I feel like part of of my brain is back.

Speaker 3 I'm a video guy. So I, you know, I had never loved Twitter.
Twitter never loved me. And it turns out that was probably for the best.
I already had a cancerous platform called Reddit.

Speaker 2 Ah,

Speaker 3 people who had opinions about things they knew nothing of, but I already had enough of that. So, you know, I have a Twitter.
And again, I'm with all of you.

Speaker 3 I will never call it X, but my opinions of it haven't honestly changed that much. They've kind of been the same.

Speaker 6 I was going to call it the bathroom wall of the internet, but that's really Reddit, to be honest.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 Well, it's that time. A little birdie told me the story of Elon's Twitter takeover, and now I'm going to tell you.

Speaker 1 So, between 2007 and 2012, Twitter was soaring, becoming one of the most popular and influential platforms to ever exist. It launched comics and journalists to stardom.

Speaker 1 It inspired TV shows and became an essential source of news for many of its users.

Speaker 1 But around 2013, when it went public, Twitter's popularity started to dip. The next nine years were plagued with slow growth, poor user retention, political scandals, and misinformation.

Speaker 1 There was one user, however, who was still very much in love with Twitter. Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 Musk is an active and cavalier tweeter, posting over 19,000 times in his decade of using the social media site. So it's April 2022, and Elon Musk is worth over $273 billion.

Speaker 1 By some accounts, the world's richest man.

Speaker 3 He might afford a house in the Bay Area.

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 2 It's a dream.

Speaker 1 And around this time, Musk proclaims himself as an advocate of free speech, which he feels is under attack by Twitter.

Speaker 1 He's amplifying far-right talking points that Twitter shadowbans conservative voices.

Speaker 1 When a conservative comedy account, the Babylon Bee, is suspended by Twitter for posting hateful transphobic material, Musk becomes one of their most vocal advocates.

Speaker 1 So, hurry and Ross, please read some of these, quote, satirical headlines from the ghouls behind the Babylon Bee. And Ross, we'll start with you.

Speaker 3 FBI admits it's really hard to solve crime they didn't make up themselves.

Speaker 3 Got some onion articles here.

Speaker 2 But like a poorer quality onion article.

Speaker 2 Okay, hurry.

Speaker 1 Could you read this next one?

Speaker 6 AOC weeps after learning that voting present doesn't mean she gets presents.

Speaker 6 Because present has a double meaning.

Speaker 6 If it means doesn't get gift, I think it would have been a little more clever, to be perfectly honest, but still not clever.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 So Musk hatches a plan to fix Twitter. Step one, become its largest individual shareholder, which he does.

Speaker 1 Step two, Musk writes an email to a Twitter chairman expressing his desire to purchase Twitter outright for $44 billion,

Speaker 1 somewhere between $4 billion and $19 billion more than Twitter is actually worth, depending on the analyst.

Speaker 1 After he sends his offer to the Twitter board, Musk does what any of us would do after potentially spending $44 billion.

Speaker 1 He plays the video game Elden Ring.

Speaker 3 Phenomenal game, honestly.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, he plays it in his mansion till 5.30 in the morning while he stresses out over what he just did.

Speaker 1 I mean, who amongst us hasn't made an irresponsible online purchase and then stayed up all night playing video games?

Speaker 6 That's how you know also that he might not be an incredible father because I'm a dad. I have one kid and and I can't stay up till 5:30 in the morning.

Speaker 2 Are you kidding me?

Speaker 6 Here's how exhausting the next day is. That's a man that does not take care of his children.
Someone else is taking care of his children.

Speaker 3 I mean, and to be a CEO of what, five companies, SpaceX, Nerling, Tesla, soon-to-be Twitter. Where does he have time to play Elden Ring?

Speaker 3 Again, great game. I just, I don't know.
I feel like there's some priority mismatch going on here.

Speaker 1 Well, the deal and offer is immediately chaotic.

Speaker 1 Since Elon's already offered way too much money to purchase Twitter, he tries his best to just back out of the deal, claiming that too many users are spam bots.

Speaker 1 Twitter threatens to take Musk to court to force the deal. Musk finally relents.

Speaker 1 He knows that it's likely he'll lose the case, be forced into the purchase anyway, and then also have to deal with all of that legal BS.

Speaker 1 Remember, he put this whole thing into motion because he wanted more Babylon B in his Twitter feed.

Speaker 1 So how does Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest charisma vacuum, break the big news to the world that he just purchased Twitter, humanity's awful comment section? Well, let's take a look at a photo.

Speaker 3 Is this the kitchen sink? Yeah, let that sink in. Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 Could you describe for the listeners what we're looking at?

Speaker 6 He's holding a sink.

Speaker 6 And he's saying entering Twitter headquarters, let that sink in. And that's because sync also has a double meaning, right?

Speaker 2 We love our double meanings, we love them.

Speaker 3 There's the guy in the background looking at him like, What the fuck's he doing with the sink?

Speaker 3 For all his shortcomings, he is a tremendous troll, one of the best.

Speaker 6 I feel bad for the assistant that had to go out and buy that sink for this stupid tweet.

Speaker 2 Actually, yep,

Speaker 3 his commitment to the joke, though.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you got to give him that.

Speaker 1 So, on October 26th of 2022, it's official. Elon Musk becomes CEO and brands himself the chief twit.
Everything about this company is about to change.

Speaker 1 On October 27th, Musk tweets an open letter promising nervous advertisers that, quote, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.

Speaker 1 Let's remember that.

Speaker 1 According to one study, the hours immediately following Musk's sink stunt and the announcement that his acquisition was official, from midnight to noon on October 28th, there were some 4,778 instances of hate speech on Twitter, an almost 500%

Speaker 1 jump. I mean, does that seem high to you or like surprisingly low? Low.

Speaker 6 Surprisingly low.

Speaker 3 Low and surprising.

Speaker 6 I always imagine it. Do you know how like in Ghostbusters, when that little trap opens up, you know, the thing that traps all the ghosts?

Speaker 3 Sucks them all in.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Well, this is when they're actually flying out.

Speaker 2 Oh, though.

Speaker 3 Well, when they go back, when they release them out, when they release them, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 That's exactly what I imagine. Like, they released all the ghosts at once.

Speaker 3 When consequences go away, the freaks come out. So, right.
That's what you get.

Speaker 1 Well, meanwhile, within the company, there are about 7,000 tweeps, aka Twitter employees. And these tweeps have been nervous for the whole two weeks leading up to Musk's purchase.

Speaker 1 The day after walking into the Twitter HQ with a literal sink, Musk meets up with Twitter's CEO and CFO.

Speaker 1 Maybe everything will be okay.

Speaker 1 Shortly after the meeting with Musk, the two are fired.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, thanks to reporting by the New York Times on those first two weeks, we know that Elon quickly sets up a quote war room in Twitter headquarters.

Speaker 3 The Alex Jones special right there.

Speaker 6 I just love the fact that, like, him firing them seems like, what is that? You want us off the Titanic. You're giving us lifeboats as we leave.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 3 No, please don't. No.

Speaker 2 No.

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Speaker 1 So in his big boy command center, he's flanked by a group of advisors, including about 50 engineers, product leads, and staff from his other companies, Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, and Neuralink.

Speaker 1 The tweeps start calling them the goons.

Speaker 1 Have you ever worked for a company that got acquired?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Yes. How is that?

Speaker 3 Well, you kind of know it's the beginning of the end. Yeah.
It depends on if you're getting, also, if you're getting bought by a bigger company or private equity, and then you know you're dead.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm just imagining this boardroom with like Skeletor and like the ghost of Mussolini and just like, they're all just like, yeah, Dr. Evil's in there.
They're all just scheming.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 it's very rarely a good thing yeah well the tweets they're also stressed out one engineering manager is handed a list by one of elon's goons it contains the names of hundreds of employees who all need to be fired the manager vomits into a trash can by his feet is that true that happened yeah

Speaker 1 So one person who keeps expecting to be fired is the head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth.

Speaker 1 Roth was the content moderator who made the decision to start tagging misleading Donald Trump tweets alleging that the 2020 election was rigged.

Speaker 1 But for whatever reason, Musk likes Roth, so he spares him his job.

Speaker 1 But Musk is very motivated to cut a lot of staff loose before November 1st because he wants to avoid paying out employee bonuses that come in the form of vested stock.

Speaker 1 Since that is technically illegal, a team at Twitter counters with a financial proposal that might save more money paying the bonuses instead of all of the hefty fines and legal fees.

Speaker 1 Musk agrees, but he has one condition. By the end of Halloween night, Twitter must hunt down any so-called ghost employees.
Spooky.

Speaker 1 In his mind, there must be tons of folks at Twitter getting paychecks without doing any actual work. So he has an executive conduct an audit to find these apparitions.

Speaker 3 Elon Musk would make a great McKinsey consultant. He would make a great McKinsey consultant.

Speaker 3 I'm surprised he didn't just bring McKinsey in there and just, you know, I mean, they're the grim reapers of pretty much every company ever.

Speaker 3 So, you know, this is a McKinsey job, if I've ever seen one. For sure.

Speaker 1 So the evening of the sync video was also the night of Twitter's Halloween party called Trick or Tweet.

Speaker 1 The mood is tense. People suspect that someone in a scarecrow costume is actually Elon Incognito, but it's just a hired performer.

Speaker 6 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Could you imagine being that paranoid at a Halloween party?

Speaker 6 That no one's going to show up. No one's going to dress up.

Speaker 2 If I was there, yes. If I was at Twitter, yes, I can imagine.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So feeling the proverbial axe about to fall, some employees at the party hug each other and cry.

Speaker 1 And friends they should be scared but not just yet because musk's auditor finds no ghost employees so on november 2nd musk fires him and has him marched out of the building oh geez i mean if you were a twitter executive at this time how are you navigating elon musk that's an interesting question so towards the end of the of World War II in Berlin,

Speaker 6 when he's in the bunker, at what point do you realize we should flee to other countries? And at what point do you just sit there and wait for the inevitable? That's essentially the question. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, I think to me, I'd probably wait for the inevitable because at least I get severance, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. You have to just pick whether you're going to fall the line, stick around or not.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's dubious if you want to get on Elon's good side. I mean, go fire some people and be like, look what I did.
He'd be like,

Speaker 2 that's my boy.

Speaker 3 I agree.

Speaker 8 Take the money. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a war story. You know, it's a scar.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You know, you've seen some shit.

Speaker 1 Well, soon advertisers notice that Musk has turned Twitter into that free-for-all hellscape that he promised it would definitely not become.

Speaker 1 Even more big advertisers, we're talking GM, Audi, Pfizer, General Mills, and more, they pause their Twitter ad buys.

Speaker 1 Blue chip brands decide to evaluate Twitter's performance before sinking money into a failing brand. Let that sink in, Elon.

Speaker 1 So, Twitter's revenue drops significantly. Ross, could you please read what Musk tweets in response?

Speaker 3 Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with the content moderation.

Speaker 3 And we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up exclamation.
They're trying to destroy free speech in America.

Speaker 2 Trump or Elon.

Speaker 3 I mean, the nice exclamation in there, messed up, you know.

Speaker 6 Also, it's like, it's not a free speech issue. It's a private company.
Like, people have opinions. You ignore them or you don't.
Like, you're upset that the toy's broken, but you broke the toy.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Oh, no, the consequences of my actions.

Speaker 2 Right, exactly.

Speaker 1 So, how can Elon make up for the loss of ad revenue?

Speaker 1 Well, he decides that paying subscribers will get a special badge next to their username to show that they are a premium user. He calls this Twitter Blue.

Speaker 1 This would be fine if he didn't decide to use Twitter's verification checkmark for the stunt. In its early days, Twitter had a problem with people impersonating others on the platform.

Speaker 1 So in 2009, they added light blue checkmark badges to verified users so folks knew they were legit. Users like celebrities, world leaders, and news orgs relied on this to help curtail misinformation.

Speaker 1 Musk claims verification is somehow elitist.

Speaker 6 I mean, first of all, it's just weird that he's bringing up class in any way. Like this,

Speaker 6 this is class warfare. That's what he's fighting.
Anyone can impersonate anybody. That's one issue.
The next issue is like, the checkmark was currency.

Speaker 6 Like that and the number of followers, but you could buy followers. You couldn't buy a check mark, which gave it currency.
So it's like, then what's the point?

Speaker 6 Like, you just got rid of a thing that actually

Speaker 6 was aspirational.

Speaker 1 At first, a Twitter blue subscription is set to be priced at $20.

Speaker 1 And then writer Stephen King sends shivers down Musk's already brittle spine.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Here's King's October 31st tweet. Hurry, could you please read it?

Speaker 6 $20 a month to keep my blue check?

Speaker 2 Fuck that.

Speaker 6 They should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron.

Speaker 6 It rhymed at the end, too. That's good rhyme.

Speaker 3 Strong rhyme.

Speaker 2 Strong rhyme.

Speaker 1 It's Halloween. So getting a stern message like that from the king of horror himself must have been pretty scary.
But Ross, can you please read what Musk's response from the following date was?

Speaker 3 Twitter's current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue check mark is bullshit. Power to the people.
Blue for $8 a month.

Speaker 6 It was free.

Speaker 2 You can't charge money and then claim it's for poor people. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah.

Speaker 3 The only people who were buying it were the people with the NFTs in their profile. Like, it was all like people with fake board apes buying that,

Speaker 3 the Elon stands.

Speaker 6 Well, it's strange because like he took all the blue checks away from people who had them previously, except maybe elected officials and stuff.

Speaker 6 Now, when I go on Twitter or X or whenever it is that I do go on, we just like maybe every couple of weeks, all the demons are the ones with a check mark.

Speaker 6 If I see someone writing to me with a check mark, it's going to be something awful. So, if anything, it became a really useful way to tell who horrible people are.

Speaker 6 They're the ones that have the blue check marks. It's like the scarlet letter, essentially, now.

Speaker 1 Well, all of this talk about Twitter Blue is, for the moment in this story, BS because it doesn't actually exist.

Speaker 1 So, Musk sets a fun challenge for his development team. Finish Twitter Blue by November 7th or you're fired.

Speaker 6 Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 1 True motivator. The pressure is on to pwn Musk detractors and make Twitter Blue happen in one week.
Esther Crawford, Twitter's director of product management, is on the Twitter Blue team.

Speaker 1 She works around the clock at the office to meet Musk's arbitrary deadline. Someone takes a photo of Crawford sleeping on the floor and it goes viral.

Speaker 1 She responds on Twitter, quote, when your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines, sometimes you hashtag sleep where you work.

Speaker 1 And let's take a look at that viral photo.

Speaker 2 Oh boy. Is this a refugee cam?

Speaker 3 That is, look at that.

Speaker 3 Yeah. She's got the weighted eye mask on though.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Looks like a SpaceX sleeping bag.

Speaker 1 I mean, but should Patagonia be selling a line of office sleeping bags?

Speaker 3 We know who's buying them.

Speaker 1 Well, while Twitter Blue is being built and advertiser dollars are drying up, layoffs begin in earnest.

Speaker 1 Initially, managers are told to expect a 25% cut to their teams, but a document being shared on the employees' Slack indicates that about half of Twitter's current staff, over 3,500 people, will have to be let go.

Speaker 1 In other words, a bloodbath.

Speaker 1 So many people are being laid off at once that folks are concerned they won't be able to keep the site up and running.

Speaker 1 When the layoffs are complete, Twitter's staff is reduced to about 2,000 employees remaining, down from 7,000.

Speaker 1 The layoffs are needlessly cruel and so sloppy that a few employees even get hired back because they were the only ones who knew how to operate certain tools in the revenue division.

Speaker 1 If offered, would you even accept your job back at this point?

Speaker 6 Depends on how much money we're talking about.

Speaker 2 Is he doubling the salary? Everyone's got a price. I'm just going to say it.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 6 If you're planning to leave soon anyway, it's like, while I look for a new job, let me get double my salary.

Speaker 8 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I hate to say it, and you guys can crucify me if you want, but Elon was right about having too many employees. They were like, they were a bloated company, and they could have...

Speaker 3 They could have run that company a lot more efficiently, a lot more lean. It wasn't what he did.
It's how he did.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, putting my NBA hat on, putting my douchebag hat on.

Speaker 6 The thing with using radiation is that you kill the cancer cells, but if you're not careful, you kill the body.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 6 Essentially, it feels like he just went nuts. He's like, I'm taking everybody out.

Speaker 3 Oh, he went scorched earth. He was just napalming the entire place.

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Speaker 1 Well, on November 8th, Election Day, Twitter is delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, the Twitter Blue development team meets their goal.

Speaker 1 Twitter Blue officially launches on November 9th. Head of trust and safety UL Roth sees another disaster in the making.

Speaker 1 He knows there's potential for any troll with an extra $8 a month to impersonate literally anyone using Twitter's perceived symbol of trust, the verification badge.

Speaker 2 And Roth is right.

Speaker 1 How bad does it get?

Speaker 1 Well, to find out, let's play a game.

Speaker 1 This game is called Guess Who is On Blue. Here are the rules.
I'm going to read some tweets from some notorious Twitter Twitter Blue trolls, and you have to tell me who the troll is impersonating.

Speaker 1 Here's an easy one to start.

Speaker 2 I'm nervous.

Speaker 1 Whoa! Twitter Blue is now available for free crypto. NFT holders can now get Twitter Blue for free by authenticating their wallet assets.
P.S. There might be a little surprise after authenticating.

Speaker 1 Bird NFT, side-eyes emoji. Who are they pretending to be?

Speaker 3 Elon, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Sounds like an Elon thing. That was my guess.
Elon Musk.

Speaker 3 Who else is a crypto king?

Speaker 1 They were pretending to be Twitter.

Speaker 2 Oh, Twitter. Oh, that's funny.
Oh, God.

Speaker 1 Twitter themselves.

Speaker 3 Well, that's the same thing, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's the same thing.

Speaker 1 Next one. As the apostle tells us in the 2 Corinthians 11, verse 14, the wicked may pose as the righteous and lay snares to trap the unwary.
Social media has worsened this phenomenon.

Speaker 1 Our blessed store is the only authorized source for the indulgences at $8 a month. Link in bio.
Who are they pretending to be?

Speaker 6 I'm going to guess Elon Musk again. Elon Musk.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to say the Pope at first, and now I guess it's probably Elon. But again, what's the difference? What's the difference here?

Speaker 1 Ross, you should have gone with your gut. It was the Pope.

Speaker 2 Oh, geez. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 The real Pope then responded: quote, My brothers in Christ, this is unseemly and so is the sin of scandal. Please stop.

Speaker 3 Oh, my brothers in Christ.

Speaker 1 Prayer hands emojis.

Speaker 3 Good.

Speaker 1 Third one. We have just overthrown the government of Brazil.
Who are they pretending to be?

Speaker 6 The U.S. State Department.

Speaker 3 I was going to say Bolsonaro at first, but I guess he already is the government. So

Speaker 1 I don't know if you'll get this one. This one was Chiquita Banana.

Speaker 6 Oh, that's hilarious. That's really good.
I would have never.

Speaker 3 I wouldn't have got that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I got there. All right.

Speaker 1 One last one.

Speaker 1 We are excited to announce that insulin is free now.

Speaker 2 Mark Cuban, um,

Speaker 6 Hershey's.

Speaker 2 That's good.

Speaker 3 That's funny. Biden, maybe

Speaker 1 Eli Lilly and Company, a big pharma brand.

Speaker 3 Oh, the company, yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 So, after the fake tweet from Eli Lilly, the stock price of the pharmaceutical company dropped over four percent. That's a loss of billions of dollars.

Speaker 3 Wait, so is this a problem or no?

Speaker 1 Well, while Twitter Blue is blurring the line between what's real and what's parody, this is taking place early November of 2022, when the results of the midterm election are being disputed.

Speaker 1 Unfounded rumors about malfunctioning voting machines in Arizona spread like wildfire.

Speaker 1 One expert says after election day, quote, there are definitely things we're seeing today that that would not have been there if this whole Elon Musk takeover had not happened.

Speaker 1 Let's say you're in Elon's probably very expensive shoes. What do you do at this point?

Speaker 3 Double down.

Speaker 6 I'd get on one of my rocket ships into space.

Speaker 2 That's what I'd do.

Speaker 6 They can't find me up there.

Speaker 8 I mean,

Speaker 6 Branson does something. So yeah, I'd probably go into space and just go into hiding.

Speaker 1 Well, hate speech of every kind becomes more frequent, convincing advertisers to keep away. As head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth is horrified by what is happening.

Speaker 1 While his team struggles to review complaints in the midst of massive layoffs, Musk seems indifferent. Roth says that Musk's response to this messy situation is, do it anyway.

Speaker 1 On November 10th, there's an all-hands meeting where Elon will be addressing the company for the first time. The outlook is grim.
Oh, geez.

Speaker 1 Musk tells employees that Twitter has a, quote, negative cash flow in the millions and that Musk himself has sold $4 billion in Tesla stock to help keep Twitter going.

Speaker 1 To be fair, Twitter was never a profitable company. Right.
But before the end of November, half of Twitter's top 100 advertisers stopped advertising on the website.

Speaker 1 These 50 advertisers had spent about $2 billion since 2020, a huge financial hit for the company. After Musk's first two weeks, it was estimated Twitter was losing $4 million

Speaker 1 a day.

Speaker 1 One person not in attendance, Yoel Roth. While the rest of Twitter is at a meeting, Roth sends a resignation email and sneaks out quietly, preferring not to be walked out by any of the goons.

Speaker 2 Respect that.

Speaker 6 It's kind of amazing to like Irish exit a job.

Speaker 3 Yeah, just ghost.

Speaker 6 I'm just going to quietly quit and walk.

Speaker 3 Just simply stop.

Speaker 2 Not showing.

Speaker 6 Just don't say a word to anybody. Just pretend this didn't happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 see i'm picturing like the slow-mo walking away from an exploding car in a match movie yeah you know the meme that i feel like best represents this whole situation is like from the simpsons where the kid like where someone's i think it was a clown killing a clown is like stop it stop it he's already dead and i feel like that best yeah yeah yeah

Speaker 1 well That's the end, at least for this episode. We're only covering the first two weeks of Musk's takeover, but Elon's antics have continued ever since and somehow have gotten worse.

Speaker 1 There's so much more. Yeah, I know.
Unless you're on a mental health cleanse, look up the Twitter files fiasco to learn more.

Speaker 1 So are there any missed opportunities for him to have messed up Twitter even worse or faster?

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah, of course.

Speaker 6 I don't want to give him ideas though, but you know, he could be selling all our personal data, releasing all our personal data every dm or chat could be made public like a library that's one way he could help destroy the company and the world he can merge with truth social yep that's a good oh yeah that's good yeah that's good yeah honestly the thing i think would save the company is just turning it into a porn site i mean it just seems like yeah if it's something that it requires some money but encourages you to send nude pictures to each other i don't know i mean i know there'll be a lot of guys that would sign up.

Speaker 3 Most people with a blue check mark.

Speaker 2 Oh, 100%.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 6 That's where the money is.

Speaker 3 Look at OnlyFans. I mean, they're printing.
Yes. Oh, yeah.
They are printing. Although there is a lot of porn on Twitter already.
I've heard.

Speaker 2 Allegedly.

Speaker 2 I've heard. I don't know.

Speaker 1 So let's do a little, where are they now? Let's start with the Babylon Be, the conservative parody news account that started it all.

Speaker 1 Later in November, the Babylon Be was unbanned along with many other accounts.

Speaker 3 Thank God.

Speaker 1 Finally, Musk probably said it was all worth it. Esther Crawford, who was sleeping on the floor at Twitter Blue, was fired in February of 2023.

Speaker 1 Yoel Roth, who has a PhD in communications and has written papers on content moderation, has returned to academia.

Speaker 1 Following his departure, accounts associated with groups like QAnon and Isis swell, and the moderation teams cannot keep up.

Speaker 2 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 Some hate groups are even buying Twitter blue check marks, like we've said, adding the look of legitimacy for anyone who's been under a rock.

Speaker 1 The mess at Twitter encouraged some of its top executives to follow Yoel Roth's example and quit.

Speaker 1 In October of 2023, a year after he let that sink in, Musk told the press he believed that Twitter was worth about $19 billion,

Speaker 1 admitting a loss of 55%.

Speaker 1 In January 2024, Fidelity, one of Musk's financial backers, said that Twitter has actually lost over 70% of its value since Musk's purchase.

Speaker 1 So to close it out, here's a clip of Elon in November of 2023 with a message to all of those lame advertisers out there.

Speaker 2 Let's watch.

Speaker 12 There was all of the criticism. There was advertisers leaving.
We talked to Bob Eigen. I hope they stop.

Speaker 12 You hope. Don't

Speaker 12 You don't want them to advertise? No. What do you mean?

Speaker 12 If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 go fuck yourself.

Speaker 12 Is that clear?

Speaker 3 Wouldn't it be nice to have that much money and not give a shit about anything?

Speaker 6 I mean, the fact he changed it to X is really appropriate because X is a a variable. It's not clear.
It's not defined. We don't know what the value is.

Speaker 6 It's volatile. Like,

Speaker 6 good job. The rebranding actually makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 So, here on the big flop, we try to be positive people and end on a good note, on a high. So, are there any silver linings that you can think of? Any good come out of Elon's Twitter?

Speaker 6 I've been writing again, which has been really great.

Speaker 2 That's good.

Speaker 6 I've been working on a book proposal that I've been meaning to do for years. I've I've written multiple scripts since then.

Speaker 6 Like, honestly, this is probably the most productive stretch in terms of writing I've had in years.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I think it's an it's an interesting lesson in, I mean, not that we needed X to be the example, but of the power of social media, what can happen when one person decides to literally become a dictator of it.

Speaker 3 It's forced a discussion. I don't know if it's necessarily changed too much, but it's just interesting.
All of a sudden, Zuckerberg looks like a, you know, a saint.

Speaker 6 and so it's like these interesting brand flops like switches flops are not quite the right word but flip-flops and we're watching it unfold in real time and i think the next the next thing unfortunately fortunately for this election cycle is gonna be ai and we're gonna see how that exists on each of these social platforms twitter is like a really public example of a corporation and somebody who's leading it who it doesn't know what they're doing and but you can apply that to so many other industries right this is just the most one of the more public ones but like, you know, they're driven by ego and profit or some mix of it.

Speaker 6 Like something like Elon Musk, like that's, it's not like that hasn't happened in other worlds. It's just that with Twitter, it's like, it's just a huge embarrassment.

Speaker 6 Like, but no one's dying because of it.

Speaker 1 You know, we did find one pretty positive silver lining. Now, I will preface this by saying there's still a ways to go on this subject, but the biggest one was the price of insulin.

Speaker 1 The Inflation Reduction Act reduced the cost from $1,000 a month to a cap of $35 a month for Medicare users.

Speaker 1 And after that fake tweet about free insulin, Eli Lilly extended that price cap to even more people.

Speaker 1 The guy who wrote the fake tweet knew that this price cap was already in the works, but he believes that his free insulin tweet put public pressure on both Congress and Eli Lilly to act.

Speaker 1 So now that we all know about Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, would you consider this a baby flop, a big flop, or a mega flop?

Speaker 8 Mega flop.

Speaker 3 Yeah, mega flop, Titanic flop.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Just humongous flop.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 That being said, this episode of the Big Flop brought to you by Twitter.

Speaker 3 Doesn't mean we won't take their money.

Speaker 6 Not actually. I mean, the thing was already in kind of in trouble.
Like you were saying, like it's all, it's ever made money. And so

Speaker 6 the fact it survived so long is already kind of shocking, but he really,

Speaker 6 wow, he was really efficient with destroying it in a very short period of time.

Speaker 1 Well, thank you so much to our amazing guests, Hurry Kundabolu and Ross Pomerance, for joining us here on the big flop. And thanks to all of you for listening.

Speaker 1 If you want to hear the story of Elon's messy Twitter takeover in depth, check out the Wondery podcast, Flipping the Bird, Elon vs. Twitter.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next week to talk about Pepsi's attempt at at a rewards program that took off in all the wrong ways.

Speaker 11 Bye. Goodbye.

Speaker 3 Bye.

Speaker 1 The Big Flop is a production of Wondering and At Will Media, hosted by me, Misha Brown, Produced by Sequoia Thomas, Harry Huggins, and Tina Turner. Written by Anna Rubinova.

Speaker 1 Engineered by Andrew Holzberger. Our story editor is Drew Beebe.
Our managing producer is Molly Gettman. Our executive producers are Kate Walsh and Will Malnati for At Will Media.

Speaker 1 Legal support by Carolyn Levin of Miller, Korzynik, Summers, and Raymond. Producers for Wondery are Matt Beagle and Grant Rutter.
Senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher.

Speaker 1 Managing producer is Joe Florentino. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesong Sync.
Our theme song is Sinking Ship by Cake.

Speaker 1 And executive producers are Lizzie Bassett, Morgan Jones, and Marsha Louie for Wondery.

Speaker 1 We

Speaker 1 are on a sinking ship.

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