Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge and host of the Decoder podcast, talks with Jon about Elon Musk’s newest and thorniest business venture: purchasing Twitter. In a recent article, “Welcome to Hell, Elon,” Patel describes the quandary that awaits the Tesla founder and argues that Musk has made a historic mistake. He joins Offline to talk Musks’ misguided free speech promises, the limits of technical solutions to political problems, and the hubris of an internet troll-turned-King Twit.
CHAPTERS
0:00 – INTRO
2:00 – Elon Musk is in a bind
6:01 – Content moderation
9:26 – Free speech & the threat to the 1st amendment
13:05 – Ad break
17:59 – Sensible laws for free speech?
20:40 – Elon should have expected the backlash
23:24 – Can Twitter sustain without content moderation?
25:50 – Does paying for blue checks save Twitter?
32:52 – Ad break
35:25 – Twitter turning into a right-wing platform?
42:06 – Final thoughts on social media platforms
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36 Comments
… Nilay Patel sounds exactly like Brennan lee mulligan …
Weird. Listening to the part about Tik-tok and it reminds me of listening to two extroverts discussing how everyone else clearly enjoys company. The tunnel vision is a little scary.
I have never had a Twitter account and have zero plans to have one. I view it as just a bunch of pop culture fuckery. 🤷♂️
You guys are too dumb to understand Elons game plan ..Doing podcasts is your biggest achievement lol
Interesting, ultimately I don’t care about twitter
It's illogical to blame Elon for people not making money on Twitter when he just took over. Also, he literally did say that he wants to make it possible for people to make money on the platform.
I am a fan of Elon's work but I am convinced that this will go down as his biggest boondoggle. He is a brilliant engineer but he is not a master of social paradigms. How can he understand a social media network? It is much easier to be a provocateur on social media than it is to be a leader. The man is surrounded by people who give him the illusion that he understands social paradigms… this is the Achilies heel of his motive.
This guy is looking at an apple tree in the winter and telling us how it has no fruit.
The guest trails off every sentence to the point he's unintelligible. Very hard listen as a result.
I can’t deactivate my account. It has been a week now.
Simple solution. Get off twitter.
😂😂😂
The weekend before election and a political podcast is talking about Twitter.
😂😂😂
Now pay your $8 to get the same blue check as me.
Laughs in private company
Tell your corporate overload (Indochino) that the presence of your drivel at 13:00 in support of their advertising content guarantees that I will NEVER purchase their product, no mater what it is, no matter how much I might want or need it.
Bow to your corporate overlords, Jon Favreau. Clearly, your sponsors entirely, completely, utterly, own you. Disgusting.
I've heard your name, Jon Favreau. I will avoid it strenuously, in any medium in which I find it, because of your choice of deference to Indochino, your corporate overlord. Tell Brian Tyler Cohen that I will unsubscribe his channel, simply because he recommended you to my attention
Yes, Indochino is now in my brain, so I guess their ad is successful if their goal was to engender utter hatred and disdain for their product, their brand. Because that is what it did
The thumbs down is from me. I skipped the ad, then turned the video off at about 20:00.
I have unsubscribed.
I have told YouTube to no longer recommend your videos to my feed.
My god, you are stupid.
And you lose, stupid.
Twitter is not pleasant to use. I quit because of the anger it made me feel when I was on there. Elon makes it worse with his trolling.
I abandoned Facebook and joined Twitter because Elon Musk is in charge. 🐦
What a masterclass! My understanding of social media suddenly grew 10x. What a clear thinker Nilay is!
Ok so what is Elon going to do when people start spamming his high-profile conservative friends' feeds with pornography then?
Elon Musk has no idea what free speech IS. I cannot think of a better marker for late-stage capitalism decay than the town square being owned by a single right-wing troll pretending to be a freedom-hero while pushing an authoritarian agenda. Elon Musk is so incredibly unintelligent that he doesn't even realize how roasted he gets with his posts. How embarrassing.
I’m living for this failing, unqualified billionaire seeing what he actually bought. Burn baby burn.
You are underestimating Elon Musk, all is speculation, just wait for what comes.
Oh, wait Elon made promises he can't keep, where have I heard that before …? Oh, yes, in almost all of his business ventures.
He is literally Trump 2.0 – claiming to be a genius when he is a giant grifter himself.
I was BANNED from twitter by JACK DORSEY because I was a liberal who was attacked by a bot farm. I had thousands of followers including Obama. So…I was a target. Republicans are being censored and liberals arent is a total f*cking LIE. It wasnt until Jan 6 that Qanon, Trump…etc… were kicked off. Elon is just addicted to twitter. Like heroin. Trolling verified accounts/celebrities makes him feel SO COOL!
Wonderful interview as always. I understand twitter is often awful for the Content Creators but as a total lurker on there I think it's great. It's two strengths imo are for learning academic level information from people who are expert in their field… and the rapid fire sharing of loads of great jokes whenever something weird happens in the news.
I don't look at what the algorithm recommends, or daily trends. I only go on specific user pages who are a) interesting b) trustworthy and c) tweet often and I don't see the outrage or the misinformation. I.e., for Covid info I started from SAGE (UK scientists) and they would post new papers that they thought were good, explain them in laymans terms and from reading their retweets I'd find new respected experts and it was so nice. It felt like I'd been let into a circle of academics who were both discussing their ideas with each other but also making it accessible for the public. I was faaar better informed from this than listening to UK politicians – our news was showing graphs with unlabelled x-y axes and an equation for "Covid Alert level" that didn't depend on the number of infections (Alert Level = no of infections + rate of infection … seriously!). Also I knew Covid was airborne, and wasn't spread by touching surfaces long before our news did. 🤷
So I'm going to miss twitter. Something about being able to post a series of pictures with a series of connected thoughts is really great for science communication in particular, and I don't know of anywhere else that's as good for explaining complex ideas. I can find my entertainment recommendations and niche hobby communities on reddit at least. (I'll be honest the humour on reddit isnt for me, wish I could find twitter humour somewhere else)
You’ve thought more about this than Musk has.
Twitter writ large is six problems in a trench coat pretending to be a solution.
If you really want to see 100% hands off free expression, that exists. It's also the birthplace of QAnon and a 1000 things worse.
No thanks.
Thanks so much for this interview/conversation, it kept my interest and was educational too. I don't use Twitter or TikTok or IG-just YT and FB-so it was illuminating to hear how those other platforms operate.
He laid off safety engineers and content moderators so there's that. Follow me for more insights :p
I may have missed it but did they discuss what they think will happen when the Chinese government inevitably demands that Elon censor certain tweets and viewpoints? Elon's ability to sell Teslas in China is vital to his financial standing. Would he risk standing up to the demands of the Chinese government?
Mike Masnick's piece on Techdirt is absolutely brilliant and as someone who has been on the Web since the 1990s it is absolutely on point.
If you're a Democrat, don't just vote on election day, send a message to Musk and terminate your Twitter account.
You Break It You Bought It
#Twexit?
No plan? He just bought the company 😂
Despite the economic downturn,I'm so happy☺️. I have been earning $ 60,200 returns from my $7,000 investment every 13days.