完整通话：马斯克 Twitter 全员大会 6/16/22

0:00All right. Hello everyone.

0:02Thanks for joining this special Q&A session with Elon.

0:05Elon, thank you so much for joining us.

0:08The company's been so eager to hear from you live and direct.

0:11We all appreciate you joining us today.

0:14Absolutely. Our product is planning.

0:16It's quite good to speak to everyone.

0:19Since we started late, I'm going to go right ahead and

0:22talk to Leslie so that she can moderate this Q&A session for us.

0:26Okay, sounds good.

0:27Amazing. Thanks for a high you on. We have a lot to cover, a ton to cover. So I am going to ask you a question that usually gives us at the end, which is, you know, you come back for a part two at some point.

0:41If there are things that we don't cover. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. So we have some pretty good. So I really do see this at the beginning of a conversation, obviously with the company at large, and also the teams and leaders over the next coming weeks and months and beyond.

0:56So we're just getting started.

0:59OK, so I'm going to zoom all the way out to the reason

1:02that we're actually here together today.

1:04And that is because you love Twitter.

1:07I love Twitter.

1:08Yes, I want to be fair about that.

1:09I love Twitter.

1:10In fact, I literally have tweeted, I love Twitter.

1:13You have.

1:13So tell us, say more, why do you love Twitter,

1:16and also why did you and do you want to buy Twitter?

1:21Well, let's see.

1:30I find like I learn a lot from what I read on Twitter

1:35and what I see in the pictures, videos, text,

1:43and memes that people create.

1:47I also find it's a great way to get a message out

1:53if I'm going to say something, make an announcement.

1:57I think Twitter's the best way to do that.

2:00It just goes that immediately to everyone.

2:04And I made this joke already, but some people

2:11use their hair to express themselves.

2:13I use Twitter.

2:17So I find it's for communicating with a lot of people

2:31simultaneously and getting that message directly to people.

2:36In the past, you'd have to, in order for somebody to read about something, you'd have to issue

2:43a press release or, and then you'd hope that the regular media would write about the press

2:50release and then they wouldn't write about it and quite the way you liked to write about

2:53it.

2:54I really found those like, the old style press releases kind of, like really quite strange

3:00because you're writing a press release about yourself, which is sort of something that the

3:05media, it's like some overly flattering, it's like mainly sort of propagandist, in fact,

3:13quite propagandist, and in hope that the media writes something favorable, which they usually

3:17do not. And I think that actually is maybe one of the best reasons for me using Twitter

3:25is attacking community,

3:27directed people and not through the lens of the media.

3:30I think this is obviously important role for the media to play,

3:34but as anyone knows who reads the newspaper,

3:38it's coming through quite a negative lens.

3:41I have to say, how many newspaper articles do you read that are positive?

3:46How many news articles do you read that are negative?

3:49What percentage are positive?

3:51What percentage negative?

3:52And then when you read about, it's obviously overwhelming

3:54the negative.

3:56And then when you read about something in these newspaper

4:01or it's a dated term in the news,

4:05where you actually personally understand the situation,

4:08how many times have the media got not right?

4:12I would say almost never, not never, but almost never.

4:15So this is a way for people to communicate directly

4:21with each other and not through a negative lens.

4:26And I think that's extremely important for the world.

4:28So I'm sort of going waxing on about this,

4:31but I think it's pretty important.

4:34And, you know, that, you can sort of my comments

4:41about Twitter being sort of like a digital town square,

4:45but really much more than that,

4:46because you can't put that many people in town square,

4:49you have to communicate with millions of people on Twitter. That's just an incredibly

4:56important thing and I think it's essential for functioning democracy to function well.

5:05I think it's essential to have a free speech and to be able to communicate freely. Now,

5:16But the free speech stuff, this needs to be, you know, it's free speech within the context

5:21of the law.

5:22So I'm not definitely not suggesting that we, you know, just flout the law because we'll

5:27get shut down in that case.

5:30And I think there's also this freedom of speech and freedom of reach.

5:35And you know, freedom of speech is one thing because like anyone could just go into the

5:40middle of Times Square right now and say anything they want, they just walk into the middle of

5:44of Times Square and tonight at the Holocaust, okay?

5:47Yes, to all of them, they will just do that.

5:49But that doesn't mean you have to,

5:50that needs to be promoted to millions of people.

5:53So I think people should be allowed to say,

5:56pretty outrageous things that are within the bounds

5:59of law, but then they don't,

6:00you know, doesn't get amplified,

6:02that doesn't get, you know, a ton of reach.

6:05And I think an important goal for Twitter,

6:10we're really trying to include as much of the country,

6:13as much of the world as possible.

6:15So currently, it's a relatively small percentage

6:19of the world that is, it is a small percentage of what

6:21that is on Twitter, if you say like daily active users,

6:24do you think that that's say 200 million?

6:27You've got eight billion people on Earth.

6:29That's a 7.8 billion going on on Twitter.

6:33So that's a pretty big number.

6:36I think you want as many,

6:37as much as possible on Twitter,

6:39you want to be as inclusive as possible

6:42for all this demographic.

6:44And for that to happen, people must like being on Twitter.

6:47So if they're being harassed or they're uncomfortable,

6:52they're sucking you use Twitter.

6:53And so we have to sort of strike this balance of allowing people

7:00to say what they want to say, but also

7:03make people comfortable on Twitter.

7:06Well, if they simply want to use it,

7:07it will be quite niche.

7:12And I think there's also a lot that should be done in terms of enhancing the core technology

7:18and offerings of Twitter.

7:20Like right now, if somebody does a video, like let's say a content creator does a video,

7:27then they're going to put that video on YouTube and just put a link to it from Twitter

7:32because they're able to monetize their content on YouTube but not on Twitter.

7:36And I think it's going to be really important for if you want people to put the content on Twitter

7:41we do, then there has to be a mechanism for content creators to monetize that content.

7:49And so they can do a poster, they can post it to YouTube and to Twitter.

7:52But I think it's crazy right now that content creators will use Twitter to drive traffic

7:58to their YouTube video because that's how they make a living.

8:05And that really should be on Twitter.

8:08Like, we want to basically address the reasons that people, like, why aren't more people

8:13using Twitter and why do people click away from Twitter?

8:17And if we can address those reasons, then they'll use Twitter more and they'll get greater

8:24value from service.

8:31And if I think of like WeChat in China,

8:38which is actually a great app,

8:40but there's no WeChat equivalent outside of China.

8:44And I think that there's a real opportunity to create that

8:48sort of, you basically live on WeChat in China.

8:51So because it's so useful and so helpful to your daily life.

8:58And I think if we achieve that,

8:59or even close to that with Twitter, be an immense success.

9:05Hopefully that is, you know,

9:07I really went on there,

9:08but I don't have to elaborate on any of those points.

9:11Yeah, no, it's great.

9:12And we're gonna get a little bit deeper

9:13on pre-station policy a little bit later.

9:15So I do wanna come back to this, actually.

9:18But in terms of, you clearly have a lot of thoughts

9:21around sort of the problems,

9:22which would have been that aren't working well,

9:24or sort of the barriers to what's possible.

9:26How do you see your buying the company?

9:30Is that sort of feed your desire to buy the companies?

9:33Or how do you see these things sort of together?

9:37And what's your thought process around that?

9:43Well, there's definitely an ongoing challenge

9:49with Twitter with bought accounts and spam accounts

9:54that this looked quite a lot of crypto scams on Twitter.

9:58It's gotten better, but there's still a fair bit of that.

10:02There are also people where they're not necessarily bots, but they might be operating one person's

10:06operating hundreds of accounts and trying to make them look like individuals, but they're

10:12not.

10:13So, I think a lot of this is not reiterating something I said publicly, but I'm back on

10:22Twitter.

10:23In order for people to have trust in Twitter,

10:27I think it's extremely important that there be transparency.

10:29So that's why I'm an advocate of

10:33say having the algorithm be open source,

10:36so that people can critique it, improve it,

10:40identify bugs potentially or bias.

10:43But when it's transparency,

10:46it obviously increases trust.

10:49So I think it's just very important

10:52like anything that's happening on an automated basis,

10:55be open source and be clear.

11:00And then if there is any action taken by someone

11:02with the Twitter to boost or something

11:09with a tweet, then it's just very clearly identified

11:12on the tweets of people aren't subscribing to Malice,

11:16that is the way there's no Malice.

11:19So, but when it's inscrutable,

11:23then people don't know what to think,

11:25and they will sometimes think the worst

11:27when that's actually not true.

11:29So I think that trust is extremely important,

11:31and then just for the usefulness of the system,

11:34getting rid of,

11:37it kind of sort of control farms

11:38and bots and spam is incredibly important.

11:42I'm gonna have a photo in this regard,

11:44which I think is my work,

11:48which is to, you know, this is currently just Twitter blue,

11:52but if you get Twitter blue,

11:53it doesn't, your identification in the system

11:56does not change at all.

11:57You still look up the normal user ID.

11:59But I think if it was like a little,

12:01you know, Twitter blue authenticated,

12:03not like authenticated like this,

12:04Lendredy, but authenticated at least by Twitter blue payments,

12:10just using the payment,

12:11are you backing on the payment system to your authentication?

12:14That I think a lot of people will be like,

12:16Okay, that's pretty helpful to have some designation

12:20that's my name, that in case I'm probably not

12:25a bot host spam or one person is operating 100 accounts.

12:31And that's like three bucks a month, I believe.

12:35I think that would be pretty helpful.

12:36And then also prioritizing comments

12:41and mentions whatnot by who is,

12:46verified in this broader sense the word of verification, in the sense of, you know, the

12:52it could have blew verified and just prioritized, you know, like that about someone who's not

13:00not verified. So there's so many people read access to the system, so we pull right access

13:04to the system, but you essentially, any tweets or outreactions would be prioritized according

13:16to who's verified. And then a very large number of people can be verified.

13:21I'm going to have a couple of questions on this specifically, but giving you mentioned trust,

13:26I wanted to ask when we avoid questions around trust. They said, Twitter has a lot of incredible,

13:31smart, talented people. What can we do to earn your trust and what are you going to do to earn our hours?

13:38I don't trust it as I trust it.

13:46So I can't be extremely literal in what I say.

13:55So aspiration in one does not need to read between the lines,

13:59so it can simply read the lines.

14:02And so the things that I've said about Twitter

14:05I think are you need to have in order for it to be,

14:10to really go to the next level.

14:12I mean, I think the potential is there for Twitter

14:15to have, and be accessible to an order of bang

14:19to more people, and for a lot more people to find it useful.

14:24And if not currently, I guess it would be

14:32four or four percent of the world or something like that.

14:33I don't know, it's a four or five percent of the world,

14:35optimistically is finding Twitter useful,

14:38and maybe 50% of the world find Twitter useful.

14:42So I want to take whatever actions would lead to that.

14:46And I'm very much like, it's, it's,

14:54I wouldn't say it's necessarily a cross thing.

14:57It's like, if somebody's getting useful things done,

15:01then that's great.

15:02And if they're not getting useful things done,

15:04and I'm like, okay, why are they at the company?

15:07So it's really just like we need to improve the core technology,

15:13improve the design, and you know, so.

15:21Trust emerges from that.

15:23Yeah, I mean, trust me.

15:24Yes, it's not like, I take trust.

15:27It's not exactly, but it's like, you know, if somebody's getting stuff done, great, I

15:33I love them and if they're not, I don't like the night to roll.

15:36Space report.

15:38Can we say, I would like to say on this topic of employees

15:40and how we work.

15:42So distributed work is something that

15:43has been core to our strategy.

15:45Most of our people work in a hybrid model.

15:48About 1,500 people work remote full time.

15:51We know that you recently sent a communication

15:54to Tesla executives about remote work.

15:57Can you share what your point of view

15:59is on remote work and specifically for Twitter?

16:03Yeah, so Tesla makes cars,

16:07and you cannot make cars remotely.

16:09Obviously, you have to make cars in a big factory,

16:14and the supply chain,

16:15and you have to bring in the parts,

16:17and assemble them,

16:19and then transport the car to the owner.

16:23All of these things must be done in person,

16:25because it's physically impossible to do them remotely.

16:29There are some rules at Tesla

16:31where the work can be done remotely,

16:34like say, software or design.

16:38And so that, you know, I think that's still a case

16:43where you want to aspire to do things in person.

16:46But if somebody is exceptional at their job,

16:50then it's possible for them to be effective

16:52even working remotely.

16:53So with Wathesele, I simply have asked for a list,

16:57that the manager has to confirm that they're an excellent contributor and if they do, they're

17:07allowed to work remotely.

17:10So it's pretty basic, I think.

17:14There is a hit one takes remotely because they've just reduced a speed of core and it's

17:21like it's hard to, you know, like, like,

17:24if you just, there's really, it really,

17:27it kind of matters to be in person,

17:29at least some of the time.

17:30So, like one of the things I said,

17:31even if somebody's working remotely,

17:33they're gonna show up at the office occasionally,

17:35so that they recognize their colleagues,

17:37and don't, you know, you don't have to walk down the street

17:39and pass your colleague, and, and they're,

17:42you don't recognize them, that would not be good.

17:45Yeah, no, I think this is, this is super clarifying,

17:48and resonates with us, and it's hard to wait

17:50of how it works. So thank you for clarifying that topic. It's really important to us. I

17:56would like to keep on the topic of employees and some of the questions that have come through.

18:01This one's on compensation and benefits. Most people, especially obviously here, are used

18:06to working for a public company. Can you talk a little bit about how you compensate

18:10folks at SpaceX as a private company? How does it work and what approach you plan to

18:15take at Twitter as a private company?

18:18Yeah, and so SpaceX I think operates in the best of both worlds where stock

18:26and options are issued to everyone but we don't have all the challenges being

18:32publicly traded company with stock to be up and down for one day for the next

18:35to be quite a distraction and where one is at for most of your short-sellers and

18:40class action lawsuits and just generally it's like being in the stock

18:44and there's 30 meters that you're all there.

18:47So SpaceX still allows liquidity,

18:52and so every six months, this liquidity event

18:55at SpaceX and people have the opportunity to sell their shares.

18:59And that's worked very well for the whole life of the company.

19:04So I think something like that would make sense at Twitter.

19:07So it's still be starting options, everything,

19:09and it just be liquidity events twice a year.

19:12Great, and thanks. We are getting some real-time feedback on the remote work

19:18questions, so I just want to make sure I follow up. Your approach to remote work

19:22and distributed work at Twitter, you are, is that what I'm hearing from you, is that

19:27you are supportive of remote distributed work as it is productive and meaningful

19:32and faithful show up when it's important and depending on the job. Is that an accurate

19:37reflection? Yeah, I mean the bias definitely needs to be strongly towards

19:42working in person, but if somebody is exceptional, then remote work can be okay.

19:50But then, if their work output is exceptional, then remote work is fine.

19:57There is some communication, you know, impact that one takes when working remotely, because

20:03if you're with people, you know, and they're just, you know, a few desks away, it's very

20:08It's easy to communicate in real time, but it's much harder to do that if you're in a different physical location.

20:13So I do want to emphasize that the bias is very much towards the input support.

20:18It's just that it would obviously be insane if someone is excellent at what they do,

20:23but it can only work remotely to then fire them even though they're doing excellent work would be insane.

20:29So I'm definitely not in favor of things that are like mad.

20:35I mean, they were things that will the business make it better.

20:38Thank you.

20:40Question about layoffs.

20:42We received several questions from employee

20:45on this point.

20:46Obviously, they write about the recent layoffs at Tesla.

20:50Can you speak to how you're thinking about layoffs at Twitter?

20:54Well, I think it depends on the company.

20:59This needs to be to get healthy.

21:01So right now the costs exceed the revenue.

21:05So that's not a great situation to be in.

21:10And so there would have to be some rationalization of the head

21:14count and expenses to have revenue be greater than cost.

21:18Otherwise Twitter is certainly not viable or can't grow.

21:23So I think it would just be dependent on

21:30But I said that anyone who is like a significant contributor

21:34should have nothing to worry about.

21:36I'm not to take actions which are destructive to the health

21:41of the company.

21:43So you know.

21:48And you want a question connected to that.

21:50As you're obviously learning and gaining information

21:52as we get closer to the steel being closed,

21:56what do you feel that you have sort of a deep understanding

21:59of grasp of and what are the areas that you feel

22:01you want to dive much more deeper on to understand and learn?

22:06Well, I certainly have a stronger understanding of the product, because I use Twitter every

22:13day, practically.

22:15And I think you're going to have a really good understanding of our standpoint.

22:25What I have less understanding of is, you know, like this sort of bot spam or multi-user

22:35This is anything that affects the monetizable daily user number is probably my biggest concern,

22:43because that's really what drives advertising revenue as well as subscription revenue.

22:51And really, the Twitter's revenue revenue is going to be subscription

22:57advertising. I think payments would be an interesting thing to do as well.

23:01But all of those things are only relevant as a function of how many unique humans are on the system.

23:11So that's my biggest concern and that's what I said publicly as well.

23:19Like I said, I try to be as literal as possible.

23:25And as we think about, obviously, the product and the service and serving customers all around

23:32the world, clearly it's critical and existential for us to serve diverse communities and all

23:40people, as you said earlier.

23:42So inclusion diversity is obviously core and essential to our work at Twitter both are

23:46employees and the customers that we serve.

23:49You've been both whole on a variety of different topics and issues that relate to inclusion

23:53and diversity.

23:54Can you talk about your views and also your commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive

23:59workplace and also a service where everyone can feel included and safe?

24:05Yeah, I mean, well, it's really clear.

24:08You know, if you want to talk about the, you know, that's a set of our Twitter's whole,

24:13like there's 8 billion people in the world.

24:16There's sort of, I'm told there's 200 billion, you know, daily users of Twitter.

24:22That's a 7.8 billion person gap.

24:26So I think we really want to have at least a billion people on Twitter, maybe more, as

24:33many people as you can possibly get on Twitter.

24:35So that I think is the most inclusive definition of inclusiveness.

24:40It's like all humans.

24:43So that's important.

24:49on the company standpoint, I believe in something

24:52in a strict neurotocracy.

24:54So whatever, who can remember doing great work,

24:58great, they get more responsibility than 30.

25:02And that's that.

25:04And I know you mentioned in some of our conversations

25:07about your IMD team at Tesla,

25:09we have an amazing IMD team here at Twitter as well.

25:12So continue on the journey together.

25:16I wanted to talk about content

25:19matteration go back to a number of

25:21things that you said earlier.

25:23So this is what I'll take.

25:24I'll take verbatim.

25:25So you've spoken a lot about the

25:27importance of pre-speech.

25:28Let's start with the U.S.

25:29where we have a strong tradition

25:31around this and you talk, you've

25:32touched on this earlier.

25:34A lot of what's called waffle,

25:36but on full speech is allowed here

25:38in the United States, right?

25:39Animal abuse, footage,

25:41joxing, videos of sexual violence,

25:43et cetera.

25:44So allowing this type of content obviously could cause harm and make Twitter unusable

25:51for the broad audience that you're trying to reach.

25:55What is your approach to this type of content that's legal but problematic as it relates

26:01to people actually using the service?

26:02How do you think about this tension?

26:04As I said earlier, I think people, we should allow people to say what they want, first what

26:12They want to put in the balance of the law.

26:14But that's different from them being able to reach people who

26:19don't want to be reached with that content.

26:22So if that content is offensive, then to its people,

26:27that will not most simply stop using Twitter.

26:31So it's important to make Twitter as attractive as possible.

26:37And really, that means not showing people content

26:40that they would find pay for a offensive or a simple,

26:45even frankly, content they would find boring is not good.

26:49So we don't even want them to see boring content.

26:53Unless we were talking about TikTok last night,

26:57and TikTok obviously does a great job

27:00of making sure you're on board.

27:03I mean, it does feel like ADD, but next level.

27:09But, but TikTok does a great job of making a board.

27:14I mean, I do find some of the videos offensive, I think.

27:19But they're not boring.

27:21So, the folks read, like, how do we ensure people have content

27:25that is that they find entertaining and engaging

27:29and interesting such that they want to keep using Twitter

27:32and use it more.

27:33So, that's, you know, that's essential.

27:40to the book of the service.

27:43And one of our employees asked about people

27:46who use Twitter having the right and the ability

27:48to filter out content that they don't want to see.

27:50I think this gets to exactly what you're pointing to.

27:53Yeah, I mean, too clear.

27:55It's like the standard is much more than not offending people.

27:59The standard is should be that they're

28:02very entertained and informed.

28:05Because you could not offend someone,

28:07but you also borrow them and show them

28:09a bunch of content that they don't find interesting,

28:11and then they will not use the service or they will use a glass.

28:14So that's why I use the example of TikTok,

28:17where they just hone an algorithm to be as engaging as possible.

28:22And I think we want to also hold as engaging as possible

28:26in a different way.

28:27I think that TikTok is interesting.

28:31But you want to be informed about serious issues as well.

28:35And I think Twitter, in terms of like serious issues,

28:39can be a lot better performing a lot of serious issues.

28:44I do think it's important that there be,

28:48if there are two sides to an issue,

28:50it's important to represent if there are multiple opinions,

28:54but just make sure that we're not sort of driving narrative.

29:02that we give people an opportunity to understand

29:05the various science initiatives.

29:06Most issues are complex.

29:09They're not well down to a simple,

29:12this is a hard set good and this is a hard set bad.

29:16So I think it would be,

29:18it would have a more important public

29:20if people will present it with multiple sites for an issue.

29:24One point I just wanna go back to you on sort of the law

29:28and how that impacts content and moderation.

29:32as we think globally around the world, there are some countries that have

29:37lost that limit speech and sometimes actually use these laws to silence

29:41disagree with the government etc you're talking about different points of view.

29:44So Twitter is historically focused on doing what we can do to enable

29:49people everywhere to have their voices. How do you think about that as it relates to

29:54again like the local laws and what that means? Well I mean I'm in favor of

29:59doing, you know, of going as far as the law will allow us. If the law, you know, if say

30:05a quarter of employees would get arrested in the country if we adhere to the law, then we

30:10would obviously adhere to the law or exit the country or something. So, I mean, as much as

30:21we can enable people to have a voice and speak their mind, I think we want to do that.

30:27Yeah.

30:28And I know we talked about this as well last night about the teams doing this work and

30:35sort of your desire to connect with those teams and sort of understand where we've been,

30:39where we are, where we're going.

30:40And I think that would be usually productive across the board both ways.

30:47Can we talk briefly about your political views?

30:51How if at all do your political views play into the leadership of the companies that you

30:56currently run, how would it affect Twitter, is that all?

31:01Well, my political views, I think,

31:03are moderate, at least as would be,

31:07as if you said, what is the center of the normal distribution

31:11of political views in the country?

31:13I think I'd be pretty close to the center.

31:17I voted to jump back every election

31:21until this recent one this week.

31:23And then I voted for Merritt Flores,

31:27who was Republican,

31:29which is Mexican American,

31:32and I thought a good candidate,

31:35and was voting for.

31:37So, but I'm in favor of moderate politics.

31:46People who have relatively extreme views

31:52to express those views within the balance below.

31:57So that's, you know, as I said, probably like, I think if we, let's say that all that 10% and

32:06all right, 10% will equally upset on Twitter, then that will probably be a good outcome.

32:12I want to just talk about our business for a minute.

32:16You've spoken about incentives that the AI business creates for services like Twitter.

32:21What role does advertising play in the future of your business plan?

32:27The advertising is very important for Twitter.

32:29So in the case of, say, Tesla's SpaceX,

32:32there's no need for advertising because of the demand

32:35exceeds our production.

32:38So I mean, advertising is fundamentally

32:41a demand generator.

32:43And occasionally, you want to get some other message out,

32:45but it's fundamentally a demand generator.

32:47So given that Tesla demand is far in excess of production,

32:54there's no need for Tesla to advertise.

32:57But, you know, I'm not against advertising.

33:01I would probably, I don't know, want to talk to the advertisers and say,

33:06like, hey, let's make sure the ads are as entertaining as possible.

33:11I think they're more effective if they're entertaining.

33:15Like, you want to be strident or spammy in the ad.

33:19And then of course, I don't think it's good to allow advertising of any products, which

33:26are bad products.

33:30I was literally scammed on it.

33:35I bought this thing off of a YouTube ad and it doesn't work.

33:40And then I just Googled it.

33:43And it's like, oh, yeah.

33:44Once you click on the second page, you Google search results.

33:47like, yeah, this product totally just worked in the trash.

33:50And I'm like, well, what the hell is YouTube allowing advertising

33:54of scamming products that's totally not cool?

33:58So, you know, I think if the advertising is entertaining,

34:05interesting, it's something you might actually want.

34:09And the product would be fulfilling to Twitter user.

34:15then I think that's great advertising.

34:18So yeah.

34:21So, you know, we're going to go over that, OK?

34:24Oh, yes.

34:24Awesome.

34:25Thank you.

34:26Can you talk a little bit about Twitter and payments?

34:29You mentioned a few times in different settings.

34:31What's an understanding of thinking there?

34:34Yeah, I think the money is essentially

34:38a form of information.

34:39So it's information that allows us to exchange products and services without any

34:48to barter and allows people to ship obligations in time.

34:53But money is fundamentally digital at this point and it has been for a while.

34:58And PayPal, I think, has done a great job on the payments front.

35:07I think it's going to make sense to get a great payment into Twitter.

35:12So that's easy to send money back and forth.

35:15You know, and the current state as well as crypto, you know, essentially what I would find useful.

35:27So, the next thing, my goal would be to maximize the usefulness of the service.

35:35The more useful it is, the better.

35:40And if one can use it to make convenient payments, that's an increase in usefulness.

35:46It's sort of news entertainment and payments I think are like three critical areas.

35:57It's just about sort of thinking about how to make this, how to make using Twitter so compelling

36:05that you can't look at it and that everyone wants to use it.

36:11I wanted to stand the product.

36:12I know you, again, you did that to Bondis earlier, but it's a recurring question around

36:16authentication piece in terms of yours and you want to authenticate all humans.

36:22So just to sort of double click into that, you know,

36:26balancing this with those who benefit from anonymity,

36:30right from safety perspective, especially for example,

36:32you can write back to this and marginalized communities.

36:34So it's sort of, can you just clarify again,

36:37speak to that sort of that tension

36:39and how you think about those groups specifically?

36:45I mean, the committee is sort of core to how?

36:50I don't think it's necessary for someone

36:52to use their real name.

36:54So if one say does a payment space authentication,

36:58I think it should be okay to not use your real name

37:01much whether it's, so Twitter would know who you are,

37:06at least from a payment standpoint,

37:07but you would not have to stay your real name or anything.

37:12That's obviously important,

37:13where if someone has different political views

37:15from their manager, let's say,

37:18then they don't really wanna get crosswise there,

37:23and so that it would be better for them to have a student on Twitter.

37:29But it's still back-ended authenticated.

37:33And like I said, at no point would, I suggest that you have to be authenticated in order

37:40to use Twitter.

37:41It's just that it would just be a prioritizing authenticated comments and actions on Twitter

37:47over unauthenticated.

37:48in order to combat the sort of bots and trolls.

37:55And it needs to be much more expensive

37:59to have a troll army.

38:02Whereas right now it's basically very inexpensive

38:05to have 100,000 big clear accounts.

38:10And you have certainly been very vocal on Twitter.

38:13You are very vocal on Twitter

38:14and often your tweets and even emojis create new cycles.

38:18You know, you have been also critical of the company on Twitter, which obviously impacts

38:24lots of discussions, conversations, and perceptions from whether it be partners or even our employees.

38:30How do you think about these tweets?

38:32Do you look at the reaction or think about the reaction of these tweets?

38:35I'm just curious, sort of thinking behind the tweet, if you will.

38:39Well, I think it would be helpful.

38:42But one thing about words is that it's hard to convey tone.

38:47And so it's possible for essentially people

38:51will take the words and then assume

38:55they were said in maybe an angry way

38:57or an indigent way or something like that.

39:02But I mean, I'll think until my normal tone is not.

39:06I'm not an angry person.

39:08I almost never raise my voice.

39:10So like in a year, I might not have raised my voice literally.

39:15So this is not, you know, so sometimes people may think,

39:19oh, wow, he's sort of yelling at screen yourself,

39:21but I'm really not.

39:24So if I might,

39:26because maybe some way to indicate

39:29how an immunomology sort of do that,

39:32but I don't know, maybe it could be like a,

39:35where you have like a, I don't know,

39:40iron-eat flag or something. This is ironic. You know, it's ironic to eat something like that.

39:49Listen, I think spaces are the great products for you as well.

39:54Yeah, I can do it.

39:55You'll also have voice tweets, which I don't think I've seen you use before, but I think that would add your literal voice over and color some things that you'd wait for.

40:04enough. Oh sure. I should, I should, I should, yeah maybe I could just say it. Yeah exactly, exactly.

40:13Or you could read it but then you can also see how I would have said it. Like, you know,

40:18you know, like I wonder if you said that in an everywhere and then you can see how I actually

40:22said it. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. That'd be a new thing. On your, I know we have, I'm going

40:29I'm gonna only push you about 10 more minutes

40:31at the hour, so I'm holding you until then.

40:36Your role at the company,

40:39there's an discussion about will you be CEO,

40:41will you not be CEO?

40:43What can you speak to this?

40:45And how do you anticipate your role

40:48sort of influencing strategy day to day,

40:50division?

40:53Well, I guess I'm not that hung up on titles,

40:56But I do want to try out the product in a particular direction.

41:03So it could be like, I don't really care

41:06what about being CEO.

41:09In fact, I renamed myself TechnoKing at Tesla

41:16with an official SEC filing.

41:20So we saw.

41:22Yeah.

41:22And then our CFO was renamed Master of Coin,

41:25which I think is a cooler thing than CFO.

41:29So,

41:33I mean, the,

41:35one of the least one to do is,

41:36is like try the product,

41:37improve the product and then select basically

41:41software and product design, you know.

41:43So, you know, I don't mind doing other things,

41:49you know, related to operating a company,

41:52but there are, you know, chores,

41:54there's a lot of chores to it's CEO.

41:57And I really just want to make sure that the product evolves

42:03rapidly and in a good way.

42:06And I don't really care what the title is.

42:11But obviously people do need to listen to me.

42:14If I say, hey, we need to make part,

42:17agree with the product in the following way,

42:18make the following changes.

42:21Add these features, then I can't

42:25you expect that that pool isn't doing in this regard.

42:29I mean, that's how I do it, SpaceX and Tesla.

42:32So I'm really just working really engineering and production.

42:43And like it sometimes may seem like, wow,

42:46he's going really out there a lot.

42:48But actually, I'm not.

42:48If you see how many actual interviews do I do,

42:50it's quite a small number.

42:53But when I do a tweet, they'll make an entire two-page article about it.

42:59So basically, I'm quite internally focused at SpaceX and Tesla, even though it may not

43:08seem that way.

43:10And it's really just involving the rocket technology with SpaceX and providing global

43:16internet with Starling and then Tesla, it's about accelerating sustainable energy and with

43:23electric cars and stationary battery packs and solar power.

43:26And the fundamental good of Tesla, I would say, is measured by how many years did we accelerate

43:33the atmosphere of sustainable energy.

43:36And then the fundamental good of SpaceX is, are we able to make like multi-planetary and

43:43us improve the probable lifespan of consciousness.

43:48You can always say what is a unifying philosophy?

43:53For me, it is we should take a set of actions most likely to extend the scope scale and

44:00lifespan of consciousness as we know it.

44:06So that's what interactions improve things at a civilizational level and improve the probable

44:12lifespan of civilization.

44:14The civilization will come to an end at some point, but let's try to make it last as long

44:19as possible.

44:20And it would be great to understand more about the nature of the universe, why we're here,

44:25the meaning of life, where everything's going, where we come from.

44:30Can we travel to other star systems and see if there are alien civilizations?

44:36there might be a whole bunch of long-edge, one planet,

44:41civilizations out there.

44:42That existed 500 million years ago.

44:47If you think about the span of human civilization

44:49from the advent of the first variety,

44:51it's only about 5,000 years, which is nothing.

44:56And at both this roughly 0.5 billion years old.

44:59So all of civilization as measured from the advent

45:03writing is a flash in the pan. And I think we want to take whatever actions we can to

45:10extend that flash in the pan to hopefully be a flame that lasts a long time.

45:16I can't believe I have the transition from aliens away from this conversation back to

45:22Twitter. What do you do?

45:24I'm not saying it's aliens, but yes, aliens.

45:26What does Twitter look like to you?

45:31I think I just don't have trolling people about the aliens.

45:34So people really think, I've seen no evidence.

45:39I've seen no actual evidence for aliens.

45:42I get asked that a lot and I think I've not seen anything.

45:47Yes.

45:49Okay, you've heard it here everybody.

45:51Question about Twitter, when you look five to 10 years from now, what do you consider successful

46:00for yourself in acquiring the company and for all of us in the work that we do?

46:07What does successful look like?

46:09Yeah, so I think success would be a substantial increase in daily active users.

46:18I don't know, except if Ken would get daily activities

46:25was over a billion, that would be, you know,

46:27it's still only one eighth of both.

46:29But that would be a huge improvement

46:31from what things are today.

46:35And I guess, broadly speaking, like,

46:40is Twitter helping for the civilization and consciousness.

46:51It's Twitter.

46:53I'm not seeing that.

46:55It has actually a lot of complete sessions, anyway.

46:58But is Twitter contributing to a stronger, longer lasting

47:07civilization where we're better able to understand the nature of reality. I would say my philosophy

47:14is one of curiosity of trying to understand the nature of the universe as much as possible

47:21to understand. So in order to understand the nature of us, we must expand the scope and scale

47:28of consciousness, to extend the life of consciousness. So I guess, formally speaking,

47:34has Twitter meaningfully improved the strength and longevity of civilization.

47:42I know that we have gone meaningfully over.

47:47So first of all, thank you so much for the time.

47:49Thank you for coming back for a part two.

47:51Thank you for continuing the conversation with all of us.

47:55You're welcome.

47:56That's a pleasure.

47:57Thank you so much.

47:58We'll talk very soon.

47:59Thanks, bye.

48:00Thank you, Lauren.

48:01Bye, everybody.