On this episode of the Human Events Sunday Special, host Alex Blumberg sits down with the man, the machine, the mystery, the legend, Alex "The Man, the Machine, the Legend" Alx.
00:00:30.000Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard to today's Sunday special here on Human Events.
00:00:41.880So this week and going forward for a couple of weeks, I wanted to take some time to step back from sort of the day-to-day issues and actually conduct some interviews with people that either I've known or I've wanted to get to know better or I want you to know better.
00:00:56.700People that have had, in some cases, massive influence from behind the scenes, sometimes massive influence in front of the scenes.
00:02:30.020And I always point out that, you know, so my first you and I are kind of interesting in a sense, or we have something in common, I should say, because we both were kind of anonymous when we first started on Twitter.
00:02:45.960And you started even years before I did.
00:03:20.260But yeah, so Rand Paul was really my guy, because, you know, I wasn't a Kennedy fan, and I wasn't a Romney fan.
00:03:26.720So, like, I really didn't have, like, a true, like, Republican leader or conservative leader that I looked to.
00:03:34.080And then, you know, when Donald Trump announced in 2015, that's when I really began social media.
00:03:41.200And, you know, on Twitter, and then further down the line on Instagram, I wasn't that big in 2015 on Instagram.
00:03:49.280But yeah, so it was kind of anonymous, because I was in school, and I didn't want, you know, that to jeopardize any future career or, you know, my liberal professors to hold that against me.
00:04:01.740So I just went by ALX instead of my full name, which is Alex.
00:04:07.440But, I mean, it's just one letter off.
00:04:09.560But, you know, it's, I didn't really, like, do people ever, like, ask you, like, what, does ALX stand for something?
00:04:44.320Like, when I was in the IC and you were coming up with, like, a cover name, they would always say, you know, pick a name that's close enough to your real name that you'll answer to it, that it appears familiar to you, that you don't have to skip a beat where you go, oh, wait, right, that's supposed to be me.
00:04:57.780You know, if I'm, if my name's Jack, then you shouldn't be, like, Claudius or some, like, you know, some random thing you're not even going to think of.
00:05:05.840You know, you'd be, like, Jake, right?
00:05:07.940Or, you know, something, Jacques, you know, something similar, similar enough that you're going to listen to it, John, even, which actually is my legal name.
00:05:16.700Oh, no, I'm getting in trouble now, self-doxing.
00:05:20.760But, but, so, coming up on Twitter, like, before we get into necessarily the Elon stuff, and I want to ask more about Twitter, what, how has Twitter changed in, from the pre-2016 era to now?
00:05:36.240So, we don't talk enough about it, because I was there, you were there, you were there even longer than me.
00:05:40.740What was Twitter like in those early years?
00:05:44.660The really early years, it was kind of, there is a lot of, like, crashing, and I would compare it to, like, Parler.
00:05:53.760Like, Parler was always down in the early days.
00:05:56.080People forget that in the early days, Twitter had that whale, the overcapacity whale.
00:06:02.580Yeah, yeah, so that happened a lot, actually, and then, like, so one of, one of my friends online actually posted, like, a screenshot from, like, 2012 or whatever.
00:06:11.500If you even look at the, you know, the layout of everything in 2012, it literally looks like it's from the Stone Age.
00:06:18.540So, I think people take for granted how far it's come as a platform.
00:06:23.440So, at the beginning, it was kind of more like now, where it was, like, getting banned was very rare.
00:06:30.260I mean, the first real, you know, bannings didn't start until 2015, around, like, when Milo and a bunch of, you know, other people got banned.
00:06:39.240Yeah, Milo was really the first big ban that I remember happening, and it just wasn't, with the exception of, like, like, people forget that, I know you remember this, there used to be actual ISIS members on Twitter.
00:06:52.780So, you could just go on, and you would find, in Arabic, and they'd be, like, tweeting death threats to people, and then it used to be a whole thing where you could find the ISIS accounts, and you could get them banned, because they were, and I don't mean, like, somebody LARPing, like, there's Taliban LARPers on today.
00:07:06.960I mean, like, actual, straight up, in Syria and Iraq, ISIS followers that were on Twitter, and you could get them banned, but nobody, nobody who was, like, a real, like, nobody ever got banned for politics.
00:07:19.480It was, it was, like, criminal activity or threats, that kind of thing.
00:07:23.980Yeah, and we're getting back to that now.
00:07:26.580So, actually, just this past week, Twitter announced that they are going to start, instead of locking users out, that they're going to take a less harsh action for policy violations that don't violate the law.
00:07:43.980They're going to just take an action at the tweet level and not the account level.
00:07:48.040So, if something is, yeah, if something is seen to violate their hateful conduct policies or whatever, it will just have a label that says this, you know, was found to have violated Twitter's hateful conduct policy, and you'll have to click view to see it, and you can appeal it.
00:08:10.620So, they're not even necessarily going to take it down.
00:08:12.840It will just be, it'll be there, but kind of like, what does that?
00:08:16.440Instagram is like that, where, you know, if it's fact-checked, you can still click, yeah, like a sensitive content.
00:08:22.680Yeah, and a lot of people were criticizing that in the sense that it still is censoring the content, but at the same time, you have to take it in perspective that it's in place of locking.
00:08:35.180Number one, it's going to not take any action on your account level, meaning it's not going to be like a strike on your account.
00:08:42.120So, if you do it again, you're not going to be locked out for seven days or something like that.
00:08:45.300So, it's just an action at the tweet level, and then, like I said, you can appeal it.
00:08:50.620And it wouldn't even, so it wouldn't even necessarily de-boost you in the algorithm.
00:09:06.320Yeah, it's going to be a lot more transparent than in the past.
00:09:09.980And, like, I put out a tweet on it, it's not perfect, but it's definitely an improvement from, like, my situation and your situation, where, you know, I was locked out for, you know, posting a picture of Zelensky with the Ukrainian flag, and they mistakenly flagged it as nudity.
00:09:28.240And I would have been locked out for 12 hours had you and other people brought, like, attention to it.
00:09:34.640So, that would be in the past, whereas, like, this new policy, they would have that label over it, and then I'd be able to appeal it.
00:09:43.380And then I also would be able to tweet and say, well, this is a clear mistake.
00:09:46.660In the past, users that were wrongly locked out, they would have to find other users to tweet on their behalf.
00:09:52.180So, I believe errors will be reversed more quickly as well.
00:09:58.460And I just, I know that they're, one of the things they're dealing with right now at Twitter is just that there's a lot of automation, because I know, obviously, a lot of employees have left.
00:10:07.780So, that's one reason you're seeing the mass report bans are kind of back right now, because I think due to the, just due to the employee issues, that they've been relying a little bit more on automation.
00:10:22.200And it did used to be that you could mass ban people, and that would, that would actually work, like, mass reporting someone to get them banned would work.
00:10:31.420That was one of the ways, like, my old, old account had something like that happen once I did.
00:10:36.220I was able to get it reversed, but I remember that happening.
00:10:38.820Yeah, that was a, that was a flaw in the, in the past, and like you said, it's due to the employee issues.
00:10:45.640But there are some bans that were due to, like, the actual employee hitting the wrong button or not being trained, I've seen.
00:10:54.540And so, there was someone who got banned for, like, hateful conduct, and they're like, well, under our new freedom of speech policies, this shouldn't have been actioned then.
00:11:03.220And Ella Erwin, who's head of trust and safety, had said that they're doing new trainings with, you know, new hires on that.
00:11:39.980So, man, we were talking before about just how Twitter has changed over the years.
00:11:44.660But one thing that I remember specifically that, you know, before we talk too much about the new Twitter, because the new Twitter, you're right.
00:11:51.840It's all, everything is political, everything.
00:11:54.660But I remember in the early days, it was like Twitter was, it was, it was like comedy, right, was kind of the main thing.
00:12:04.980And sort of like freak out posts or, or posting weird stuff was a big thing.
00:12:12.220And there's sort of those, this element, and you see this in a lot of those early Trump tweets, right, from the same era, from like 2012 through 2015 or so, before he announced, I should say.
00:12:22.520Where it was kind of like, if, if something was posted on Twitter, it was just assumed that it was a joke, because that was the big thing was like you got you went viral for making jokes.
00:12:33.780There were like people weren't necessarily monetizing Twitter, people weren't using it for, you know, some people would promote articles and stuff.
00:12:40.940But I really feel like the main thing was just, I don't know, kind of following TV shows and then being funny.
00:12:49.320Yeah, there was a lot of like commentary, I remember on, you know, celebrities and stuff that Trump had back in the day.
00:12:56.440Like, oh, yeah, where he would just like, you could tell he was like watching a show or whatever.
00:13:00.740And he would just feel like tweeting out loud and like his reactions to the show.
00:13:05.540But yeah, I think you're right that and then like, one of the things I followed early on was just like sports in general, just like, you know, sports, and then, you know, just TV shows or whatever.
00:13:18.460And yeah, like you said, it didn't get very overtly political until, you know, 2015.
00:13:24.040And then, of course, now in the new Twitter era, everything is, but you're right, in the early days, it was just kind of comedy, you know, having fun with friends.
00:13:35.380And then just even celebrities like Trump had their famous like Diet Coke tweets, or there was one of them where, you know, he replied to like random sock puppet accounts.
00:13:45.280He's like, well, why do you follow me around like a little puppy then?
00:14:05.340And that's what the vibe was on Twitter.
00:14:07.560Yeah, it was sort of a, it was almost like a party, I guess, like a big party.
00:14:11.700Because when Jack Dorsey created Twitter, the idea was that it was, it was supposed to be in like an open chat room.
00:14:20.100Um, so the Twitter, the, the original character limit, which I missed so much, the one 40 Twitter was meant because you didn't want it to be cluttered with long posts.
00:14:32.160So it was every person was, it was like a chat room that you shared with the whole world in a sense.
00:14:37.680And then hashtags originally were created so that you could find other people that had, you know, similar interests to you.
00:14:44.940So I'm, I'm tweeting about a certain, uh, you know, topic.
00:14:50.360Um, so I'm going to, I'm going to make sure to include that hashtag.
00:14:52.860So like I used to do my game of Thrones account and I would make sure to do hashtag game of Thrones.
00:14:56.920So if somebody would go to search hashtag game of Thrones and they would find my account.
00:15:00.860Um, I remember the big conservative one back then used to be like TCT or something.
00:15:06.580And I, I don't even remember what it, what it stood for, but it was like the conservative something or other.
00:15:12.220But that was like, if you were trying to, trying to get ahead in, in that community, you would always post to that hashtag and hashtags that by and large, I kind of feel like they're dead now.
00:15:22.340Um, yeah, so I also, I, I share that same sentiment and the fact that like, I don't think normal words could actually trend on Twitter back in the original days.
00:15:34.520I think it was only trending hashtags and that's why people kind of coalesced around hashtags.
00:15:39.600But now if you look at the trending topics list, I don't even think hashtags really even trend.
00:15:43.780It's just words, names, you know, individuals or whatever.
00:15:47.160And that's what the trending topic list has turned into.
00:15:50.180But back to your point on the conversation piece of it, I remember like quote tweets weren't really even a thing.
00:15:56.340You'd physically have to quote the tweet, put like RT in front of it.
00:16:04.320Cause it, I, I remember there's like, there's some people that confused, like they're not knowledgeable and they'll go back and they'll find a post.
00:16:11.960And then they'll try and attribute the RT post to the original author.
00:16:16.800And it's like, well, no, that was like a quote tweet, but that's just what quote tweets looked like back then.
00:16:21.440Well, a lot of those were also, it was, um, you had these third party apps that were, that were built in with Twitter, which a lot of those features Twitter then later took and reincorporated in and, and said, okay, we need to do this.
00:16:35.100And obviously quote tweets is one of the most ubiquitous ones.
00:16:37.620The other one, if you remember was everybody forgets this.
00:16:41.340Tick tock was not the original short form video platform.
00:16:45.640I know, you know, this ALX, what was the original short form video?
00:16:55.460That wasn't just like a random tweet by what's going on with thing that they're looking into.
00:16:59.800Um, I'm not sure like exactly how far along they are, but I know they're looking into it.
00:17:05.920Um, and I, I think the debate is really whether they're going to have it incorporated in the Twitter app, or if they're going to revive it as its own, you know, separate app, but then you can integrate it into, you know, Twitter.
00:17:19.100Well, so that's what they do with Paris.
00:17:22.720So I think they're just trying to figure out logistically how they want it, you know, to be.
00:17:26.960Um, but yeah, I, it's very serious that they want to compete with tick tock on that, especially with, you know, talks of the tick tock ban.
00:17:35.260So I, I think that they're like taking that seriously.
00:17:39.020So if that's the case, then, um, obviously I think everybody knows that, um, you know, uh, Periscope was one of my all time favorite features on it.
00:17:49.700Um, that was where I live streamed multiple times a day, um, when it was in its heyday and, uh, you were on there.
00:18:21.440And I had, I had one computer just dedicated to downloading my Periscopes and I, cause I, you know, my setup and I was like, all right, I'm just going to leave this on and see how long it takes.
00:18:30.300And I went back after like a week and it still said pending.
00:18:33.540So something obviously not right there.
00:18:36.680And the fact of the matter is, is that Twitter was so powerful when it allowed you to live stream.
00:18:47.000If I remember correctly, it predated YouTube live stream, predated Facebook live stream, um, predated Instagram live stream.
00:18:55.120And the fact that you could share it with everyone in the world made it so incredibly powerful because suddenly, Hey, I'm a guy who is just sitting here talking with my wife and we're chatting about politics.
00:19:09.540But you can get hundreds of thousands of people watching instantly, even if they don't know the channel.
00:19:16.760And that's the difference between Twitter and every single other piece of media, because Twitter is an open sandbox or social media.
00:19:24.320And I guess TikTok is kind of like that, though, to be honest, like I've, I've not, um, spent enough time playing around with TikTok to even understand, like, how do you interact with other content on like what goes viral, et cetera.
00:19:38.960So it's, it's not, it's still not the same.
00:20:08.720And then, so the problem with that is you'd have to join the app.
00:20:12.500You'd have to know someone on the app to give you an invite.
00:20:14.600And it was this whole hassle by like Twitter spaces it's through Twitter.
00:20:18.840So the same thing could be true about, you know, bring back Periscope because technically it's separate, but it's through the functionality is like integrated within the Twitter app.
00:20:29.360So all of your followers and stuff and the potential for new reach all can come through Twitter.
00:20:35.320It was a little bit weird because you could, I remember, for example, my dad had a Periscope app, but he didn't have a Twitter app at the time or didn't have like, yeah, didn't have Twitter downloaded.
00:20:45.360So I like, he could go, my dad used Periscope, you know, like it was very simple to use.
00:20:54.340Um, you couldn't really do, you know, I guess what they call them duets.
00:20:57.520You couldn't, you couldn't bring in multiple people on video, but it was very, very low bar to entry.
00:21:02.980Um, which I think is the opposite of, I mean, I guess Instagram is pretty easy to use, but YouTube is not the live streams unless you're using it for you.
00:21:12.480But, um, like, you know, my dad used to use Periscope and then I would share his Periscopes on my Twitter and then my Twitter followers could go there.
00:21:21.180Or you could even go in on Periscope and then just only have that app and go through there.
00:21:28.240So it was, it was a little funky the way the handoff actually worked, but I don't know, man.
00:21:33.640I, I, I used to love, and I'll just say it.
00:21:36.060I used to love going on Periscope and sometimes if I was bored, do you remember the, um, they used to have the global map on it, the global heat map.
00:21:55.600I mean, imagine if we had that right now with Ukraine or anything that's going on anywhere in the world, you know, what's Russia like right now with the sanctions?
00:22:03.800Are they working or they're not working?
00:22:21.540Cause I, I remember that people were doing that a little bit when the Ukraine war kicked off, but then they, they turned it off immediately.
00:22:31.560No, I think, I think Twitter is, I mean, when you look at monetization and we're coming up on a break here, but when you look at monetization, I mean, why is not, why is
00:22:40.720live streaming not one of the first things you're thinking of?
00:22:46.300I think they're trying to stem the bleeding from the original advertiser scare, and then they're going to try, you know, live streaming and then in stream ads for video, um, is going to be their next thing.
00:22:57.680I think, cause that was a lot of, you know, YouTubers want to upload long form content with ads.
00:23:03.560So, but I hope live stream is high on their priority list.
00:23:08.060I mean, I would, I would say that too, that it's, it's, and we'll come back in a second here.
00:23:12.720Since speaking of ads, we're going to be taking a little bit of a commercial break, a, a gratuitous profit break, uh, or as a rush limbo used to say, but I got to say folks, I know I'm getting a little,
00:23:23.760little waxing nostalgic here on, on Periscope, but you don't understand.
00:23:28.780I would love to be able to do this show right now on Periscope, sharing it out with the hundreds and thousands coming back here.
00:23:40.540And we're back, you know, Alex, we were just talking about, um, Periscope, but you know, the other thing was, I remember, you know, what else I loved about Periscope was.
00:23:48.880If there was something happening out in the world, um, summer of 2020, there's a riot going on somewhere.
00:23:56.180You could pop on Periscope, look for that red dot in that city.
00:24:00.040And then boom, suddenly you're in the middle of it.
00:24:02.700Um, if there was a terrorist attack in France, you could fly over, you could fly over to France from your, from your phone sitting in your hand.
00:24:12.040You could go immediately there and you could see what was actually going on.
00:24:17.260And then I think it would save for like 24 hours and you could go back and watch if anyone had been there.
00:24:22.560And so it was just, it was incredible.
00:24:25.660The level of connectivity it gave you.
00:24:27.640And I've never seen on any other of these apps that are out there, that level of global penetration, taking you directly straight to the action, wherever it was in the world.
00:24:40.800And like you said, Snapchat is kind of like that, but I think, uh, even then that's, that's, that's heavily locked down.
00:24:46.480So think about it from, from a news perspective, right?
00:24:50.480The, uh, the, about the, uh, and Elon talks about this, that Twitter is the news now, right?
00:24:55.400Twitter's main competition is not other social media apps.
00:24:59.120The Twitter's competition is mainstream media is something that Elon actually said this week.
00:25:04.080And I think that's exactly right because you can go on there.
00:25:07.540Actually, I remember trying to explain it to my, um, my division officer when I was in the Intel community once and the Hong Kong protests were going on.
00:25:17.140And I said, look, this was the umbrella protest in 2014.
00:25:20.080And I said, look, you can go to Hong Kong right here and look at the protests.
00:25:24.820We don't need to need some like classified special, whatever.
00:25:30.380And he had no idea what I was talking about.
00:25:33.300Yeah, it's pretty funny to like how you explain it that way.
00:25:36.780I feel like, I don't know if Elon is fully aware of the functionality of Periscope as like a separate app as well.
00:25:44.080I think he is aware that they acquired it and that it was their live streaming capabilities.
00:25:48.760But I think if explained like that, he might be more likely to bring it back because like you said, he's touched on the fact that Twitter is the news now.
00:25:57.680And how you'd like to democratize reporting.
00:26:00.740So he wants Twitter to be a source of truth.
00:26:03.760So having basically an eye on the ground in any given news story, I feel like would be the closest way to get the truth out there.
00:26:14.960And it's not through the lens of corporate media.
00:26:17.320So I think, yes, it explained that way to Elon, who I feel like would have a renewed focus on bringing that back possibly.
00:26:26.640Plus, I always said, you know, with live streams and I remember being in situations where people said, hey, can you turn that off?
00:26:32.240And I said, no, I'm not, because this is protecting both me and you.
00:26:51.400And so now, of course, the team's not going to like edit us out of context or anything, but it's different from something that's live on the scene.
00:26:59.160And you look at how many people got got big out of just going to stuff and then being able to film it while live on the ground.
00:27:21.400Yeah, that's that's actually a really good idea to start to start pushing him in that direction and maybe worth like a tweet and explaining like exactly what it was that made Periscope so valuable and the fact that they own it already.
00:27:37.400And it's probably an easy, you know, infrastructure fix on their end where they have to, you know, just turn something back on.
00:27:46.180I don't know exactly on their end what it would what it would take.
00:27:49.140But yeah, when put like that, I think that it would incentivize more people to subscribe to on the ground reporters like I know, like Drew Hernandez, like those types of that go out on the scene.
00:28:04.140I feel like that would be an entire new market of, you know, people going out and making money for it just just by using the in app function of the subscribers, which now they're they're really pushing because it's relaunched this past week.
00:28:23.980So, yeah, I think that would be an excellent idea to include.
00:28:27.600Right, because there's already there's there's even something so like I qualified for it.
00:28:33.040I got the email the other day and but then in the back of my head, I'm thinking, well, what do I want to put behind a paywall?
00:28:43.160And the question so you remember Periscope had the stars system so you could tip someone a star, which was crazy because I used to get stars, but then it wouldn't even pay them out to me.
00:28:55.300So I never even got a sign out of it, but it was like it was kind of like super chats, I guess, on YouTube.
00:29:00.800And I, you know, I'm guessing that they would take like whatever percentage of every transaction would go to the app.
00:30:41.620So I asked him that question because me and him are always up at like two in the morning.
00:30:47.520And one of the times was just before, like, just before while the trial was going on, somebody had posted like an entire thread on Doug Mackey's case.
00:30:59.880And then he replied, is there a criminal complaint online for this?
00:31:03.740Because he was probably, you know, shocked that it was an actual thing.
00:31:08.300Like, I need more information on how this is going on.
00:31:11.840So I replied with the criminal complaint, a bunch of other users did, but he had never followed really back on it to see, like, we didn't know if he actually saw the tweets and read the criminal complaint.
00:31:23.820So that's why I asked about it and also because he owns the platform.
00:31:29.900So I kind of wanted to get his answer on what he thinks of a user in the past on the platform that he owns being criminally charged for something that went on on the platform that he currently owns.
00:31:43.680So I agree with his answer in the sense that it goes way over the top.
00:31:49.900And I asked him it, too, because he said, I get trolled all the time and he's laughing about it.
00:31:55.040So that goes to the sense that the owner of the company doesn't think it's Twitter's role to tell you what the truth is and, you know, what you should believe.
00:32:05.740You should go online thinking, I shouldn't believe everything that I see online.
00:32:10.980And it isn't Twitter's job to tell you if it's true or not.
00:32:14.860So having the owner of the company have that same mentality and being, you know, tricked by memes or whatever or being trolled online shows that he's just another person.
00:32:26.900And he has a tendency to agree with that more than the fact that the entire case was predicated on the fact that Hillary Clinton voters are stupid enough to take their voting advice from in a non-account with Charlie Sheen wearing a MAGA hat.
00:32:42.520And that's how they get their advice, how to vote.
00:32:45.860And it's a meme saying, text your vote.
00:33:08.520Plus, Elon Musk, I mean, he's a little bit more than he's not just the owner of Twitter.
00:33:12.600He's one of the richest men in the world.
00:33:14.180You know, it's kind of fluctuating state by state, a richest or number two.
00:33:17.240But certainly someone who's got massive amounts of influence in the nation, but also someone who I think has become kind of a cultural figure in his own right, because there are people who follow him that aren't necessarily, you know, right wing or left wing.
00:33:34.480They're just they're they're Elon fans.
00:33:36.180He's got this huge center right kind of even on some issues.
00:33:42.080I mean, this is the green car company guy.
00:33:44.280So, you know, there are people that, you know, that funded Tesla, that backed Tesla because they love the environment and climate change type of guys, even though I don't recall Greta ever thanking him for anything.
00:33:54.500But I want to come back in a second because we've got our last break and dig into this a little more what it means to live in a country where people can go to jail for memes they post on Twitter, what we do about it.
00:34:44.160And I feel like we spent a lot of time doing that.
00:34:45.660But I feel like we don't take enough time to step back and say this is the most influential app that's ever been created.
00:34:53.500It's obviously going to be in the history books because of 2016 and so many things that happen afterwards.
00:34:59.480It has become the global public square.
00:35:02.700And it's it's kind of hard to explain how it happened.
00:35:06.260But did you ever think that when you signed up for Twitter originally all those years ago that this is where it would be and this is where it would take you?
00:35:17.080Like you've mentioned, it was a place to make jokes, a place to just hang out with friends and open group chat, if you will, in a public forum.
00:35:25.560And over the years, I think this really started it's really started when celebrities and public figures started using it as, you know, their platform to get their message out, their official statements.
00:35:40.160And then later, government officials, like you had Obama as the first president to use it, and then other government officials like senators and congresspeople using it as their official means to communicate with their constituents.
00:35:56.080I believe that's how it became kind of the global times square, if you will, because that's where leaders are, that's where celebrities are, that's where athletes are.
00:36:10.720And therefore, everyone else in the public are going to be looking to Twitter for that.
00:36:47.720Cause I had a buddy who signed up in like, oh nine and he had been using it for a couple of years and had been saying, Hey, you should get on there.
00:36:55.080And that's, I started my GOT account on that game of Thrones to just make fun of the TV show.
00:37:01.620And, uh, you know, and I had like, you know, a couple of thousand followers, but that's back in those days, like having a couple thousand followers was meant was pretty big.
00:37:11.700That it, you know, people didn't have these huge follower counts.
00:37:14.540Like getting a hundred thousand was a huge deal or in like, even as, as late as 2015, 2016, having over a hundred K was massive.
00:37:22.620And if you had told me back then that I would have what I have now, I would like, are you kidding?
00:37:28.600That was like the only things that ever, that when it went over a million were, um, because so many people came on after Trump, right?
00:37:35.840This user base came on and just massively shifted the audience.
00:37:40.100But at the same time, people forget too, that, uh, the United States, isn't the only market for Twitter.
00:37:46.100They're massive in India and they're also massive in Japan.
00:37:49.040Japan is a huge user base for Twitter.
00:37:51.420And I always wonder, I thought this during the Jack Dorsey era, and I certainly even think of it more under Elon is, do you ever think that he sits there and goes, you know, these guys are like, you know, what, whatever percentage of my user base.
00:38:03.980And yet they cause all of the problems and all of the headache.
00:38:07.740That is, yeah, that is a good perspective to say.
00:38:10.240Like, I haven't heard of like anyone other than maybe like the Germans or whatever, or the EU that complained.
00:38:17.040Um, like in any other country, like you mentioned Japan, like complaining about the new leadership.
00:38:37.080Those are like the only and loudest voices on the platform or outside of the platform criticizing everything.
00:38:45.460But I would also point out, and this is something that, um, that Elon has mentioned a number of times.
00:38:50.740Is that the EU has actually passed laws to protect users on there.
00:38:56.380Now they do also have hate speech laws, which is something that I completely oppose.
00:39:00.520Um, but they do have laws that prevent you from like viewpoint discrimination, various things on Twitter.
00:39:06.820Uh, they have data laws with what, what Twitter's allowed, what they're allowed to collect, what they're not.
00:39:10.860But, and so Elon's whole point has been, and he says it over and over in these, in these videos, like when he had the BBC interview, which also took place on Twitter, on Twitter spaces that, which, you know, you're talking about the live stream.
00:39:23.340I think they could just, just add live streaming to Twitter spaces.
00:39:43.220Um, that's, that's, I think the good viewpoint on it in the sense that I think the BBC interviewer was like, oh, wouldn't that incentivize people to pass bad laws or whatever?
00:39:54.960I'm like, well, think about what you're saying.
00:39:56.480It's like, you know, how hard it is to pass a law and the thought that people are going to pass it just for, you know, Twitter is absurd.
00:40:03.680That was his follow up question, I believe James Clayton to Elon saying that, but it just, his point is the fact that if a collection of people in a country feel so strongly about something on Twitter or whatever,
00:40:20.760that should be reflected in their laws before they're required to take action on a social media platform, that's supposed to be the public Times Square,
00:40:28.220because it's supposed to be reflecting as close as, you know, general life in that country as possible.
00:40:38.320So if it isn't required by law, he, you know, doesn't have to take action against it and doesn't feel compelled to.
00:40:45.800Um, because, uh, but like I just said, if, if a populist feels strong enough about something that they're going to elect leaders that are going to take action and make it into a law, if they feel so strongly about that.
00:41:01.880Because, you know, and, and to be clear, you know, he does have the community notes now, which is an interesting function.
00:41:07.440I don't think it quite gets everything right, but it at least performs some kind of fact checking.
00:41:12.040I think it's hilarious when they do it to like, uh, you know, corporations like Howard or Glenn Tesler.
00:41:18.580Um, I've pretty much every time I upload a deep fake, they add it to there and it's like, well, you're really, you're going to do it on jokes.
00:41:27.580Um, but the other part is, no, he has changed the doxing policy, which, you know, to take down a lot of those, those, uh, trackers like the jet tracker that he, that he really didn't like.
00:41:39.240Um, though I've yet to see it actually be enforced against, cause he said it's supposed to be like real time doxing, um, with the standard, but I yet to see it actually be enforced against some like them real time, like a paparazzi picture or something.
00:41:52.300Yeah. And I think the distinction, uh, that was made too, is cause James Clayton also brought this up, um, after the interview, cause he cut into the spaces questions was he's like, Oh, what if somebody is just in a picture at a concert?
00:42:07.200If it isn't at a public setting, like a political rally or a concert or whatever in a public space, it's not considered doxing because you're attending a public event.
00:42:16.780Um, I think the distinction is posting real time travel location, like as, as it's happening, because you're basically reporting to the public, the, the real time location of a person rather than, you know, you just saw someone on a street corner.
00:42:35.060It doesn't really give the coordinates. There's ways to figure out like by location of like a photo of like, if you see a street sign or whatever, but like that, that takes more effort than having a dot on a map.
00:42:47.960Um, which is kind of like what the Elon jet tracker did, um, was a counter argument against that because it just showed the airport location.
00:42:57.980And if you like, if you say, Oh, this person is at LAX, even if you went to LAX, there is no guarantee you're going to, um, but I do see the concern in, you know, reporting location by location in real time on a map.
00:43:14.720Um, so I, I think, I think that's the distinction there.
00:43:19.960If somebody is in a public setting and is pictured somewhere, um, that is, that's a lot different than a real time map with a tracker.
00:43:28.800We are coming up on our last couple of minutes. This has been an incredible conversation. Everybody needs to follow you at a LX.
00:43:36.640What are your, just as we wrap up here, where, where do you think Twitter goes from here? Do you think Twitter is here to stay?
00:43:43.360Elon's talked about, uh, evolving it into this sort of everything app under X, um, sounds ambitious. He's talked about, he's compared it to WeChat. Do you think that's his, his ultimate plan?
00:43:57.000Yeah, I think to start, he's going to increase the functionality on the app itself. Um, and then, uh, it's going to, I believe be maybe a separate app.
00:44:07.540Um, I know the news came out this week that they officially changed to X Corp. Um, so Twitter Inc. no longer exists. So it's going to be X Corp, but the app is still going to be called Twitter for now.
00:44:18.880But I think the first step in making it the everything app is the enabling of payments, like a Venmo, um, alternative as, as you know, like he helped found, uh, PayPal.
00:44:30.120So he has some, you know, history there. And I think like Twitter payments and Twitter coins are in development currently. Uh, so that also goes back to the Periscope thing you were talking about, about awarding stars and comments.
00:44:44.400So that's actually, um, that's in the process. I'm not exactly sure on the platform, how it will work, but there are going to be ways to, you know, send stars or coins or peer to peer, just like Venmo transactions on, on the Twitter app.
00:45:01.900Um, and I believe eventually it will evolve into a larger app with different functionality.
00:45:09.640Yeah, no, I, I think that's great. I think it's awesome. I think we need it.
00:45:13.260I would love to see it. I love the fact that, that Elon, what he's doing with it. Um, I do also think, and I sort of had this debate with destiny last week on this.
00:45:23.140I do think though, that being said, just because Elon has it now, it doesn't mean he'll have it forever.
00:45:28.280And I do think that there still needs to be a role for some type of public regulation.
00:45:33.920Um, I was actually, Alex Jones was on my panel, um, as sort of a surprise guest.
00:45:37.680And we both agreed that it should be given the same kind of rules as a utility.
00:45:41.840Yep. I agree with that. Make it a public utility. I fully agree that these, yeah, the section two 30, it's too nebulous.
00:45:49.900It's, it's not applied evenly. And I don't think that makes sense. Make it a public utility and put it under the common carrier anti-discrimination laws. Simple.
00:45:57.920Mm-hmm a hundred percent. Agree with that.
00:46:01.920Um, at ALX on Twitter and true social, and then ALX the Lord on Instagram.
00:46:07.760All right. ALX, one of my oldest Twitter buddies and now longtime actual friend folks, ladies and gentlemen, as always, you have my permission to lay short.
00:46:17.680kind of answer, but there is aksi bottom, the general team