November 26, 2024 • 36 mins
There have been a lot of raised eyebrows over Elon Musk’s “DOGE” (not the cryptocurrency), short for Trump 2.0’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” It’s Donald Trump’s project for Musk: he’s assigned his wealthiest donor the task of cutting government spending by about $2 trillion (most of which is constitutionally up to Congress, but anyway...), in part by gutting or eliminating key regulatory agencies. The DOGE will be co-led by former presidential candidate, fellow tech entrepreneur and now full-on Trump acolyte Vivek Ramaswamy. Recent reporting has revealed a whole team of Trumpian billionaires, investors and tech personalities willing to join the feeding frenzy—a veritable Avengers team of MAGA fiscal expenditure.
On the latest episode of Elon, Inc., David Papadopoulos and Max Chafkin break down who’s who behind the scenes of the DOGE team, and try to figure out what, if anything, it can do or what Musk’s end goal is.
The episode also includes a live recording in London from October with Papadopoulos, Chafkin and social media expert Devika Shanker-Grandpierre. The trio discuss the global consequences of Musk’s lax content moderation on X.
To top things off, David confronts Max with Musk’s latest ploy: a suggestion that the billionaire should buy MSNBC. It may sound far fetched but, as David points out, didn’t the purchase of Twitter also start out as a joke?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
it will be different.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
He'll vote Republican. There is a reason the US government
is so reliant on him. Elon Musk is a scam
artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Anything he does, he's fascinating to people. Welcome to the Elaniing,
Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, November twenty sixth.
I'm your host, David Papadopolis, And before we get into
(01:00):
anything else, I've got an exciting bit of information for
all you dear listeners out there, which is that we
have created for you an email address in which you
can ping us your thoughts, your ideas, things you love,
things you hate about the show, or things you want
us to do going forward. It is Eloninc. At Bloomberg
(01:21):
dot net and it is open to receive your messages
as we speak. Right now, I am sitting here in
the studio with our man, Max Chafkin. Hey, they're Max.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Hey David.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, Max, So it's Thanksgiving week here, as you well know,
you got your turkey ready, Pal.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I did.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I brianed it last night. I started this. I started
the Brian process.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Brian is incredibly key until we started brining the Turkey
years ago. Way too dry. Brianing's gene.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
You do a wet Brian or a dry Brian.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Wet Brian. Okay, well done, Max. Now, in addition to
the Brianing of the Turkey Thanksgiving, it's just a busy
time of the year. So you know, we're pulling the
recording from the archives this week. Max previously unreleased live
recording from the tech summit that Bloomberg held in London
last month. Great chat about misinformation or on the globe
(02:12):
X is growing roll in it. But you know, Max,
before we roll that tape, I can't help but be
curious about some recent developments with DOZE. You remember DOGE.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Max, you're talking about the Department of Government Deficiency that
may or may not be an actual department.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I am talking about the Department of Government Efficiency that
may or may not be a department. Correct. I want
to pick your brain about this, But I also max,
I got to get something off my chest first. So
you're you're gonna listen to me, now, okay, all right,
humor me here.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You've been dying. I know that this take is weeks,
not months.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
You know, there's been a lot of joking about Doge,
but you know, I think the macro backdrop is important,
the macroeconomic backdrop to the rise of Doge, which is
you know. So one of the clear ways I think
we can interpret the election results are the American people
rejecting the inflation spike we saw on saying in loud
(03:11):
and no uncertain terms, we are voting out the current
administration because we hated that inflation. And it is also
a statement of fact that while there were many drivers
of the inflation spike that we've suffered over the last
few years, unprecedented budget deficits being run by the government
starting under Trump in twenty twenty, carried carried on by
(03:34):
Biden in subsequent years are a key part of it.
And so I think that in the abstract, it stands
to reason that you say, hey, it's no coincidence that
something like Doge was launched right now, A group of
people coming together to say, hey, how can we squeeze
and tighten government spending, get the deficit under control, and
(03:55):
try to tame inflation. Now, of course, there's also the
fact that this incoming administry also talks incessantly about cutting taxes,
which is true, will only drive the deficit right back up.
But let's strip that part of it out for a second, though,
and just say, hey, when it comes to spending and
the deficit, they have something of a point, okay, to
(04:17):
which why do you say they don't.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I don't say that they don't. I mean, they obviously do,
but I don't think it's in any way clear that
there is a plan indaged to deal with it, or
that voters in fact voted for it. And when you
start like, yes, voters were very upset about rising prices,
but Trump also campaigned on a booming economy. He's gonna
(04:44):
pressure whoever runs a federal reserve to lower interest rates,
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
So so I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I don't know that it's clear that voters are like, yeah,
let's let's cut let's cut social security spending, let's cut medicare,
let's cut the Defense Department. Like none of those things
are popular and unfortunately that's what it's gonna take. And
on top of that, I don't think Elon Musk or
Vivek Ramaswami have really laid out a plan to address
(05:10):
that spending with the stuff that's largely been talked about.
Seems like it's more about sort of making very modest
tweaks or whatever to to how the government operates stuff
that I don't know is actually gonna move's gonna do anything, right, Like,
I think that this is like another instance of a
bunch of tech guys attempting to apply themselves. And we're
(05:31):
actually starting to see like there is some excitement in
the world of tech for this because Elon is a
big name and there's a sense of possibility under Trump,
he obviously has a lot of access. I just think
it's gonna be it's gonna be really hard for them
to do anything.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Indeed, we shall see if they manage to come up
with actual, tangible, meaningful cuts that are politically palatable to
a majority in Congress to move the needle. But as
you were just alluding to the team at DOGE, the
large team at DOGE is starting to take shape.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I mean, there are some basically some friends of Elon,
some some of his like this guy Steve Davis, who's
one of his longtime deputies. He worked at SpaceX, he
worked at Boring Company. He's sort of like Musk's like
top fixer.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
He was at X for a while.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
There were reports that he was involved in Pennsylvania. He's
involved with Doge Antonio Grossius, who's one of Musk's good friends.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
He's involved.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Are these guys going to be involved in in a
full time capacity, Like, I'm not totally sure. I think
it's gonna be. Musk joked about this, you know, he said,
you're gonna have to be work, you know, willing to
work like eighty hours a week for like little to
no pay and and you know, effectively like sleep on
the floor of the you know, all the.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Dog Yeah, and in the energy department or something.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And we know where the Doge office will be. Max.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
My assumption is, well, for now, I think they're based
in They're in mar A Lago with everybody else who's
around Trump's orbit. My assumption that it is that it
will be somewhere in DC, although probably the government building.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I think it'll be in a wee work actually there
we go we work.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Work, so right. You mentioned Antonio grass Is, Steve Davis,
Joe Lonsdale I believe has been tell us about him.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Joe Lonsdale is kind of a Peter Teel protege. He's
a co founder of Palenteer. He's an investor I believe
has a big stake in SpaceX. He's based in Texas.
He's one of the guys who I think served as
kind of an entree to Elon Musk's like political engagement.
But I again, I don't know that he is going
(07:33):
to become a full time employee of DOGE. Like it
really sounds like they're a bunch of a bunch of
guys who have ideas and they they haven't totally figured
out how to actually staff this thing or what does
even staffing it look like. I was talking to somebody
who's had a conversations with people involved with DOGE, and
they were saying that, you know, it's gonna be maybe
Elon and Vivek Ramaswami each bring you know, five or
(07:56):
six people into a five oh one c three so
so in other words, a privately funded a privately funded
entity rather than a government program, which makes sense because
you because Elon Musk is not gonna want to like
deal with government ethics roles and so on. But again,
like I don't know how much you really get done
with that. And again beyond, they're definitely gonna be able
(08:16):
to make a lot of political noise, and I think
they're gonna be able to have a role from like
an advocacy position, perhaps especially given that Trump is listening
to Elon Musk right now, and there are members in Congress,
both houses of Congress who are saying, yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
We're gonna have a Doge caucus. We're gonna like there's
gonna be a liaison.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
It isn't Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, and tg she's she's on board.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I believe Joni Ernst in the Senate has has indicated
that she's gonna, you know, be some sort of representative
or whatever, some somebody who's gonna advocate for this stuff.
So I think it's we should look at this like,
I'm sure these guys are technologists. I'm sure they're gonna
try to like do some data stuff. But I think
this is that we should think of this more as
(09:02):
a political thing rather than like they're gonna like find
like lots of narrow efficiencies of government and bring it together.
They're going to come out and say we should get
rid of the Department of Education, Congress, go for.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
It or whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Now, as in as a close listener of citizen Elon
Max and a big fan, I heard you say the
other day that you are simultaneously thinking that Doge will
go nowhere at all, but also could have perhaps you
also then think an enormous impact. Are you still sort
of back and forth between the.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Two general I mean, I'm more optimistic about Elon Musk's
chances to have an impact politically than I think almost
anybody else, including a bunch of the people who talk
on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
And I think that's because that's why.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
We cut them all out today. It's just you and Well.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I mean, here's the thing, like, we all come with biases,
and a lot of people who've been in Washington a
long time and who've covered Trump for a long time
have seen business leader after business leader, you know, get
into Trump's orbit and sort of crash out in borderline
humiliating and or career destroying spectacular flame out. People who've
covered Elon Musk for a long time and have followed him,
(10:15):
have seen him over and over again sort of cajole,
you know, work his butt off, do whatever it takes
essentially to succeed and cause his enemies to fall away.
So like, if you've been following Elon for a long
time as I have, it's like you think, like, Okay, well,
you know, maybe there's a chance he's gonna figure this out.
And I do think he has things going for him
(10:37):
that are underappreciated, like his wallet and his willingness to
spend in the midterm elections. If that, if that keeps up,
gives him real leverage over Trump.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well if the value of these can't and won't keep spending,
and even.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If they as long as as long as the value
of Tesla doesn't collapse, like he like spending a couple
hundred million dollars in twenty twenty six, Like he can
do that very easily, and that's gonna be a huge
asset to the President elect and to the kind of
hard right Republicans who want to buy into this agenda.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
So Max, beyond Elon fretting about as I was earlier,
the evils of inflation that can often be caused by
out of control budget deficits, what does he want to
get out of Doge.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I honestly think that Doge, and we we get into
this in the Citizen Elon podcast in the last episode,
But I think Doge is just an entree for him
into Trump World. And I think what he wants is
to influence government policy in areas that he knows and
where he is positioned to benefit. So it's government contracts
like he does, and there are aspects of government procurement
(11:43):
that he has spent lot been exposed to and has
like big thoughts, and I suppose, like Doge, if you squint,
has something to do with those. But now I think
it's more about trying to, you know, push the government
in the direction that you know that that he thinks
would be good, which you know consequentially happens to involve
him getting even richer.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yes, I do suppose that would be a nice little
knock on effect, and we'll find out just how far
Doge gets. We will be talking about it, dear listeners
again and again and again in coming months, so you
have that to look forward to. But Max, let's go
back to London that time we did that show. Remember
that show we did in London.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I mean it's hazy. You know, I feel like I've
lived a lifetime.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But but you know, in reviewing it, I do think
that conversation we had is really important. You know, we
talked about disinformation at X and and the ways in
which governments in particular have started to resist it or
try to resist it. And you know X as we
saw with this election, like it's a part of Elon
Musk's empire. It's the media arm of Elon Inc. And
(12:50):
if it's weakened either because it sort of goes too
far and makes some governments in Europe.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Mad or it pisses off its users.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And they go to Blue Sky or something else, as
we talked about last week, you know that's gonna that's
gonna hurt Elon. It's gonna hurt more than Disney going
away or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Wait, wait, so if it's the media armor of Elon ink,
what the hell are we you think about it?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So let's listen to that recording. It's me and you Max,
and it's a special guest. We had Debica Shanker grand Pierre,
who's a former social media executive and now a professor.
We recorded this a week or so before the elections.
And then, Hey, Max, don't go anywhere, because when we're
done listening to it, I've got to ping you in
a couple of other things I've had on my mind,
(13:36):
as you can say, I've had a lot on my
mind of Lake. I'm here for you, David. All right, right,
Hello everyone. I'm David Popadopolis, host of Elon, Inc. Bloomberg's
(13:57):
weekly podcast and all Things Elon. It's great to be
here in London for the Bloomberg Tech Summit, and we
have a great show ahead for you. I'm joined on
stage by my man Max Chafkin, senior writer at BusinessWeek
and not only a regular on this show, but now
the host of another Elon pod. You're gonna be all
eloned out very soon, a mini series on his political
(14:21):
awakening called Citizen Elon that debuts today. We Max Hey.
Also with us is Debica Shanker grand Pierre, tech risk expert.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Debica spent over a decade working at large social media
platforms like TikTok and Meta.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Welcome Debaica, thank you for having me, David.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, given that the theme for today's event is trust, we're
going to dive into the controversial evolution of X under
Elon and how his move into politics is drawing every
greater scrutiny of the platform and is broader global empire.
By the way, we're recording here, so you know, try
to you know at some point in time, you know,
yuck it up. Laugh ten year into it, Debeka, We're
(15:01):
going to start with you. It's funny. You know, the
words trust in safety get thrown around a lot. Even
at the university you teach at in Greece, those words
figure prominently in the name of one of your winter
semester courses. So at places like Meta TikTok X, what
do those terms actually mean? What do those teams do there?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Essentially, trust and safety are the people who keep the
Internet safe. So they do broadly three things. Number one,
define the rules of acceptable behavior online. Number two enforce
those rules in a consistent, objective, reproducible manner, and number
three come up with innovative ways to make sure that
people can have a safe experience, and of late also
(15:47):
work with regulators and close partnerships to meet with all
of the compliance requirements. So those three four things sort
of boil down to what we broadly mean by trust
and safety in.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Tech and now, when Musk took over Twitter now X,
you know he famously gutted a huge part of the
trust and safety team, something like eighty percent of it
as part of that, you know, massive chaotic layoffs that
he did when he first got there. What are the
risks of doing that and how are we seeing them
play out now?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
So the impact of gutting your trust and safety team
is simply real world consequences. So if you get rid
of eighty percent of the people who are responsible for
keeping your platform safe, all of us here who use
X can see and feel for ourselves the level and
(16:39):
type of discourse the endless stream of crypto offers the
only defense ads we see all of that in English now.
If we take those risks that we can feel tangibly
and magnify that by one hundred X, I think we
can begin to have a vague understanding of what the
risks look like in non English speaking countries.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
So do we see these problems proliferating more on X
now than we would on other platforms?
Speaker 4 (17:06):
The problems have felt more acutely on X on account
of not having teams that are responsible for making sure
that the platform is safe in those languages and in
those countries.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
When Ela Musk brought back foreign President Trump to his platform, right,
he did it via a pole and it was like
he just said, like should I bring President Trump back?
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Or no?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Vox popular Vox day, you know, basically like hey, whatever
you think is cool. And it's such an interesting contrast
to like Facebook, which was so the decision to ban
Trump and then like what to do with him.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Was so fraught that they created.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
This entire like Supreme Court like called the Oversight Board
literally and they and they wrote this like lengthy brief
sort of discussing you know, the and and musc of courses,
just shooting from the hip, I think partly because that's
just how he runs his companies. And he just decided,
you know, hey, how hard could it be to run
a social media site, which of course overlooks like a
(18:03):
lot of the problems that Davikas bring up. And then
you know, and then also has like these political reasons
to do so that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
There can be there can be too much intervention from
these teams, can they're not max?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I mean, I think there's the question, there's like a
philosophical question of like how like how open.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Should social media companies be?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Like like people talk about free speech and and like
should it be unlimited free speech? So there's there's that,
there's that question, and then like what that does to
trust as far as people who use the platform, because
you want people use the platform to feel like it's
not an arbitrary it's not just like whatever the owner
wants in that particular moment.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
The key thing that you want to have as any
platform that like cares about its users and has a
core principle is really you want to make sure that
the decisions that you make are objective, reproducible, and testable.
Like doing a poll on who should come back to
your platform or not? I think maybe fails all three
of those thinky things.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And if you take the position one the pole overwhelming
that Trump should come.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Back, I mean I would. I think the problem with
that is if you decide, hypothetically speaking, that you're going
to have a digital platform where you make all decisions
based on referendums, let's make up this world where that's
the case, right, you still need to have some sort
of guardrails around how often you're going to do the polls.
Who are the people who are going to vote on
(19:26):
these poles. What results are good is eighty percent goods
seventy percent goods, so that you can apply those in
a uniform and firm way. And to add on to
what Max said, I think Musk went from its free
speech I like free speech to I like free speech
as long as it's legal, to I like free speech
(19:46):
as long as it's legal, but I'm still uncomfortable about
people who track my jets or people who use terms
lexis gender to I like free speech as long as
it's legal. But if a country like Brazil says that
it's legal, then I'm kind of not okay with it. Well,
you can't go through those, right, you know, those huge
(20:07):
changes in your position in a very short period of time.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I think that's It's also weird because Musk right now
feels like he's falling into many of the same pitfalls
that he like criticized the you know, the prior regime.
Like Musk's critique of Twitter was that they were too
captured by Biden and by Democratic politicians. And now you
have Musk himself, you know, serve acting as a surrogate,
(20:32):
you know, campaigning with the former president, and you know
along the way having to make all these like very
difficult decisions, and that kind of erodes trust as well.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Very much so. And we will get back to that
issue in a second. I just want to ask you
to because though I hear what you're saying on some
of those things in that evolution, that's that's taken part
in terms of his you know, how he's viewed how
to treat these issues. But I still I guess I
wonder if you were to sell your soul, not that
you would do such a thing, but if you were
(21:04):
to sell your soul and go over the dark side.
Vladimir Putin said here, here's a half a million dollars
a month to help me spread disinformation. What would you
tell them? You just simply say, just go to X.
Do it all there.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
First of all, I don't think you need half millions.
I think it's I think he's overpaying. But obviously that's.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
No you I'm offering you.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
So I think I would probably say, yeah, go to X,
because if you don't. X doesn't label any any of
the official Russian propaganda state media. There's no labels on
any of them. So people interact with content from Russian
state sponsored points of view without really knowing that that's
(21:47):
who they're interacting with.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I mean, the odds of getting anything you know, banned
or removed are pretty low.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Yes, they don't, at least according to the latest transparency report.
No mention of what they're doing around coed influence operations
or specifically disinformation. I think it again ties back to
the original thing around, like, if you don't have anyone
looking at the problem or measuring the problem, then I
(22:16):
suppose you can take the view that there is no problem.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Correct, Well, you would sell your soul by the way
easily in a second. But would you also send them texture?
Do you have some other grand plan to spread disinformation?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Well, I mean, I think what's so interesting about X
is that it's a relatively small plant. I mean, like
you know, Facebook, Instagram has a lot more, TikTok has
more users. The reach is just shrunk now, I do think,
and there was there's been all this talk around how
Elon must change. Actually, you know, he famously, as you said,
laid off all these people and did all these things
(22:48):
that sent a lot of users, including a lot of
prominent users, including celebrities and journalists and so on.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
You know, essentially running from the hills or you know.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Defecting to Instagram and threads, which is the you know
Instagram like you know Twitter version. But on the other hand,
I think it still remains culturally relevant and like, especially
in the US, and especially in terms of like conservative politics,
it is like where that political conversation still seems to
be happening.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
And therefore, yes, if I were part.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Of the half a million dollars media, you know, and
I have no other choice, right, Like, it does seem
like a pretty effective way to.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Like reach a politically engaged audience.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And I think, like, I mean, that's obviously bad from
a you know, or not obviously bad. It It might
be bad from a societal point of view, but it
is in some sense to el must credit because X
is still relevant.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
I think regulators around the world are like waking up
and realizing, like, what what do we want to signal here?
And exactly around that political conversation in the US, that's
everyone feels that, But like if we just move just
zoom out a bit. Right, Currently, there is an ongoing
conflict standoff diplomatic standoff between India and Canada around the
(24:07):
alleged assault and murder of a sick activist. If you
go on x for understanding or if you just want
to see what's happening on this specific topic, all of
the top sited algorithmically amplified sources of information are state
media points of view. And why that.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Is especially media from Russia.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
In India, so that Sputnik India are to India, these
are your top sources. And this is why this is
interesting is because the content that Russian state media is
creating in a country like India, it's extremely localized. Its
means it's entertaining and it you seed their point they
see their point of view so effectively in local languages
(24:52):
that it gets picked up by journalists in India who
still use x right for a variety of reasons. And
then that's part of the mainstream conversation conversation and then
it's hard to say it did it starts, hard to say.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Where it starts, but it does get the people worked up.
I want to talk a little bit about the riots
that broke out here in the UK this summer in
the wake of the mass stabbing in Southport. The riots
here were a concrete case of a virtual mob turning
(25:26):
into an actual mob in the streets, much of that
virtual mob congregating on x egg don by Musk, who
was predicting civil war here. So the counterfactual is hard
to map out and prove. But did the riots take
place if there was no such thing as social media?
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I mean there were riots.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
And this is what if you ask like a social
media company, like an executive here, like they would say, well,
there were riots before there, you know, race riots existed
in the world before social media. Unfortunately, Yet on the
other hand, I don't know. I mean, it's really tempting
to see this, to see this as a case where
(26:06):
like the influence of these platforms and of our kind
of just completely broken, like information ecosystems that are very
entertaining are you know, are spilling on the real world.
And then it creates this like additional problem when when
you're like, hey, social media companies, can you perhaps rain
this in a little bit, you know, maybe you could
(26:28):
try to help us like figure out how to deal
with this, you know, crisis, and the CEO of one
of them, Elon Musk, is just like, hey, sorry, I'm
busy posting my own memes about the race riot, which
is what was going on I mean he was not
only ignoring British lawmakers, he was just sort of like
you know, pouring you know, extra gasoline on the fire.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
I think the fire gasoline like sort of contribution to
the problem and the real world consequences. And it's another
one of those things where you like look at the
entire globe and you see there are parts of the
world where what's on the Internet leads you there is
a direct link between what happens in the real world.
(27:11):
I can give you an example, since we're all the
unfortunate topic of riots. Just a couple of months ago,
Bangladesh had went through this huge period of political turmoil.
The Prime Minister fled the country at extreme short notice,
and there was a claim that one of the beloved
(27:31):
cricketers for everyone who follows cricket, our house was touched
as part of communal violence in Bangladesh. And this was
a claim that originated on x And this was a
time and internet was shut down in Bangladesh as a
response to what can you do to control the risks
and the spread of information? Right, So this claim was
(27:54):
fact checked by multiple fact checkers within I want to
say five to six hours, but that content that this
is misleading and this was false was not anywhere to
be seen on the platform, and it kind of took
a life of its own, and it spread to the
neighboring countries who then started to make kill lists of
(28:17):
people who belong to minority groups within their local communities,
and they did that on X in languages which are
non English, and you can still probably find a lot
of them under the algorithmically amplified section of X for Bangladesh.
So the actual contribution to a crisis will riot still happen, yes,
(28:41):
but what is a contribution to that real world consequence
because of technology in different parts of the world. I
think it's quite varied. In some places it's extremely high,
like Myanmar or Bangladesh or India, and in some places
it's more muted.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
There was a sense that Musk is going to be
called or some of the leaders of acts, we are
going to be called to the UK and held to
account and forced to ask answer questions that never happened.
At the same time, there are do seem like there's
some forces building here in UK and broader Europe where
(29:16):
they have a slightly more dim or harsh view towards
social media than is the case in the US. Are
we going to see actions taken potentially in the future.
Is Musk on a collision course with regulators here in Europe?
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I think yes, there's a short.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Answer, He's on a collision course definitely.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
I think the slightly longer answer would be, and I'm
sure this is the discussion that is happening at Offcom
and multiple regulators and the European Commission around what is
the message we want to send with regards to compliance
to regulation of social media. So based on where they
land on that spectrum, I think it's unlikely that it
(30:00):
would be as extreme as.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Telegram CEO who was arrested.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
But it is now up to the regulators to send
the right message, I think, because if there is no
consequence for gutting your team that is responsible for keeping
use digital platforms safe, If there's no consequence, then what
does that What message does that send to other platforms?
What message does that send to startups who might be
(30:27):
creating new platforms, how important the safety to them in
their design? So I think it's definitely on a collision course,
but maybe not as extreme as as Telegram, which is
on the.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Other end very good we're at a time we need
to end it there at Devika. Max, thank you very much. Okay,
that was awesome. It's all. It's all coming back to
me now. Max, I and I especially remember the drinks,
those really fancy drinks you and Rayhan got. What were
they called? After this?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
That is one part that has not come back to me.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Jesus, apparently you had one too many of them. All right, now,
listen the thing I wanted to ask you about it
like a fabrication. No, no, it's it's true. I was
there for it. It was documented. There are pictures. So
Elon is now joking about buying MSNBC. The Twitter thing
started with the joke.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Max.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
And it's not clear to me that Comcast, which is
spinning off its cable companies cable networks into a separate company.
The idea is that both it's like the telecom part
and the media part will be worth more as two
different things. It's not clear they'd be willing to like
part with just like one of their cable channels. Of
course they own a bunch of different cable channels. But
(31:45):
as you said, I mean, I think in the world
of like corporate m and a like if someone makes
a huge offer, like they're gonna they're gonna look at it.
Elon I don't think has really been very serious about this, right,
there's been.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
A any sort of sense of what the dollar value
of this thing would be.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
No, I have no idea, and I think it's there's
there would be like real questions about how much it's worth,
Like as a standalone thing, you know there are a
lot of fixed.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Costs to Cornaki come with it.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, you'd have to think that the khakis would be
part of the deal, and.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
That's got to make it worth one hundred or two
hundred million.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I mean, the thing is like like a Twitter was
a business that Elon Musk understood well. He was a
longtime user. He loved the thing.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
This just you don't think he's ever This feels like
a troll.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
This feels like meme bait. Now, you know, he's done
stuff that seemed out there before. But I think for now,
like I'm looking this at this more as a bit
rather than a actual proposal. But I think it's something
we should like keep our eyes on because again, you
never know. You could also imagine him if he's serious
about about broadcast about owning a TV channel, Like, there
(32:51):
are a handful of other conservative networks you know that
that have been spun up over the past few years
that I'm sure would be you know who would be interested.
You could imagine him going after some kind of big name,
sort of left media outlet. Maybe it's not a TV station,
maybe maybe a struggling print magazine or something like that.
You know, there are a bunch of those, So I
(33:13):
don't know, Like, I don't think it's totally crazy.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
He clearly likes media.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
He got something out of his last media deal, and
now he owes Twitter. You could imagine maybe some synergies.
But I think it's probably pretty hard to operate MSNBC.
And I'm not an expert on the economics of cable television,
but I'm guessing it's pretty hard to operate MSNBC as
a standalone thing that that's going to be outside of
the Musk's expertise.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I like, how serious you're taking this question, because you
know what, No, it's to your point, we would be
foolish to take anything positive in that sort of way,
in this case, in the form of a tweet as
merely a joke to be discarded because he's just he's
proven to us in the past that he's often deadly serious.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
I mean, there is.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Also the question of like creating a little bit of
news creating again, like Doge is gonna be hard, so
so and Elon Musk is kind of a master of
creating new storylines, just like Trump, right, like the ways Trump.
You know, it's like the Trump presidency is like a
reality show, and and he's really good at like finding
things for people to focus on.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So so maybe this is it.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
But but again, it just feels like a lot if
it also feels a little derivative.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
You know, the Onion is buying Info Wars.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
It feels like a little bit of a like a
lame sequel slash competing Hollywood studios coming up with like
copycat stories like I don't know, I'm not into it yet.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Alrighty, fair enough, And Max, of course we need to
remind everybody again we have our brand new email address
for our listeners to ping us at what is the
address again, Max Ewoninc.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
At Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
You can tell us what you can get the show
and tell us which departments the Doge should cut. We'll
pass it right on to Elon and we'll read it,
you know, on the show if it if it's funny.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Right, if it's funny, or if it's help well for
the dose two Max, good luck with that, Brian, that Turkey, Brian,
Thank you, Happy Thanksgiving to you, Happy Thanksgiving to you, David.
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Masarrakas is
our editor and Rayhan Harmansi is our senior editor. The
(35:21):
idea for this very show also came from Rayhan. Blake
Maples handles engineering, and Emma Sanchez fact checks. Our supervising
producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elan Inc. Theme is written
and performed by Takea Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiera. Brendan Francis
Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the
head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to
(35:44):
our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos.
If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
it will be different.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
He'll vote Republican. There is a reason the US government
is so reliant on him. Elon Musk is a scam
artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Anything he does, he's fascinating to people. Welcome to the Elaniing,
Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday, November twenty sixth.
I'm your host, David Papadopolis, And before we get into
(01:00):
anything else, I've got an exciting bit of information for
all you dear listeners out there, which is that we
have created for you an email address in which you
can ping us your thoughts, your ideas, things you love,
things you hate about the show, or things you want
us to do going forward. It is Eloninc. At Bloomberg
(01:21):
dot net and it is open to receive your messages
as we speak. Right now, I am sitting here in
the studio with our man, Max Chafkin. Hey, they're Max.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Hey David.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, Max, So it's Thanksgiving week here, as you well know,
you got your turkey ready, Pal.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I did.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I brianed it last night. I started this. I started
the Brian process.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Brian is incredibly key until we started brining the Turkey
years ago. Way too dry. Brianing's gene.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
You do a wet Brian or a dry Brian.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Wet Brian. Okay, well done, Max. Now, in addition to
the Brianing of the Turkey Thanksgiving, it's just a busy
time of the year. So you know, we're pulling the
recording from the archives this week. Max previously unreleased live
recording from the tech summit that Bloomberg held in London
last month. Great chat about misinformation or on the globe
(02:12):
X is growing roll in it. But you know, Max,
before we roll that tape, I can't help but be
curious about some recent developments with DOZE. You remember DOGE.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Max, you're talking about the Department of Government Deficiency that
may or may not be an actual department.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I am talking about the Department of Government Efficiency that
may or may not be a department. Correct. I want
to pick your brain about this, But I also max,
I got to get something off my chest first. So
you're you're gonna listen to me, now, okay, all right,
humor me here.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You've been dying. I know that this take is weeks,
not months.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
You know, there's been a lot of joking about Doge,
but you know, I think the macro backdrop is important,
the macroeconomic backdrop to the rise of Doge, which is
you know. So one of the clear ways I think
we can interpret the election results are the American people
rejecting the inflation spike we saw on saying in loud
(03:11):
and no uncertain terms, we are voting out the current
administration because we hated that inflation. And it is also
a statement of fact that while there were many drivers
of the inflation spike that we've suffered over the last
few years, unprecedented budget deficits being run by the government
starting under Trump in twenty twenty, carried carried on by
(03:34):
Biden in subsequent years are a key part of it.
And so I think that in the abstract, it stands
to reason that you say, hey, it's no coincidence that
something like Doge was launched right now, A group of
people coming together to say, hey, how can we squeeze
and tighten government spending, get the deficit under control, and
(03:55):
try to tame inflation. Now, of course, there's also the
fact that this incoming administry also talks incessantly about cutting taxes,
which is true, will only drive the deficit right back up.
But let's strip that part of it out for a second, though,
and just say, hey, when it comes to spending and
the deficit, they have something of a point, okay, to
(04:17):
which why do you say they don't.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I don't say that they don't. I mean, they obviously do,
but I don't think it's in any way clear that
there is a plan indaged to deal with it, or
that voters in fact voted for it. And when you
start like, yes, voters were very upset about rising prices,
but Trump also campaigned on a booming economy. He's gonna
(04:44):
pressure whoever runs a federal reserve to lower interest rates,
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
So so I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I don't know that it's clear that voters are like, yeah,
let's let's cut let's cut social security spending, let's cut medicare,
let's cut the Defense Department. Like none of those things
are popular and unfortunately that's what it's gonna take. And
on top of that, I don't think Elon Musk or
Vivek Ramaswami have really laid out a plan to address
(05:10):
that spending with the stuff that's largely been talked about.
Seems like it's more about sort of making very modest
tweaks or whatever to to how the government operates stuff
that I don't know is actually gonna move's gonna do anything, right, Like,
I think that this is like another instance of a
bunch of tech guys attempting to apply themselves. And we're
(05:31):
actually starting to see like there is some excitement in
the world of tech for this because Elon is a
big name and there's a sense of possibility under Trump,
he obviously has a lot of access. I just think
it's gonna be it's gonna be really hard for them
to do anything.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Indeed, we shall see if they manage to come up
with actual, tangible, meaningful cuts that are politically palatable to
a majority in Congress to move the needle. But as
you were just alluding to the team at DOGE, the
large team at DOGE is starting to take shape.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I mean, there are some basically some friends of Elon,
some some of his like this guy Steve Davis, who's
one of his longtime deputies. He worked at SpaceX, he
worked at Boring Company. He's sort of like Musk's like
top fixer.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
He was at X for a while.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
There were reports that he was involved in Pennsylvania. He's
involved with Doge Antonio Grossius, who's one of Musk's good friends.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
He's involved.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Are these guys going to be involved in in a
full time capacity, Like, I'm not totally sure. I think
it's gonna be. Musk joked about this, you know, he said,
you're gonna have to be work, you know, willing to
work like eighty hours a week for like little to
no pay and and you know, effectively like sleep on
the floor of the you know, all the.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Dog Yeah, and in the energy department or something.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And we know where the Doge office will be. Max.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
My assumption is, well, for now, I think they're based
in They're in mar A Lago with everybody else who's
around Trump's orbit. My assumption that it is that it
will be somewhere in DC, although probably the government building.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I think it'll be in a wee work actually there
we go we work.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Work, so right. You mentioned Antonio grass Is, Steve Davis,
Joe Lonsdale I believe has been tell us about him.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Joe Lonsdale is kind of a Peter Teel protege. He's
a co founder of Palenteer. He's an investor I believe
has a big stake in SpaceX. He's based in Texas.
He's one of the guys who I think served as
kind of an entree to Elon Musk's like political engagement.
But I again, I don't know that he is going
(07:33):
to become a full time employee of DOGE. Like it
really sounds like they're a bunch of a bunch of
guys who have ideas and they they haven't totally figured
out how to actually staff this thing or what does
even staffing it look like. I was talking to somebody
who's had a conversations with people involved with DOGE, and
they were saying that, you know, it's gonna be maybe
Elon and Vivek Ramaswami each bring you know, five or
(07:56):
six people into a five oh one c three so
so in other words, a privately funded a privately funded
entity rather than a government program, which makes sense because
you because Elon Musk is not gonna want to like
deal with government ethics roles and so on. But again,
like I don't know how much you really get done
with that. And again beyond, they're definitely gonna be able
(08:16):
to make a lot of political noise, and I think
they're gonna be able to have a role from like
an advocacy position, perhaps especially given that Trump is listening
to Elon Musk right now, and there are members in Congress,
both houses of Congress who are saying, yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
We're gonna have a Doge caucus. We're gonna like there's
gonna be a liaison.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
It isn't Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, and tg she's she's on board.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I believe Joni Ernst in the Senate has has indicated
that she's gonna, you know, be some sort of representative
or whatever, some somebody who's gonna advocate for this stuff.
So I think it's we should look at this like,
I'm sure these guys are technologists. I'm sure they're gonna
try to like do some data stuff. But I think
this is that we should think of this more as
(09:02):
a political thing rather than like they're gonna like find
like lots of narrow efficiencies of government and bring it together.
They're going to come out and say we should get
rid of the Department of Education, Congress, go for.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
It or whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Now, as in as a close listener of citizen Elon
Max and a big fan, I heard you say the
other day that you are simultaneously thinking that Doge will
go nowhere at all, but also could have perhaps you
also then think an enormous impact. Are you still sort
of back and forth between the.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Two general I mean, I'm more optimistic about Elon Musk's
chances to have an impact politically than I think almost
anybody else, including a bunch of the people who talk
on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
And I think that's because that's why.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
We cut them all out today. It's just you and Well.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I mean, here's the thing, like, we all come with biases,
and a lot of people who've been in Washington a
long time and who've covered Trump for a long time
have seen business leader after business leader, you know, get
into Trump's orbit and sort of crash out in borderline
humiliating and or career destroying spectacular flame out. People who've
covered Elon Musk for a long time and have followed him,
(10:15):
have seen him over and over again sort of cajole,
you know, work his butt off, do whatever it takes
essentially to succeed and cause his enemies to fall away.
So like, if you've been following Elon for a long
time as I have, it's like you think, like, Okay, well,
you know, maybe there's a chance he's gonna figure this out.
And I do think he has things going for him
(10:37):
that are underappreciated, like his wallet and his willingness to
spend in the midterm elections. If that, if that keeps up,
gives him real leverage over Trump.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well if the value of these can't and won't keep spending,
and even.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If they as long as as long as the value
of Tesla doesn't collapse, like he like spending a couple
hundred million dollars in twenty twenty six, Like he can
do that very easily, and that's gonna be a huge
asset to the President elect and to the kind of
hard right Republicans who want to buy into this agenda.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
So Max, beyond Elon fretting about as I was earlier,
the evils of inflation that can often be caused by
out of control budget deficits, what does he want to
get out of Doge.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I honestly think that Doge, and we we get into
this in the Citizen Elon podcast in the last episode,
But I think Doge is just an entree for him
into Trump World. And I think what he wants is
to influence government policy in areas that he knows and
where he is positioned to benefit. So it's government contracts
like he does, and there are aspects of government procurement
(11:43):
that he has spent lot been exposed to and has
like big thoughts, and I suppose, like Doge, if you squint,
has something to do with those. But now I think
it's more about trying to, you know, push the government
in the direction that you know that that he thinks
would be good, which you know consequentially happens to involve
him getting even richer.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yes, I do suppose that would be a nice little
knock on effect, and we'll find out just how far
Doge gets. We will be talking about it, dear listeners
again and again and again in coming months, so you
have that to look forward to. But Max, let's go
back to London that time we did that show. Remember
that show we did in London.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I mean it's hazy. You know, I feel like I've
lived a lifetime.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But but you know, in reviewing it, I do think
that conversation we had is really important. You know, we
talked about disinformation at X and and the ways in
which governments in particular have started to resist it or
try to resist it. And you know X as we
saw with this election, like it's a part of Elon
Musk's empire. It's the media arm of Elon Inc. And
(12:50):
if it's weakened either because it sort of goes too
far and makes some governments in Europe.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Mad or it pisses off its users.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And they go to Blue Sky or something else, as
we talked about last week, you know that's gonna that's
gonna hurt Elon. It's gonna hurt more than Disney going
away or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Wait, wait, so if it's the media armor of Elon ink,
what the hell are we you think about it?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So let's listen to that recording. It's me and you Max,
and it's a special guest. We had Debica Shanker grand Pierre,
who's a former social media executive and now a professor.
We recorded this a week or so before the elections.
And then, Hey, Max, don't go anywhere, because when we're
done listening to it, I've got to ping you in
a couple of other things I've had on my mind,
(13:36):
as you can say, I've had a lot on my
mind of Lake. I'm here for you, David. All right, right,
Hello everyone. I'm David Popadopolis, host of Elon, Inc. Bloomberg's
(13:57):
weekly podcast and all Things Elon. It's great to be
here in London for the Bloomberg Tech Summit, and we
have a great show ahead for you. I'm joined on
stage by my man Max Chafkin, senior writer at BusinessWeek
and not only a regular on this show, but now
the host of another Elon pod. You're gonna be all
eloned out very soon, a mini series on his political
(14:21):
awakening called Citizen Elon that debuts today. We Max Hey.
Also with us is Debica Shanker grand Pierre, tech risk expert.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Debica spent over a decade working at large social media
platforms like TikTok and Meta.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Welcome Debaica, thank you for having me, David.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, given that the theme for today's event is trust, we're
going to dive into the controversial evolution of X under
Elon and how his move into politics is drawing every
greater scrutiny of the platform and is broader global empire.
By the way, we're recording here, so you know, try
to you know at some point in time, you know,
yuck it up. Laugh ten year into it, Debeka, We're
(15:01):
going to start with you. It's funny. You know, the
words trust in safety get thrown around a lot. Even
at the university you teach at in Greece, those words
figure prominently in the name of one of your winter
semester courses. So at places like Meta TikTok X, what
do those terms actually mean? What do those teams do there?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Essentially, trust and safety are the people who keep the
Internet safe. So they do broadly three things. Number one,
define the rules of acceptable behavior online. Number two enforce
those rules in a consistent, objective, reproducible manner, and number
three come up with innovative ways to make sure that
people can have a safe experience, and of late also
(15:47):
work with regulators and close partnerships to meet with all
of the compliance requirements. So those three four things sort
of boil down to what we broadly mean by trust
and safety in.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Tech and now, when Musk took over Twitter now X,
you know he famously gutted a huge part of the
trust and safety team, something like eighty percent of it
as part of that, you know, massive chaotic layoffs that
he did when he first got there. What are the
risks of doing that and how are we seeing them
play out now?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
So the impact of gutting your trust and safety team
is simply real world consequences. So if you get rid
of eighty percent of the people who are responsible for
keeping your platform safe, all of us here who use
X can see and feel for ourselves the level and
(16:39):
type of discourse the endless stream of crypto offers the
only defense ads we see all of that in English now.
If we take those risks that we can feel tangibly
and magnify that by one hundred X, I think we
can begin to have a vague understanding of what the
risks look like in non English speaking countries.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
So do we see these problems proliferating more on X
now than we would on other platforms?
Speaker 4 (17:06):
The problems have felt more acutely on X on account
of not having teams that are responsible for making sure
that the platform is safe in those languages and in
those countries.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
When Ela Musk brought back foreign President Trump to his platform, right,
he did it via a pole and it was like
he just said, like should I bring President Trump back?
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Or no?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Vox popular Vox day, you know, basically like hey, whatever
you think is cool. And it's such an interesting contrast
to like Facebook, which was so the decision to ban
Trump and then like what to do with him.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Was so fraught that they created.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
This entire like Supreme Court like called the Oversight Board
literally and they and they wrote this like lengthy brief
sort of discussing you know, the and and musc of courses,
just shooting from the hip, I think partly because that's
just how he runs his companies. And he just decided,
you know, hey, how hard could it be to run
a social media site, which of course overlooks like a
(18:03):
lot of the problems that Davikas bring up. And then
you know, and then also has like these political reasons
to do so that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
There can be there can be too much intervention from
these teams, can they're not max?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I mean, I think there's the question, there's like a
philosophical question of like how like how open.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Should social media companies be?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Like like people talk about free speech and and like
should it be unlimited free speech? So there's there's that,
there's that question, and then like what that does to
trust as far as people who use the platform, because
you want people use the platform to feel like it's
not an arbitrary it's not just like whatever the owner
wants in that particular moment.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
The key thing that you want to have as any
platform that like cares about its users and has a
core principle is really you want to make sure that
the decisions that you make are objective, reproducible, and testable.
Like doing a poll on who should come back to
your platform or not? I think maybe fails all three
of those thinky things.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And if you take the position one the pole overwhelming
that Trump should come.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Back, I mean I would. I think the problem with
that is if you decide, hypothetically speaking, that you're going
to have a digital platform where you make all decisions
based on referendums, let's make up this world where that's
the case, right, you still need to have some sort
of guardrails around how often you're going to do the polls.
Who are the people who are going to vote on
(19:26):
these poles. What results are good is eighty percent goods
seventy percent goods, so that you can apply those in
a uniform and firm way. And to add on to
what Max said, I think Musk went from its free
speech I like free speech to I like free speech
as long as it's legal, to I like free speech
(19:46):
as long as it's legal, but I'm still uncomfortable about
people who track my jets or people who use terms
lexis gender to I like free speech as long as
it's legal. But if a country like Brazil says that
it's legal, then I'm kind of not okay with it. Well,
you can't go through those, right, you know, those huge
(20:07):
changes in your position in a very short period of time.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I think that's It's also weird because Musk right now
feels like he's falling into many of the same pitfalls
that he like criticized the you know, the prior regime.
Like Musk's critique of Twitter was that they were too
captured by Biden and by Democratic politicians. And now you
have Musk himself, you know, serve acting as a surrogate,
(20:32):
you know, campaigning with the former president, and you know
along the way having to make all these like very
difficult decisions, and that kind of erodes trust as well.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Very much so. And we will get back to that
issue in a second. I just want to ask you
to because though I hear what you're saying on some
of those things in that evolution, that's that's taken part
in terms of his you know, how he's viewed how
to treat these issues. But I still I guess I
wonder if you were to sell your soul, not that
you would do such a thing, but if you were
(21:04):
to sell your soul and go over the dark side.
Vladimir Putin said here, here's a half a million dollars
a month to help me spread disinformation. What would you
tell them? You just simply say, just go to X.
Do it all there.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
First of all, I don't think you need half millions.
I think it's I think he's overpaying. But obviously that's.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
No you I'm offering you.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
So I think I would probably say, yeah, go to X,
because if you don't. X doesn't label any any of
the official Russian propaganda state media. There's no labels on
any of them. So people interact with content from Russian
state sponsored points of view without really knowing that that's
(21:47):
who they're interacting with.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I mean, the odds of getting anything you know, banned
or removed are pretty low.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Yes, they don't, at least according to the latest transparency report.
No mention of what they're doing around coed influence operations
or specifically disinformation. I think it again ties back to
the original thing around, like, if you don't have anyone
looking at the problem or measuring the problem, then I
(22:16):
suppose you can take the view that there is no problem.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Correct, Well, you would sell your soul by the way
easily in a second. But would you also send them texture?
Do you have some other grand plan to spread disinformation?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Well, I mean, I think what's so interesting about X
is that it's a relatively small plant. I mean, like
you know, Facebook, Instagram has a lot more, TikTok has
more users. The reach is just shrunk now, I do think,
and there was there's been all this talk around how
Elon must change. Actually, you know, he famously, as you said,
laid off all these people and did all these things
(22:48):
that sent a lot of users, including a lot of
prominent users, including celebrities and journalists and so on.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
You know, essentially running from the hills or you know.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Defecting to Instagram and threads, which is the you know
Instagram like you know Twitter version. But on the other hand,
I think it still remains culturally relevant and like, especially
in the US, and especially in terms of like conservative politics,
it is like where that political conversation still seems to
be happening.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
And therefore, yes, if I were part.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Of the half a million dollars media, you know, and
I have no other choice, right, Like, it does seem
like a pretty effective way to.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Like reach a politically engaged audience.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And I think, like, I mean, that's obviously bad from
a you know, or not obviously bad. It It might
be bad from a societal point of view, but it
is in some sense to el must credit because X
is still relevant.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
I think regulators around the world are like waking up
and realizing, like, what what do we want to signal here?
And exactly around that political conversation in the US, that's
everyone feels that, But like if we just move just
zoom out a bit. Right, Currently, there is an ongoing
conflict standoff diplomatic standoff between India and Canada around the
(24:07):
alleged assault and murder of a sick activist. If you
go on x for understanding or if you just want
to see what's happening on this specific topic, all of
the top sited algorithmically amplified sources of information are state
media points of view. And why that.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Is especially media from Russia.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
In India, so that Sputnik India are to India, these
are your top sources. And this is why this is
interesting is because the content that Russian state media is
creating in a country like India, it's extremely localized. Its
means it's entertaining and it you seed their point they
see their point of view so effectively in local languages
(24:52):
that it gets picked up by journalists in India who
still use x right for a variety of reasons. And
then that's part of the mainstream conversation conversation and then
it's hard to say it did it starts, hard to say.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Where it starts, but it does get the people worked up.
I want to talk a little bit about the riots
that broke out here in the UK this summer in
the wake of the mass stabbing in Southport. The riots
here were a concrete case of a virtual mob turning
(25:26):
into an actual mob in the streets, much of that
virtual mob congregating on x egg don by Musk, who
was predicting civil war here. So the counterfactual is hard
to map out and prove. But did the riots take
place if there was no such thing as social media?
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I mean there were riots.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
And this is what if you ask like a social
media company, like an executive here, like they would say, well,
there were riots before there, you know, race riots existed
in the world before social media. Unfortunately, Yet on the
other hand, I don't know. I mean, it's really tempting
to see this, to see this as a case where
(26:06):
like the influence of these platforms and of our kind
of just completely broken, like information ecosystems that are very
entertaining are you know, are spilling on the real world.
And then it creates this like additional problem when when
you're like, hey, social media companies, can you perhaps rain
this in a little bit, you know, maybe you could
(26:28):
try to help us like figure out how to deal
with this, you know, crisis, and the CEO of one
of them, Elon Musk, is just like, hey, sorry, I'm
busy posting my own memes about the race riot, which
is what was going on I mean he was not
only ignoring British lawmakers, he was just sort of like
you know, pouring you know, extra gasoline on the fire.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
I think the fire gasoline like sort of contribution to
the problem and the real world consequences. And it's another
one of those things where you like look at the
entire globe and you see there are parts of the
world where what's on the Internet leads you there is
a direct link between what happens in the real world.
(27:11):
I can give you an example, since we're all the
unfortunate topic of riots. Just a couple of months ago,
Bangladesh had went through this huge period of political turmoil.
The Prime Minister fled the country at extreme short notice,
and there was a claim that one of the beloved
(27:31):
cricketers for everyone who follows cricket, our house was touched
as part of communal violence in Bangladesh. And this was
a claim that originated on x And this was a
time and internet was shut down in Bangladesh as a
response to what can you do to control the risks
and the spread of information? Right, So this claim was
(27:54):
fact checked by multiple fact checkers within I want to
say five to six hours, but that content that this
is misleading and this was false was not anywhere to
be seen on the platform, and it kind of took
a life of its own, and it spread to the
neighboring countries who then started to make kill lists of
(28:17):
people who belong to minority groups within their local communities,
and they did that on X in languages which are
non English, and you can still probably find a lot
of them under the algorithmically amplified section of X for Bangladesh.
So the actual contribution to a crisis will riot still happen, yes,
(28:41):
but what is a contribution to that real world consequence
because of technology in different parts of the world. I
think it's quite varied. In some places it's extremely high,
like Myanmar or Bangladesh or India, and in some places
it's more muted.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
There was a sense that Musk is going to be
called or some of the leaders of acts, we are
going to be called to the UK and held to
account and forced to ask answer questions that never happened.
At the same time, there are do seem like there's
some forces building here in UK and broader Europe where
(29:16):
they have a slightly more dim or harsh view towards
social media than is the case in the US. Are
we going to see actions taken potentially in the future.
Is Musk on a collision course with regulators here in Europe?
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I think yes, there's a short.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Answer, He's on a collision course definitely.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
I think the slightly longer answer would be, and I'm
sure this is the discussion that is happening at Offcom
and multiple regulators and the European Commission around what is
the message we want to send with regards to compliance
to regulation of social media. So based on where they
land on that spectrum, I think it's unlikely that it
(30:00):
would be as extreme as.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Telegram CEO who was arrested.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
But it is now up to the regulators to send
the right message, I think, because if there is no
consequence for gutting your team that is responsible for keeping
use digital platforms safe, If there's no consequence, then what
does that What message does that send to other platforms?
What message does that send to startups who might be
(30:27):
creating new platforms, how important the safety to them in
their design? So I think it's definitely on a collision course,
but maybe not as extreme as as Telegram, which is
on the.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Other end very good we're at a time we need
to end it there at Devika. Max, thank you very much. Okay,
that was awesome. It's all. It's all coming back to
me now. Max, I and I especially remember the drinks,
those really fancy drinks you and Rayhan got. What were
they called? After this?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
That is one part that has not come back to me.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Jesus, apparently you had one too many of them. All right, now,
listen the thing I wanted to ask you about it
like a fabrication. No, no, it's it's true. I was
there for it. It was documented. There are pictures. So
Elon is now joking about buying MSNBC. The Twitter thing
started with the joke.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Max.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
And it's not clear to me that Comcast, which is
spinning off its cable companies cable networks into a separate company.
The idea is that both it's like the telecom part
and the media part will be worth more as two
different things. It's not clear they'd be willing to like
part with just like one of their cable channels. Of
course they own a bunch of different cable channels. But
(31:45):
as you said, I mean, I think in the world
of like corporate m and a like if someone makes
a huge offer, like they're gonna they're gonna look at it.
Elon I don't think has really been very serious about this, right,
there's been.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
A any sort of sense of what the dollar value
of this thing would be.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
No, I have no idea, and I think it's there's
there would be like real questions about how much it's worth,
Like as a standalone thing, you know there are a
lot of fixed.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Costs to Cornaki come with it.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, you'd have to think that the khakis would be
part of the deal, and.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
That's got to make it worth one hundred or two
hundred million.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I mean, the thing is like like a Twitter was
a business that Elon Musk understood well. He was a
longtime user. He loved the thing.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
This just you don't think he's ever This feels like
a troll.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
This feels like meme bait. Now, you know, he's done
stuff that seemed out there before. But I think for now,
like I'm looking this at this more as a bit
rather than a actual proposal. But I think it's something
we should like keep our eyes on because again, you
never know. You could also imagine him if he's serious
about about broadcast about owning a TV channel, Like, there
(32:51):
are a handful of other conservative networks you know that
that have been spun up over the past few years
that I'm sure would be you know who would be interested.
You could imagine him going after some kind of big name,
sort of left media outlet. Maybe it's not a TV station,
maybe maybe a struggling print magazine or something like that.
You know, there are a bunch of those, So I
(33:13):
don't know, Like, I don't think it's totally crazy.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
He clearly likes media.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
He got something out of his last media deal, and
now he owes Twitter. You could imagine maybe some synergies.
But I think it's probably pretty hard to operate MSNBC.
And I'm not an expert on the economics of cable television,
but I'm guessing it's pretty hard to operate MSNBC as
a standalone thing that that's going to be outside of
the Musk's expertise.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I like, how serious you're taking this question, because you
know what, No, it's to your point, we would be
foolish to take anything positive in that sort of way,
in this case, in the form of a tweet as
merely a joke to be discarded because he's just he's
proven to us in the past that he's often deadly serious.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
I mean, there is.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Also the question of like creating a little bit of
news creating again, like Doge is gonna be hard, so
so and Elon Musk is kind of a master of
creating new storylines, just like Trump, right, like the ways Trump.
You know, it's like the Trump presidency is like a
reality show, and and he's really good at like finding
things for people to focus on.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So so maybe this is it.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
But but again, it just feels like a lot if
it also feels a little derivative.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
You know, the Onion is buying Info Wars.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
It feels like a little bit of a like a
lame sequel slash competing Hollywood studios coming up with like
copycat stories like I don't know, I'm not into it yet.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Alrighty, fair enough, And Max, of course we need to
remind everybody again we have our brand new email address
for our listeners to ping us at what is the
address again, Max Ewoninc.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
At Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
You can tell us what you can get the show
and tell us which departments the Doge should cut. We'll
pass it right on to Elon and we'll read it,
you know, on the show if it if it's funny.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Right, if it's funny, or if it's help well for
the dose two Max, good luck with that, Brian, that Turkey, Brian,
Thank you, Happy Thanksgiving to you, Happy Thanksgiving to you, David.
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Anna Masarrakas is
our editor and Rayhan Harmansi is our senior editor. The
(35:21):
idea for this very show also came from Rayhan. Blake
Maples handles engineering, and Emma Sanchez fact checks. Our supervising
producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elan Inc. Theme is written
and performed by Takea Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiera. Brendan Francis
Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is the
head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks as always to
(35:44):
our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos.
If you have a minute, rate and review our show,
it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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