Some really great stuff.
-Re: Kanye. He clearly knows he’s not being consistent. He’s doing his best to justify it but he knew he wasn’t really making sense, started rambling and then redirected the conversation back to the release last night in the hopes of not derailing the conversation.
-He said it was HIS decision a few times, as if to divorce his own executive decision from his general Twitter policy. (This tells me he knows the kind of battle he’s facing. He knows he can’t come off as a Kanye supporter at the moment and it appears to be more of a strategic move.)
-He just said “Yeah honestly maybe I should increase my security…but I believe if you do right by the people you have the people on your side.”
-Regarding Nancy Pelosi claim that there’s just one person controlling the narrative, he said “No that’s clearly not true. The problem (for them) is that one person isn’t toeing the line.”
-“Freedom of speech is extremely important and is not easy to keep. It’s not the default and we have to fight to make it the default.”
-He’s now saying that even more important than free speech is who controls the money and the flow of transactions. Bashing Paypal.
-Making fun of those who want a digital currency. Says they don’t even know what they’re talking about.
-Now saying SBF was full of shit and when he talked to him his bullshit meter was going off.
-It was just suggested that he do a Twitter poll to the American people on how to deal with Assange and Snowden. He said that was a great idea and would probably do it.
-He said Twitter free speech will force MSM to start telling the truth or lose all their audience for lack of trust.
-Someone just pointed out that while Elon is a patriot and putting himself at great risk, that despite that, Twitter is crushing records and doing better than ever right now. So even from a business perspective it’s the right choice to allow free speech.
-Says he has plans to enhance the tweets for long form content and long videos and audio and a way to monetize that. He says it’s obvious.
-“Vox Populi, Vox Dei”
-Someone said “This is a white pill moment. We’ve been so frustrated with the media for so long. Thanks for fighting this fight.”
-“What’s the meaning of life? We should try to expand the scope of consciousness.”
-Sneak peak of tonight’s drop: “what happened after the laptop, and the election”…”and this may sound bizarre but it seems like Hunter Biden knows how to have a good time”…”George Orwell is turning in his grave, ministry of truth stuff. Orwell was not an instruction manual!”
-Commenter: We are the news now. If people want to know the truth they can come to twitter now.
-How are you going to fix shadow banning and search banning? “I’ve only been on the job a month guys give me some time. It’s on the docket. We’re moving as quickly as possible.”
-Re: WeChat comments “It’s a no brainer that Twitter should have payments and other similar functionality.”
-“Of course we need an edit button. Twitter tech just sucks right now (paraphrase).”
-Commenter: "What do you think about the EUs threats to regulate you?" "Well, a lot of the EU rules call for things I agree with. Transparency. Ability to appeal. It's mostly good. We have to watch the implementation of it and make sure that's on the level but most of what's in there (on paper) I agree with because it aligns with transparency and accountability. At least what I know about it today." "Well we're worried about giving governments the power to decide what's disinformation and not." "No I agree that goes to the heart of the situation, you don't want governments deciding what that is, especially not unelected people within those governments." "Well what about countries that simply don't allow freedom of speech?" "Well...we'll do whatever is possible within the bounds of the law."
-Commenter: "Was there a breaking point that made you decide to want to buy Twitter?" Elon. "Great question." Commenter cuts in "We're hoping you'll say the child exploitation stuff that you've done more in the past month to end it in the past ten years." "Yeah that's it. Kids can't defend themselves so we must defend them. So...yeah." "Well what was the exact breaking point?" "Well, I would have done it sooner but I needed greater liquidity and there needed to be a solid closing price. That wasn't the case until recently. But it had really been building for some time. It wasn't a sudden idea. But the groupthink and toeing the line kept growing and we're just traveling the path more and more of suppression of free speech and it was just getting me concerned so unless something was done to reverse the trend then...yeah. It wasn't any one thing. It was just my biological neural net said it was important to buy Twitter. You can't really explain it you just feel it's important."
-Purpose of Neuralink: "Hopefully right now to just restore sight to the blind and movement to people whose limbs aren't working. It's very doable. You'll see it all coming from a long way off because you need FDA approval and all that. So it will seem slow compared to say...AI development. But I think we should be more careful with AI development specifically because of how fast it can move and what kind of danger it could pose."
"How soon do you think the singularity (AGI) arrives?" "Probably pretty fast." (He seems tepidly concerned about this--like it could be great and it could be terrible)
-Moderator guy says they should have another discussion around AI another time but they should focus on the Twitter files right now. "Are you concerned about what the government might do with section 230 because of what you're doing?" "Well it's probably good if the House is Republican. At least one branch be the opposing party to check the worst excesses of both parties so I think it's good that the House will be Republican. I'm not a Republican. I'm just a moderate and I like balance."
*Edit - Well my phone just died where I was listening to it but that conversation was already significantly longer than it was slated for (Elon said he had 30 minutes, and I think it's been over an hour already) and it was starting to drag a bit. Got some good stuff though.
Thanks for the synopsis. I wasn't expecting to listen to a Twitter space for over an hour, but I must say this is an interesting way to get info out and Elon has seemed pretty transparent so far. I'm not sure if he's telling the truth when he says he doesn't know much about the Twitter files, but I understand if he has to distance himself from it.