2022.11.09 - Elon Musk Twitter Space Transcript

Okay. Right on time. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us. My name is Robin Wheeler.
And I have been at Twitter for over a decade on the sales team in various roles. And I
am excited to be here and joined by Yoel Roth, who is the head of trust and safety, who's
also been at Twitter for a very long time, and Elon Musk, our new CEO, chief twit, chief
complaint officer. What else are you calling yourself today? Well, I'm on the complaint
hotline. There you go. Yeah. Listening to concerns and trying to address them. And we
appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly what today is. I wanted to kick off
just by saying to all of our advertising partners, our content partners that are joining today,
I want to reiterate that our commitment to all of you has not changed. Our teams are
out there still in place and are committed and dedicated to providing the service that
you've learned to love from this platform. So that is true. And our policies around content
moderation and brand safety have not changed. That being said, there is a lot of change
at Twitter. And a lot of it is very exciting. And that's why we want to have Elon here talking
to all of you. He's spent, you know, the last several days talking to partners and answering
their questions. And it's just really critical for him to hear directly from you. Now, I'm
also, I am today representing the advertising and partner community. So we have tons of
questions that we've been gathering. Our teams are gathering. And I will be representing
that. That said, we've got some speakers that are joining as well that I'll call upon directly
from the community. Our teams are getting questions in real time as well that we will
be asking. So we want this to be a very open and honest dialogue. And we're excited. So
with that, I will I want to kick off Elon with a question just, you know, it's been
what 14 days almost. What has been your biggest learning in that time?
Well, I think the biggest thing that I've come to alone is that there's tremendous potential
that's untapped for Twitter and that there are a lot of really talented people at Twitter
that I think can take company in a lot of interesting new directions. We really want
to be, as I've mentioned before, politically the sort of the digital town square where
that is as inclusive as possible, meaning like the as many people like, like, can we
get 80 percent of humanity on on the on Twitter and talking and and maybe ideally in a sort
of positive way, can we exchange instead of having violence, have words and and maybe
once in a while, people change their minds. You know, the overarching goal here is like,
how can we make Twitter a force for good for civilization? And, you know, just we'll just
keep changing and adapting until that is what that is the outcome achieved. You know, people
should look back on Twitter or consider Twitter to be a good thing in the world. Like I said,
something that for the civilization that you're glad that it exists. And, you know, as I said
in some of my tweets, I think we want to just be in vigorous pursuit of of the truth, like
to be somewhat in the business of truth. Now, truth can be sometimes a nebulous concept,
but we can certainly aspire towards it. And I think even if we can't get there completely,
at least trying our hardest to get there is worth it is a worthwhile endeavor. So this
is a big part of why I think it's important to try to get as many people as possible verified.
So and then I want to kind of explain a bit about the sort of blue checkmark verification
thing and why I think it is so important, in fact, necessary. So because I'm struggling
with the question of how do you deal with millions of bots and sort of troll farms,
including malicious actions by state actors. There's hundreds of millions of fake accounts
that are created every year by Twitter. Most of them are blocked, but not all of them.
The issue is that creating a fake account is just extremely cheap. It's maybe is a tenth
of a penny or some very small amount of money. By sort of charging $8 a month, it raises
the cost of a bot or troll by somewhere between $1,000 and $10,000. But there's a detail here
which I think is appreciated by very few people that's also very important, which is it's
not just the money, because you could say, well, wouldn't a state actor have $8 million
a day to create a million fake accounts? Well, yes, they've got the budget. But here's the
problem. They don't have a million credit cards and they don't have a million phones.
That's the actual kicker. There's no way to overcome that. And we will be vigorously pursuing
any impersonation, any deception. Another way to think of it is the high level principle
is someone engaged in deception. If someone is engaged in deception, then we will suspend
that account at least temporarily. In thinking of this like sort of an information problem,
truth is signal and falsehood is noise. And we want to improve the signal to noise ratio
as much as possible. So now there will be some bumps along the road here. But I think
in the long run, this will work out extremely well.
Hey, Elon, can I ask you about some bumps? Like specifically, you know, representing
our advertisers and our partners, like we talked about this idea of an official label
for accounts. Yes. And then I think there was a tweet today that said you killed it.
Is there what's the update on that? Because I think this is definitely a concern from
our partners, that, you know, there needs to be a way for them to identify their identity
aside from just anyone that can pay the eight bucks. And and this is, you know, critical
as they think about the future of their representation on the platform.
Sure. So the problem with the official is that apart from it being an aesthetic nightmare
when looking at Twitter feed is that it was it was simply another way of creating a two
class system and and therefore sidestepping the it wasn't addressing the core problem
of there are too many entities with that that that would be considered official or have
sort of legacy blue checkbox. But I go back to what I said earlier, which is that we're
going to be extremely vigorous about eliminating deception. So if someone tries to impersonate
a brand, that account will be suspended and we'll keep the eight dollars and they can
keep doing that. And we'll just keep keep the eight dollars again. We'll keep the eight
dollars again. Great. Do it all day long. They will stop.
So if the key point here is, is someone engaged in trickery, if an account is engaged in trickery,
we will suspend it and they will try. Of course, they will try. But it starts to get expensive
and they start to need a lot of credit cards and a lot of phones. And eventually they will
stop trying. Yoel is I mean, Yoel, would you like to sort of add to what we're doing here?
Sure. I think the key bit is what Elon just said. We know that bad actors of all sorts
of types are going to keep targeting Twitter, whether it's to try to run cryptocurrency
scams or to try to spread misleading content about an election. These are the threats Twitter
has had to deal with for years. But what our goal is, is to try to change the cost benefit
calculus for some of those bad actors. And there isn't one universal solution that's
going to instantly solve the problem. That's not what the changes to verification will
do. But they start to add more and more costs to adversaries. They start to give us more
and more information. And eventually they start to turn the tide of what the security
landscape on Twitter looks like. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Oh, go ahead. No, I'm just going to
say it. So I say like just sort of stay tuned. And we're going to react dynamically to attacks
on the system. There will obviously be massive attacks. There will be attempts at impersonation
and deception of various kinds. Or just frankly noise. It may not be simply annoying. We want
Twitter to be not just truthful but also interesting and entertaining. And we will stop anything
that is not truthful, interesting or entertaining or at least relegate it to where you don't
really see it much. And over time, and maybe not that long a time, when you look at mentions
and replies and whatnot, the default will be to look at verified. You can still look
at unverified just as in your Gmail or whatever. You can still look at the sort of probable
spam folder. But that is you'll have your inbox of highly likely to be relevant. And
then you can still look at all the others. But it will default to the highly relevant
category which will be verified. Okay, this is good because you're starting to go down
this path. And this is certainly the biggest topic that's top of mind for our partners.
And it's this idea of content moderation. And I think everybody believes, all of our
partners believe that Twitter should be a force for good. It should be a town square.
All voices should be welcome. The concern is, what does that mean for content moderation
for providing a safe environment? So I guess I'm going to pair these together. Like brand
safety, it's critical to this industry. And it's been a core, core tenet and priority
for Twitter as displayed by our partnerships with Garn and several other bodies. How are
you thinking about content moderation and brand safety?
Well, thus far our moderation policies have not changed nor has the enforcement of those
policies changed. It stands to reason that if somebody is advertising that they do not
want super negative information right next to their ad or content that may be inappropriate
safe or if it's a sort of family brand having not safe for work content right next to it
makes no sense. So we are going to work hard to make sure that there's not bad stuff right
next to an ad, which really doesn't serve anyone any good. We're also working hard to
improve the relevance of the ads. So an ad in the limit is information if it is highly
relevant but if it is irrelevant it is noise. And if the ad is noise it does not serve the
advertiser or the user. So I think brands should rest assured that Twitter is a good
place to advertise. And if we see things that are creating a problem in that regard we will
take action to address it.
Okay. That's great. What about hate speech specifically? When you talk about bad things
next to ads like...
Yeah I don't think having hate speech next to an ad is great. Obviously.
And I think this is what the concern is exactly of a lot of our partners.
Yes. You know, not to hop too much on this sort of $8 verified thing, but the propensity
of someone to engage in hate speech if they have paid $8 and are risking the suspension
of their account is going to be far, far less. I mean think of it more like how much hate
speech do you encounter if you go to a party or just, you know, you're at an event with
people...
Depends who's hosting the party. Just kidding.
Well, I mean in most parties let's say. If you meet people in person how much hate speech
do you actually encounter? It's quite rare. And so it's sort of the... But if someone
can create, you know, a thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand troll accounts that
are anonymous and where there's no cost to engaging in harassment or hateful behavior,
then you'll get a very small number of people that seem very loud. In general, I have a
lot of faith in humanity. The vast majority of people I think are good. Not bad. They're
good. But there's a small number of people who are not good. And if those small number
of people who want to engage in terrible behavior are allowed to amplify their voice tremendously
with fake accounts, then they will do so.
So this is why I think that the only way for any social media company to solve this is
with a mild paywall. Paywall for prominence. And then people will just default to looking
at comments and mentions from those that are verified. And you really won't see much of
the rest. So I think it's the only solution. I cannot think of any other path to having
a good system.
Thank you. I'm also going to ask Yoel. Yoel, you've sent a bunch of great tweets out recently.
Can you just speak to where we stand with policies, but also the facts around what we're
seeing on the platform today in terms of toxicity?
Absolutely. So first, to again echo Yulan, our policies have not changed and our enforcement
continues to be focused on being as proactive as we can be to mitigate harm to the people
who are using Twitter. There have definitely been a couple of areas where we have seen
people test the limits of what the new Twitter is, even though we haven't really changed
anything at all. One of the most notable being a spike in hateful conduct on our platform.
And I'm going to be sharing another update on this in just a little while. But we've
been focused on protecting the folks who are using our platform, on shutting down hateful
conduct wherever it emerges on our platform. And what we've seen is not only that we've
put a stop to the spike in hateful conduct, but that the level of hateful activity on
the service is now about 95% lower than it was before the acquisition. The changes that
we've made and the proactive enforcements that we've carried out are making Twitter
safer relative to where it was before. And so my ask of everyone would be, judge us by
our results. And the results, the proof that we're going to be sharing, the data that I'm
going to continue to provide, shows us that we're going to keep investing in making Twitter
safer for everyone every day and in delivering on that vision of creating a welcoming platform
that Yulan talked about.
Thanks. So I want to bring up David Cohen, who is the CEO of the IAB, the Interactive
Ad Bureau, which is, as we all know, one of the governing bodies of our ad industry. He's
a very trusted name and partner, given this is such an important topic. David, what can
we answer for you?
Appreciate that. Thank you. I would just want to start by saying that we are rooting for
you and for Twitter. So at the risk of that not being obvious, this is not a softball
question and it's something that we're hearing from many of our members. So I thought it
would be a good time to ask. We all have a brand. There is the Elon brand and how it
shows up on Twitter. And there is Twitter as a platform and business that the world
and the marketing community have come to know and love, warts and all. Those two things
can sometimes blur. So the question is, how should we think about the coexistence of those
two distinct but obviously related perspectives?
Right. Well, I think if I say that Twitter is doing something, then I mean Twitter. And
if I say I, then I mean me. And if there's any confusion about the two, then I would
just ask me on Twitter basically. But obviously Twitter cannot simply be some extension of
me because then anyone who doesn't agree with me will be put off. So Twitter must be as
a platform as neutral as possible. That doesn't mean I'm completely neutral. That would be
untruthful. I am not neutral. No person is.
Right.
But it is important to have broad acceptance of the platform, that the platform be neutral
and as sort of as inclusive as possible to the widest demographic possible. That is the
only path to success.
Got it. Could I do a quick follow up? Is that possible?
Yeah.
Okay. This is a totally different question. In my experience and from what we hear from
our members, 700 plus strong, brands are interested in basically five things. Scale, relevance,
brand safety and suitability, ability to measure, understand what I put stimulus in the market,
what does it do for my bottom line, and then an impactful creative canvas. Of those five
things, where do you think Twitter is today? And where are you going to spend the majority
of your time in the immediate term?
Well, I think we're probably not doing great on any of them. Doing okay on some. We're
terrible at relevance, I think. And one of the ways we're going to address that is by
integrating ads into recommended tweets. So the relevance of recommended tweets is much
better than the relevance of the ads, because they're two different engines. We need to
have them be the same software stack. So I've reorganized Twitter software from having three
different software groups to having one. And that's occurred just in the past week. So
we really need to improve the relevance of the ads. As I mentioned earlier, in the limit,
if an ad is highly relevant and timely, then it's really information. It's something you
might actually want to buy when you want to buy it. That's great. But if it's something
you'd never want to buy, then it's annoying and it's spam. And that doesn't serve the
advertiser or the user. So that's incredibly important to improve that. So that's a major
priority. And I think you'll see that get way better in the coming months.
Appreciate it. I'll pass it back to you, Robin.
At the end of the day, at a high level, Twitter needs to be useful to advertisers in both
the short-term and driving demand and in the long-term, hence the brand safety. But at
the end of the day, it's short-term and long-term demand is kind of what it comes down to. So
drive sales in the short-term and protect the demand in the long-term.
Got it. Thank you.
Well, thanks, David. And feel free to jump in if you have more questions. I would just
say, like, Ilan, I like hearing you say short and long-term. I think we've heard a lot about
subscriptions. We know that's important to your strategy. But, like, can you say anything
more about long-term and the role advertising plays within Twitter, both in the subscriptions
piece as well as the non-subscriptions piece?
Well, it's just this. I just mean that when I hear brand safety, what I think I'm hearing
is that we need to make sure that the brand overall is protected reputationally in the
long-term. So there may be something that drives short-term sales, but it's next to
hateful content. And that may drive short-term sales, but it's ultimately detrimental in
the long-term. So if I were to put myself in the CEO or CMO position of any advertiser,
I'd say, well, I want to make sure we do drive sales in the short-term, but we're also not
doing anything that damages our reputation in the long-term. So we also need to address
both short and long-term factors.
Great. Okay. One thing that we glossed that we didn't dive in enough on when we talked
about content moderation was this idea of your content moderation council. I know you
tweeted about that last week, I think. Can you say anything else about that? Where are
we at with it? What is it going to look like? How will it work? I know that's top of mind
for everyone.
Sure. Well, I think we want to have an advisory council that represents a diverse set of viewpoints.
That is representative of a wide range of viewpoints in the US and internationally.
In the short term, I've only got the keys to the building a week ago, Friday. I'm moving
pretty fast here, but take a moment to completely rewrite the software stack. But I can't say
that the rate of evolution of Twitter will be an immense step change compared to what
it has been in the past. If nothing else, I am a technologist, and I can make technology
go fast. That's what you'll see happen at Twitter.
Yep. That's true. Actually, you tweeted earlier today something about there's going to be
dumb things coming in months. I assume that is... Well, because you're moving so fast,
right?
Obviously, the intent is not to do dumb things. We're not aspirationally dumb. We're aspirationally
not dumb. But despite being aspirationally not dumb, we will still do dumb things. There's
some element here of nothing ventured, nothing gained. If we do not try bold moves, how will
we make great improvements? We have to be adventuresome here, and then I think we can
make some really big leaps and have radical improvements. But these come with some risk.
The key is to be extremely agile, and so if we do make a dumb move, or when we make a
dumb move, because we're not going to always knock the ball out of the park, but when we
make a dumb move, we correct it quickly. That's what really matters.
Yeah. Well, and for the record, we're seeing record-breaking user growth on the platform
since you took the keys. That's excellent. There's been a lot of conversation around
define, and can you just talk about some of the stuff you're really excited about from
a product perspective? Aside from, we've already talked about subscriptions, but what else?
You've said to me to the organization before about video and all those kinds of things,
so talk a little bit about that.
Yeah. Video is definitely an era where Twitter has been historically weak, and it is an era
that we're going to invest in tremendously. I did ask people what theirs was in Vine,
not that we would want a resurrect Vine in its original state, but just would they want
a Vine-like thing, but reimagined for the future? People are very excited about that.
One of the things, if somebody does become paid blue verified, is that they will be able
to initially use or download 10 minutes of high-def video, which will be expanding to
42 minutes soon, and then several hours as we fix a bunch of stuff on the backend servers.
There are a bunch of fundamental technology architecture changes that are needed at Twitter
in order to support a significant video, so we've got to make those core software upgrades
and server upgrades in order to support a large amount of video, but we are absolutely
going to do that. It's kind of a no-brainer. We also need to enable monetization of content
for creators, and if we provide creators with the ability to post what they create on our
platform and to monetize it at a rate that is at least competitive with the alternatives,
then of course, creators will natively post their content on Twitter. Why not? Those are
kind of no-brainer moves.
Also keyed off of paid verified is now we know that this is someone who has been authenticated
by the sort of conventional payment system. Now we can say, okay, you've got a balance
on your account. Do you want to send money to someone else within Twitter? And maybe
we pre-populate their account with and say, okay, we're going to give you 10 bucks, and
you can send it anywhere within Twitter. Then if you want to get it out of the system, then,
okay, well, now you need to send it to a bank account, so now attach an authenticated bank
account to your Twitter account.
Then the next step would be let's offer an extremely compelling money market account
so you get extremely high yield on your balance. Then why not move cash into Twitter? Great.
That sounds like a good idea. And then add debit cards, checks, and whatnot, and I think
it will be just basically make the system as useful as possible. And the more useful
and entertaining it is, the more people will use it.
That's right. Amen to that.
Hey, Robin, I've got a follow-up if that's okay.
Yes.
So I'm getting a tsunami of tweets and texts, as you would imagine, so lots of questions
out in the world. One of them, I guess the headline is, there's a challenge with some
of your tweets, Elon, and that they leave a lot to interpretation. You had something
around truth versus high-quality journalism and news. Can you talk a little bit about
kind of how you see those two things as different or the same?
Well, I do think that we should be empowering citizen journalism. If you say, how is the
Western narrative defined? Right now, I think it is overly defined by a small number of
major publications, and that, I think, is not as good as enabling the people to define
the narrative as well. In other words, elevating citizen journalism. I mean, I think we've
all seen articles in major newspapers where we know a lot about what actually happened,
and we know that what actually happened is not what is represented in that article. Now,
then why would you think it's different for anything else?
Got it. So this is not an either or. This is in your mind. This is an addition to. High-quality
journalism has a role in the world and on Twitter, clearly.
Absolutely.
Okay, got it.
No question. I'm not saying that we should somehow downplay the major publications or
prominent journalists. I'm simply saying we should elevate the people and give voice to
the people. Vox populi, Vox Dei.
Understood. Thanks.
What about fact checking and, you know, fighting misinformation?
Yeah. So I'm super excited about the Community Notes feature, formerly known as Birdwatch.
Birdwatch sounded a bit too much like, we're watching you. I'm like, no, let's just be
chill, Community Notes. And actually, that was the original name of the product. It's
awesome. And we're going to really go pedal to the metal on Community Notes. And the way
it works, I think, is actually very exciting. In fact, Keith's not on, or maybe he is, but
I highly recommend looking at the Community Notes feature. It's epic. So this is really
going to help in improving the accuracy of what's said on the system.
It's analogous to the way sort of PageRank works in Google, where the prominence of a
web page is sort of proportionate to how much weight other prominent web pages give that
web page. But it's easy. If you just search Birdwatch or Community Notes on Twitter, you'll
see how it works. And I think it's a game changer, in my view.
OK, great. I'm just getting a ton of questions as well, Elon. This one is specifically about
the auto industry, which you happen to be a member of as well.
I know a little bit about cars.
Yes, I think you do. What can you share with this community that's concerned about data
protection or how your alternative interests related to Tesla would kind of bleed over
into this current role?
Well I think it's, you know, I totally would encourage other carmakers to continue advertising
on Twitter, and I would also encourage their Twitter handles to be more active, and for
their CEOs and CMOs to be more active on the system. And in general, I would say for brands,
I think brands should tweet more, executives should tweet more. I think that sometimes
I would encourage people just to be more adventurous. That's certainly what I've done on Twitter
with Tesla and myself and SpaceX, and it's worked out quite well. But I'm definitely
not going to do anything which is somehow advantageous to Tesla, because that's going
to totally turn off any automotive advertiser. So it has to be level playing field, or we
won't get automotive advertisers. So, yeah. I don't know what else to say, but accept
that we're just going to try to be as fair as possible.
Awesome. Oh, go ahead, David. Were you going to say something?
Yeah, I got another one. I'm pretty sure I'm going to ask all these questions. It'll be
the last time I'm invited onto a Spaces, but here goes nothing. The checkmark used to stand
for something. Now, anyone that pays $8 a month can get the checkmark. What's the process
by which accounts are verified in this new world? Well, someone has to have a phone and
a credit card and $8 a month. So that's the bar. However, we will actively suspend accounts
engaged in deception or trickery of any kind. So it is a leveling of the playing field here.
It will be less special, obviously, to have a checkmark. But I think this is a good thing.
But like I said, if there's impersonation, trickery, deception, we will actively be suspending
accounts. So I think it's going to be a good world. I mean, don't we believe in one person,
one vote? I think we do. So I actually just don't like the lords and peasants situation
where some people have blue checkmarks and some don't. At least in the United States,
we fought a war to get rid of that stuff. So anyway, this is just philosophically how
I feel. And maybe this is a dumb decision, but we'll see.
Got it. David, were you going to follow up and ask if brands have to pay? Because that's
a different... Well, I mean, that was one or... I mean, obviously, this is a double-edged
sword. It's not clearly black or white. There's clearly another side to the equation. And
Elon, as you said, you're going to try it. And if it doesn't work, then you'll quickly
pivot. I think that's a smart approach. But yeah, do brands have to pay? Do marketers
have to pay? Well, I mean, we are trying to be equal treatment
situation. So... So yes. Yes. I mean, if somebody's really helping and not paying, I'll pay it
for them. Okay. Good. We heard that here. We heard that
here. All right. We'll send you the bell. Speaking of being equal, the other question
that we keep getting is, do the same rules apply to you, Elon, that apply to everyone
else on the platform? Yeah, absolutely. But I think we also are going
to try to be more forgiving, provided someone is not actively engaged in fraud. If somebody
missteps, then I think we should maybe give them a temporary suspension, but then allow
them back on the platform. But if they keep doing it deliberately, then of course they
should be permanently suspended. But I think we just need to... Forgiveness is just a very
important principle. And as long as an account takes corrective action and does not do bad
things repeatedly, then they shouldn't be suspended permanently. But if they do bad
things repeatedly and deliberately, then they should be suspended permanently.
Yoel, do you want to jump in on that, speak to how we do it right now?
Totally. I mean, let's take a step back in the history of trust and safety stuff on platforms.
For many years, the only thing that Twitter could do was delete tweets and ban accounts.
That was our only tool for content moderation. And so we did quite a bit of that. We deleted
a bunch of tweets and we banned a bunch of accounts. But one of the directions that we're
trying to build towards is having more tools in our toolbox to be able to reduce the harmful
impacts of content without always having to go to that step of a ban.
And so in the coming days and weeks, you're going to see us start to introduce some of
these new concepts and frameworks for content moderation. My focus and my team's focus is
how can we enable as much speech as we can while preventing the potential harmful impacts
of that speech. And as Elon said, sometimes the only way to mitigate harm is to ban somebody.
But we think there's a lot of other stuff that we can do from warning messages to interstitials
to reducing the reach of content that we haven't fully explored in the past. And you're going
to see us move quickly to build some of these new tools and to integrate that with our policy
approach.
Exactly. That's very well said, you all. And I pretty much think we want a diversity of
viewpoints within Twitter. Sort of a Lincolnesque cabinet, if you will. So representing a diversity
of viewpoints. And at the end of the day, the success will be if people like Twitter,
they will use it and they will use it more frequently and will get more people joining.
And if advertisers and brands, if companies like Twitter, they will use it and they will
buy advertising. And if they don't, they won't. And so the proof is in the pudding.
And I think it will be a good thing. And we're really going to agonize a lot about what is
right, what should be done, what is a force for good in the long term. And sometimes we'll
be wrong about that and we'll, like I said, take corrective action. But really, I think
we'll see. If we're doing a good job, we'll see user growth be high. We'll see advertising
interests be strong if we do a good job. And we'll see the opposite if we don't.
You talked a little bit about this earlier, I think, just in terms of not wanting certain
types of conduct, like being the town square and allowing voices of all shapes and sizes.
How are you thinking about choice on the platform? And certain people are comfortable with certain
content, others are less comfortable. Can you talk a little bit about that vision and
how that's going to come to life and when you think we can see that? Because I think
that's really an important point for folks to understand.
Sure. There's a big difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach. So at least
in the United States, we're big believers in freedom of speech. So somebody can say
all sorts of things that we don't agree with and find unsavory. Like if you just were to
go to Times Square right now, there's going to be somebody saying something crazy. But
we don't throw them in prison for that. But we also don't put them on a gigantic
bullboard on Times Square. So we have to be, I think, tolerant of views we don't agree
with, but those views don't need to be amplified. There's a giant difference between freedom
of speech and freedom of reach. And I mean, these are difficult moral concepts to grapple
with. Like I said, do our best to do the right thing here, what we think is the right thing,
and adjust course if that does not seem to be working.
Okay. I'm just getting more questions. So I know we're going in different directions
here. But some of our retail partners, we're excited to hear you talk about commerce and
everything you just outlined. Can you say how this could come to life and how it could
help merchants of all sizes accelerate their business? Because that's kind of what they're
hearing.
Yeah. I mean, we've got a lot to do on the software side. I can't emphasize that enough.
So we've got to write a lot of code here. And we've got to change a bunch of the existing
code base. But we want advertising to be, like I said, as highly relevant and timely
and really approach in the limit, how do we get the ad to be as close to content as possible?
I mean, if you're shown an opportunity to buy something that you actually want when
you want it, that's great. That's content. It's like, wow, you just served somebody's
need. That's awesome.
On the other hand, then the other side of the spectrum is if you show somebody a product
that they would never want, then it's not helping the company who's advertising. It's
not helping the user. So we're going to be super focused on how do we get it as relevant,
make that ad as relevant and useful as possible. We'll also be quite rigorous or aspire to
be rigorous about any product that is not allowed products that don't work or are actually,
you know, in some cases just, I mean, I bought a few products based on YouTube ads that didn't
work. And I thought, damn it, YouTube should really have not allowed that ad. And on Twitter,
we're going to be like, okay, we need to serve the user, we need to serve the advertiser,
and when both are served, we have a good situation.
So and then from a commerce standpoint, if you're able to buy things, you know, effortlessly
on Twitter with one click, that's great. We don't want to make buying things inconvenient
or require, you know, going through many steps. The easier it is to obtain the product or
service that you want, the better it is for the user.
Yeah. No one is going to argue with having a more performant product and solution and
more relevant ads from our clients and partners. David, were you going to speak?
Yes, I got another one. So clearly, Ilan, Twitter and you are moving quickly and decisively.
You mentioned a content moderation council that is going to be put together. I guess
the question is, how quickly is that going to materialize? And who is going to be comprised
of whom? What kinds of folks do you think?
Man, that's a hard one to answer. I think it'll probably take us a few months to put
that together. I mean, certainly a lot of people that want to be on it. But this will
be an advisory council, not a command council. It's basically so that, you know, the leaders
of Twitter can hear what a lot of people have to say and just make sure that we're not sort
of being numb to the pain of what people are feeling. You know, basically, are we listening
carefully? But just going back to what I mentioned earlier with respect to the community notes
feature in terms of accuracy and truthfulness, that's going to be very powerful. And I think
it will obviate the need for a lot of the content stuff that currently is in place,
I think. And look, I'm open to ideas. If you have thoughts here, that would be good to
know. What do you think we should do?
Yeah, we absolutely do. And we get feedback all the time, so we can absolutely do that
offline.
Okay, sounds good. I can just say that, like, the aspiration is very much to do the right
thing. And I think the best evidence for us doing the right thing will be that more people
are signing up, they're spending more time in the system, and that it's working for advertisers
as well.
Just a quick add-on to the content council. Will they also weigh in on account suspension?
And how do you think about banning folks?
I think weigh in is the correct word. You know, at the end of the day, I am the chief
twit here, so the responsibility is mine. I think it's difficult to really say anything
else would I think be disingenuous. If things go wrong, it's my fault, because the buck
stops with me. But I would like to hear what people have to say, and then we'll make our
decisions accordingly. And obviously, if I make decisions that people don't like, then
advertisers will leave the system, and users will leave the system, and we will fail.
I appreciate you saying that, actually, because I would like to know what you would have to
say to the brands that are paused or holding on running right now, during this transition.
Well, I understand if people want to give it a minute and kind of see how things are
evolving. But really, the best way to see how things are evolving is just to use Twitter
and see, well, has your experience changed? Is it better? Is it worse? As you all were
saying, actually, we've been more rigorous about clamping down on bad content and bots
and trolls, not less. So my observation of Twitter over the past few weeks is that the
content is actually improving, not getting worse. I mean, actually, if there's anyone
on the call who would like to speak up, if they think this is actually not the case,
please say so. OK. Well, what I will say is that you have repeatedly said you want feedback
and suggestions and thoughts. So this community, as you have seen, is not afraid to speak up
and has plenty of suggestions and ideas and wants to be engaged with. So that's definitely
going to be an ongoing as well as a firm next step.
Yeah. I mean, I can't emphasize enough to advertisers, brands, and the best way to understand
what's going on with Twitter is use Twitter. And if there's something that you don't like,
apply to one of my tweets, and I'll do my best to respond. But I think it's actually
getting better, not worse. And like the person putting, just use Twitter and see how it feels
to you. I think it's actually going in a good direction. Yeah.
Awesome. OK. I think we're getting close to the end here. So I'm going to give you the
floor to say whatever you want, and then I can wrap it up.
OK. Well, I'm probably being a bit repetitive here. But like I said, the larger goal is
to do things that serve the greater interests of civilization and have Twitter ultimately
be a force that is moving civilization in a positive direction where people think it's
a good thing for the world. And the evidence for that will be New Year's are signing up
and more people using Twitter for longer. And then I think also, if you were to use
Twitter for an hour a day, that when you look back, you don't regret the time. That's actually
also kind of important. You don't want something that's a hyper addictive, but then you look
back and you're like, man, I kind of regret how I spent that hour. You want to enjoy using
Twitter and find it entertaining, informative, funny. And then when you look back at the
time you spent on Twitter, not regret it. And then I think that then we will have succeeded.
Thank you to the entire team at Twitter, to YOL, to Elon, to everyone on this call, to
our partners for asking the tough questions, for pushing us and to being with us through
this transition. As I said in the beginning, we're here. Our team is here and we are committed
to serving you as we have. We are committed to answering your questions and to helping
you feel comfortable through this transition. And we want you to continue to push us to
ask questions and to trust us. And we'll just continue to communicate the best we can to
further build trust in this community. So with that, thank you everyone for joining
and see you out there.
All right.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.