>> The brief rain so far of
billionaire Elon Musk of Twitter
has been to motionless.
-- Tumultuous, reversals leading
the social media giant facing an
uncertain future, and have many
worried about growing risks of
misinformation.
>> Chaotic may be a mild
description of his run of
Twitter.
In the last week, the company
laid off half of its 7500
employees, key privacy and
compliance officers quit, and
musk reportedly told employees
bankruptcy is not out of the
question.
Just today, Twitter put its
eight dollars subscription for a
blue verified check mark on hold
as fake accounts using the badge
mushroomed.
Mike Isaak is a tech reporter
for the New York Times covering
all of this.
Thank you for joining us.
Elon Musk started buying Twitter
stock in January, announced his
bid in April.
It was not an impulse buy.
Did he have a plan going in and
he just collided with reality,
or is he making it up as he goes
along?
>> I think a little bit of both,
to be honest.
To be honest, in between the
April to the closing deal, he
did try backing out of it.
I think it was because
unforeseen economic conditions
and how it would hammer his
Tesla stock over time.
I think he is a person who has a
lot of ideas about how to change
the service he enjoyed using,
and spend a lot of time on, but
did not seem to have a real
action plan the first days he
got in there and is relying on a
handful of close advisors he
trusts while cutting out a lot
of people who have been at
Twitter for years and have
really studied how people use
the product.
>> For better or worse, Twitter
has become a key part of the
global -- global news cycle.
This chaos, this roiling of the
waters at Twitter, are there
repercussions for people who are
not on Twitter?
>> 100%.
Like you say, Twitter is small
in terms of its social use by
everyday people, it is only 200
million compared to Facebook and
Instagram's multiple billion
people.
But the news hitting on Twitter
trickles down to other networks.
It flies out to Facebook, hits
on news networks, we talk Abo
tweets and things, and he has
implemented systems that make it
more difficult to immediately
understand whether or not tweets
or accounts are actually real,
verified people.
Eli Lilly stocks started
bouncing around when a fake
account said they would be
giving away insulin for free.
So they had to do damage control
quickly.
>> Also, there is a little
whiplash with this policy saying
the subscription is going away.
People can't buy that check mark
anymore.
>> I think Elon did a tweet
about this.
Continuing to do a lot of dumb
things at Twitter as we
experiment and figure out our
ideas.
I think that is the way he runs
company, very experimental and
entrepreneurial.
Any folks would call it a pro
rather than a con and why they
find him such an innovator.
This is a very different company
than Tesla, space X, or any
other things he has done, and
has wide-ranging repercussions
for how we consume media on a
daily basis.
>> Twitter is operating under a
consent decree from the federal
trade commission over security
issues.
A spokesman said it is watching
developments with deep concern.
Could the ftc step in?
>> I think it is absolutely the
right question to be asking.
Elon has had run-ins with the
sec in the past, and different
government agencies keep a close
eye on his businesses.
They particularly raised their
eyebrows when a few of Twitter's
top lawyers and compliance
officers quit and posted an
internal message saying don't
cross any red lines do anything
illegal.
That definitely got the ftc's
attention.
Twitter pushed back saying it
would comply with everything,
but they are under the spotlight
right now.
>> Twitter was already
financially struggling before
musk took over.
Now advertisers are staying
away, they are losing
advertising revenue.
Is the company's future in
danger?
>> I think they are really
hemorrhaging cash and ad
commitments faster than I would
have suspected.
Most would have suspected --
Twitter is an advertising
business and has been for a long
time.
Not a great business, it has
been unprofitable eight out of
the last 10 years as a public
company, but it has been run by
ads.
Elon is trying to rapidly shift
it to an eight dollars
subscription business.
But he's doing it very quickly
and bleeding money, which turns
off advertisers, which is
dangerous in the long term.
>> You talked about his
reputation for innovation at
Tesla and space X.
He took a lot of risks that have
been paying often those
companies.
But you say Twitter is a very
different animal.
Is it unlikely he's going to do
the same thing, that these risks
are going to payoff at Twitter?
>> This is the thing.
The reason you have at least
some people still at Twitter
right now, and at his other
companies, people who meet or
are in Elon's orbit believe in
the guy, they are inspired by
him, and appreciate the
entrepreneurial spirit silicon
valley celebrates and doles out
venture capital to new startup
founders and things like that.
So I think there are still a lot
of people out here in the valley
that believe he can do it.
His first two weeks, if we are
grading -- we are not exactly
grading our curb, it is having
very high profile stumbles.
We will see if he learns quickly
from this sort of very difficult
beginnings he's had.
>> Mike Isaac of the New York
Times on Elon Musk's learning
curve at Twitter.