April 23, 2023 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
46:15
SUNDAY SPECIAL WITH ALX
On this week’s Sunday Special of Human Events Daily, Jack Posobiec is joined by ALX to discuss Twitter’s history as a platform, its changes over time and the future of the platform as an online “Public Square.” Jack and ALX also discuss and the importance of Periscope and Twitter’s potential future as a live reporting news and streaming platform under Elon Musk’s ownership. All this and more ahead on Human Events Daily!Here’s your Daily dose of Human Events with @JackPosobiec Save up to ...
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Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard to today's Sunday special here on human events.
So this week and going forward for a couple of weeks, I wanted to take some time to step back from sort of the day to day issues and actually conduct some interviews with people that either I've known or I've wanted to get to know better, or I want you to know better.
People that have had, in some cases, massive influence from behind the scenes, sometimes massive influence in front of the scenes.
And this is one of those individuals.
We're going to be doing a few of those here in the coming weeks on Human Events.
But for the very first one, I definitely knew I had to get on for a sit-down Human Events special.
The ALX himself.
The man, the machine, the mystery, the legend.
Alex, what is it like, by the way, being back on Twitter?
It's actually incredible.
I always thought this day would eventually come, but I didn't think it would be as fast as it, you know, came to be.
So I knew when Elon said he was going to acquire Twitter that I had a chance at coming back, but so the story is that Elon held a poll saying Should Donald Trump be reinstated?
And this, of course, was right after the Babylon Bee and Kathy Griffin and all of them were reinstated the day before.
So the answer was yes.
And right after the poll, he reinstated Donald Trump.
And then later, I was reinstated.
So I was probably the fourth person, I think, reinstated to Twitter after Elon's acquisition.
So I didn't think it would be that fast, but Since then, it's just been insane.
I've grown my following by four times my original following count, and it's just been insane to see.
And I always point out that, you know, so my first you and I are kind of interesting in a sense, or we have something in common, I should say, because we both were kind of anonymous when we first started on Twitter.
And you started even years before I did.
So I was on in 2012.
If I remember correctly, you were on in 2007?
Yeah.
So I, I wasn't very political back then, but that was just, you know, I had an account to follow news and, you know, other topics and just like friends and stuff.
Um, and then like during like high school and stuff, I was kind of more of a libertarian, I would say kind of.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
Yeah.
Hate to admit it, but yeah, so Rand Paul was really my guy because, you know, I wasn't a McCain fan, and I wasn't a Romney fan, so like, I really didn't have, like, a true, like, Republican leader or conservative leader that I looked to.
And then, you know, when Donald Trump announced in 2015, that's when I really became active on social media.
And, you know, on Twitter and then further down the line on Instagram, I wasn't that big in 2015 on Instagram.
But yeah, so I was kind of anonymous because I was in school and I didn't want, you know, that to jeopardize any future career or, you know, my liberal professors to hold that against me.
So I just went by ALX instead of my full name, um, which is Alex, but I mean, it's just one letter off, but you know, it's, I didn't really like.
Did people ever like ask you?
Like what do they like stand for something?
Does it mean anything?
Do they think there's like all this mystique behind it?
And it's literally you just took one letter out of your name.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So they think it's like an acronym or whatever.
No, I just, you know, took a letter out of my, my name.
So it was, you know, a way of hiding it, like my true identity.
But then at the same time, it's like not too far off from my real name.
Yeah, well, that's what that's what they say.
Like when I was in the I.C.
and you were coming up with like a cover name, they would always say, you know, pick a name that's close enough to your real name that you'll answer to it, that it appears familiar to you, that you don't have to skip a beat where you go, oh, wait, right.
That's supposed to be me.
You know, if I'm if my name is Jack, then you shouldn't be like Claudius or some like some random thing.
You're not even going to think of, you know, you'd be like Jake.
Right.
Or, or, you know, something Jacques, you know, something similar.
So similar enough that you're going to listen to it, John, even, uh, which actually is my legal name.
Oh no, getting in trouble now.
Health docs.
And, um, but, but so coming up on Twitter, like before we get in necessarily the Elon stuff, and I want to ask more about Twitter, what, how has Twitter changed in from the pre 2016 era?
Now, we don't talk enough about it because I was there, you were there, you were there even longer than me.
What was Twitter like in those early years?
The really early years, it was kind of, there is a lot of like crashing and I would compare it to like Parler or Like, Parler was always down in the early days.
People forget that in the early days, Twitter had that whale, the overcapacity whale.
I remember that whale, yeah, I do.
Yeah, yeah, so that happened a lot, actually.
And then, like, so one of my friends online actually posted, like, a screenshot from, like, 2012 or whatever.
If you even look at the layout of everything in 2012, it literally looks like it's from the Stone Age.
So I think people take for granted how far it's come as a platform.
So at the beginning, it was kind of more like now where it was like getting banned was very rare.
I mean, the first real, you know, bannings didn't start until 2015 around like when Milo and a bunch of, you know, other people got banned.
Milo was really the first big ban that I remember happening.
And it just wasn't with the exception of like, like if people forget that, I know you remember this, there used to be actual ISIS members on Twitter that you could go on and you would find in Arabic and they'd be like tweeting death threats to people.
Yeah.
And then it used to be a whole thing where you could find the ISIS accounts and you could get them banned because they were, and I don't mean like somebody LARPing like there's Taliban LARPers on today.
I mean like actual straight up in Syria and Iraq ISIS followers that were on Twitter and you could get them banned.
Um, but nobody, nobody who was like a real, like nobody ever got banned for politics.
It was, it was like criminal activity or threats, that kind of thing.
Exactly.
Yeah, and we're getting back to that now.
So actually, just this past week, Twitter announced that they are going to start, instead of locking users out, that they're going to take a less harsh action for policy violations that don't violate the law.
They're going to just take an action at the tweet level and not the account level.
So if something is Yeah, if something is seen to violate their hateful conduct policies or whatever, it will just have a label that says this, you know, was found to have violated Twitter's hateful conduct policy.
And you'll have to click view to see it and you can appeal it.
So that's the place of previous.
So they're not even necessarily going to take it down.
It will just be it'll be there.
But kind of like what does that Instagram is like that where, you know, it's fact you can still click.
Yeah.
Like a sensitive content.
Okay.
Yeah.
And a lot of people were criticizing that in the sense that it still is censoring the content, but at the same time, you have to take it in perspective that it's in place of locking.
Number one, it's going to not take any action on your account level, meaning it's not going to be like a strike on your account.
So if you do it again, you're not going to be locked out for seven days or something like that.
It's just an action at the tweet level.
And then, like I said, you can appeal it.
And it wouldn't even, so it wouldn't even necessarily de-boost you in the algorithm.
Correct.
Correct.
Yeah.
So that tweet, that tweet would be, um, you know, just hidden.
And I think that that individual tweet might be de-boosted, but not your account.
And, um, yeah, it's, it's going to be a lot more transparent than in the past.
And like, I, I put out a tweet on it.
It's not perfect, but it's definitely an improvement from like my, my situation and your situation where, you know, I was picture of Zelensky with the Ukrainian flag, and they mistakenly flagged it as nudity.
And I would have been locked out for 12 hours had you and other people brought attention to it.
So that would be in the past, whereas this new policy, they would have that label over it, and then I'd be able to appeal it.
And then I also would be able to tweet and say, well, this is a clear mistake.
In the past users that were wrongly locked out, they would have to find other users to tweet on their behalf.
So, uh, I, I believe errors will be reversed, uh, more quickly as well.
Well, I think it's great.
And I, I just, um, I know that there, one of the things that they're dealing with right now at Twitter is just that, um, there's a lot of automation because I know obviously a lot of employees have left.
So that's, that's one reason you're seeing the mass band, the mass report bands are kind of back right now, because I think due to the, just due to the employee issues that they've been, they've been relying a little bit more on automation.
And it did used to be that you could mass ban people.
And that would, that would actually work like mass reporting.
Someone to get them banned would work.
That was one of the ways, like my old, old account had something like that happen.
Once I did, I was able to get it reversed.
Yeah, that was a flaw in the past and like you said, it's due to the employee issues, but there are some bans that were due to the actual employee hitting the wrong button or not being trained, I've seen.
So there was someone who got banned for, like, hateful conduct, and they're like, well, under our new freedom of speech policies, this shouldn't have been actioned.
And Ella Erwin, who's head of trust and safety, had said that they're doing new trainings with, you know, new hires on that.
So hope we can reduce that.
We are coming up on our first break here, but Really excited to have this conversation.
You've got ALX, who, I mean, if you think, if you think I know a lot about Twitter, you have no idea.
This guy is like Mario and Luigi going through the pipes at twitter.com to tell us what's actually happening on the inside there.
So stay tuned, be right back.
And we're back with the ALX.
So man, We were talking before about just how Twitter has changed over the years, but one thing that I remember specifically that, you know, before we talk too much about the new Twitter, because the new Twitter, you're right, it's all poli- everything is political.
Everything.
But I remember in the early days, it was like Twitter was... It was like comedy, right?
was kind of the main thing and sort of like freak out posts or, or posting weird stuff was a big thing.
And there's sort of those, this element and you see this in a lot of those early Trump tweets, right.
From the same era from like 2012 through 2015 or so before he announced, I should say, where it was kind of like if, if something was posted on Twitter, it was just assumed that it was a joke because that was the big thing was like, you got, you went viral for making jokes.
There were like, people weren't necessarily monetizing Twitter.
People weren't using it for, you know, some people would promote articles and stuff, but I really feel like the main thing was just, I don't know, kind of following TV shows and then being funny.
Yeah, there was a lot of, like, commentary, I remember, on, you know, celebrities and stuff that Trump had back in the day.
Oh yeah.
Where he would just, like, you could tell he was, like, watching a show or whatever, and he would just be, like, tweeting out loud at, like, his reactions to the show.
Um, but yeah, I think you're right that.
And then like one of the things I followed early on was just like sports in general, just like sports and then, you know, just TV shows or whatever.
And it was more laid back and yeah, like you said, it didn't get very overtly political until 2015 and then.
Of course, now, in the new Twitter era, everything is.
But you're right, in the early days, it was just kind of comedy, you know, having fun with friends.
And then, just even celebrities like Trump had their famous Diet Coke tweets, or there was one of them where, you know, he replied to, like, random sock puppet accounts.
He's like, why do you follow me around like a little puppy then?
I miss the Trump slides.
They were so good.
Funny.
So like that was, do you remember the one, I'm not going to give the full context, but it was like, it was like, I can assure you I have no problems in that department.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's, that was like, yeah, it was, it was sort of, it was, it was almost like a party, I guess, like a big party because when Jack Dorsey created Twitter, the idea was that it was, it was supposed to be like an open chat room.
Um, so the Twitter, the, The original character limit, which I miss so much, the 140 Twitter was meant because you didn't want it to be cluttered with long posts.
So it was every person was, it was like a chat room that you shared with the whole world in a sentence.
And then hashtags originally were created so that you could find other people that had, you know, similar interests to you.
So I'm tweeting about a certain, uh, you know, topic.
Um, so I'm gonna, I'm going to make sure to include that hashtag.
So like I used to do my Game of Thrones account and I would make sure to do hashtag Game of Thrones.
So if somebody would go to search hashtag Game of Thrones and they would find my account.
Um, I remember the big conservative one back then used to be like TCT or something.
And I, I don't even remember what it, what it stood for, but it was like the conservative something or other.
But that was like, if you were trying to, trying to get ahead in that community, you would always post to that hashtag and hashtags that by and large, I kind of feel like they're dead now.
I think they're gone.
Yeah.
So I also I share that same sentiment and the fact that like I don't think normal words could actually trend on Twitter back in the original days.
I think it was only trending hashtags, and that's why people kind of coalesced around hashtags.
But now if you look at the trending topics list, I don't even think hashtags really even trend.
It's just words, names, individuals, or whatever, and that's what the trending topic list has turned into.
Back to your point on the conversation piece of it, I remember quote tweets weren't really even a thing.
you'd physically have to quote the tweet, put like RT in front of it. - I remember that, yeah, yeah, RT. - Yeah, yes, 'cause I remember there's like, there's some people that confuse, like they're not knowledgeable, and they'll go back and they'll find a post, and then they'll try and attribute the RT'd post to the original author, And it's like, well, no, that was like a quote tweet, but that's just what quote tweets looked like back then.
A lot of those were also, it was, um, you had these third party apps that were, that were built in with Twitter, which a lot of those features Twitter then later took and reincorporated in, And, and said, okay, we need to do this.
And obviously quote tweets is one of the most ubiquitous ones.
The other one, if you remember was everybody forgets this Tik TOK was not the original short form video platform.
I know, you know, this ALX, what was the original short form video?
Fine.
It's really coming back.
That wasn't just like a random sweet bite.
So it's really coming back.
That wasn't just like a random sweet bite.
What's going on with that?
That's the thing that they're looking into.
I'm not sure like exactly how far along they are, but I know they're looking into it.
And I think the debate is really whether they're going to have it incorporated in the Twitter app, or if they're going to revive it as its own separate app, but then you can integrate it into Twitter.
Also, that's going to do with coverage.
It's going to populate better.
Yes, exactly.
So I think they're just trying to figure out logistically how they want it, you know, to be.
Um, but yeah, it's very serious that they want to compete with TikTok on that, especially with, you know, talks of the TikTok ban.
So I think that they're like taking that seriously.
So if that's the case, then, um, obviously I think everybody knows that, um, you know, Periscope was one of my all time favorite features on it.
Um, that was where I live streamed multiple times a day, um, when it was in its heyday and, Uh, you were on there.
So many people were on there.
So many people got, got big on that and then it just disappeared.
It was just basically, and I've, I've said publicly that I just, I really don't like the way that it was handled.
Um, I don't think there was good transparency.
I've tried, by the way, I've tried to download my periscopes using the functionality and it doesn't work.
It just doesn't work at all.
Yeah.
It said, it said, and I had, I had one computer just dedicated to downloading my periscopes and I, cause I've, You know, my setup, I was like, all right, I'm just going to leave this on and see how long it takes.
And I went back after like a week and it still said pending.
So something obviously not right there.
And the fact of the matter is, is that Twitter was so powerful when it allowed you to live stream.
That's all PowerScope really was.
It was Twitter live stream.
It was one of the first live streams.
If I remember correctly, it predated YouTube live stream, predated Facebook live stream.
Predated Instagram live stream.
And the fact that you could share it with everyone in the world made it so incredibly powerful because suddenly, Hey, I'm a guy who is just sitting here talking with my wife and we're chatting about politics, but you can get hundreds of thousands of people watching instantly, even if they don't know the channel.
And that's the difference between Twitter and every single other piece of media, because Twitter is an open sandbox or social media.
And I guess TikTok is kind of like that.
Though, to be honest, I've not spent enough time playing around with TikTok to even understand how do you interact with other content on what goes viral, etc.
So it's still not the same.
Nothing's the same as Twitter.
And it's much easier to go viral.
Yes, exactly.
And on platform too, because this is what happened with Clubhouse and Spaces.
So Clubhouse was the original audio app where people could go on and it's essentially a group phone call.
And Elon was one of the big users of it.
Yes, exactly.
And Joe Rogan too.
So the problem with that is you'd have to join the app, you'd have to know someone on the app to give you an invite, and it was this whole hassle.
Like Twitter Spaces, it's through Twitter.
So the same thing could be true about Bring Back Periscope, because technically it's separate, but the functionality is integrated within the Twitter app.
So all of your followers and stuff and the potential for new reach all can come through Twitter. - It was a little bit weird because you could, I remember for example, my dad had a Periscope app, but he didn't have a Twitter app at the time.
Or like, yeah, didn't have Twitter downloaded.
So I, like he could go, my dad used Periscope, you know, like it was very simple to use and that's why it was so great.
You've got, you've got, you know, pollen functions.
Um, you couldn't really do, you know, I guess what they call them duets.
You couldn't, you couldn't bring in multiple people on video, but it was very, very low bar to entry.
Um, which I think is opposite of, I mean, I guess Instagram is pretty easy to use, but YouTube is not the live streams unless you're using them for you.
It's not intuitive, but, um, like, You know, my dad used to use periscope and then I would share his periscopes on my Twitter and then my Twitter followers could go there.
Or you could even go in on periscope and then just only have that app and go through there.
So it was, it was a little funky the way the handoff actually worked, but I don't know, man, I, I used to love, and I'll just say it.
I used to love going on periscope and sometimes if I was bored, do you remember the, um, they used to have the global map on it, the global heat map?
Yup.
Yup.
Did you ever used to go in and just find like random people that were live and go in somewhere and like?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was amazing.
You could just go to Thailand.
You could go to China.
You could go through.
I mean, imagine if we had that right now with Ukraine or anything that's going on anywhere in the world.
You know, what's Russia like right now with the sanctions?
Are they working or they're not working?
What are conditions like?
That's very limited because it's just like story.
It's stories and it's locked down and it's, and it only, if I remember correctly, it's, it's only if you set it to public on Snapchat.
Correct.
Yup.
Yup.
Yeah.
Cause I remember that people were doing that a little bit when the Ukraine war kicked off, but then they, they turned it off immediately.
Basically like the government, like, no, you can't do that.
No, I think, I think Twitter is, I mean, when you look at monetization and we're coming up on our break here, but when you look at monetization, I mean, Why is not why is live streaming not one of the first things you're thinking of?
That's all I got to say.
Yeah, I tend to agree.
I think they're trying to stem the bleeding from the original advertiser scare, and then they're going to try, you know, live streaming and then in stream ads for video is going to be their next thing, I think, because that was a lot of, you know, YouTubers want to upload long form content with ads.
So but I hope live stream is high on their priority list.
I mean, I would I would say that, too, that it's it's and we'll come back in a second here.
And speaking of ads, we're going to be taking a little bit of a commercial break, a gratuitous profit break, or as Rush Limbaugh used to say.
But I got to say, folks, I know I'm getting a little little waxing nostalgic here on on Periscope, but you don't understand.
I would love to be able to do this show right now on Periscope, sharing it out with the hundreds and thousands coming back here.
Human Events Sunday Special, ALX.
And we're back.
You know, Alex, we were just talking about, um, Periscope, but you know, the other thing was, I remember, you know, what else I loved about Periscope was if there was something happening out in the world, um, summer of 2020, there's a riot going on somewhere.
You could pop on Periscope, look for that red dot in that city.
And then boom, suddenly you're in the middle of it.
Um, if there was a terrorist attack in France, you could fly over, you could fly over to France.
From your from your phone sitting in your hand, you could go immediately there and you could see what was actually going on.
And then I think it would save for like 24 hours and you could go back and watch if anyone had been there.
And so it was just it was incredible, the level of connectivity it gave you.
And I've never seen on any other of these apps that are out there that level of global penetration taking you directly straight to The action, wherever it was in the world.
And like you said, Snapchat is kind of like that, but I think even then that's, that's, that's heavily locked down.
So think about it from, from a news perspective, right?
The, the, about the, and Elon talks about this, that Twitter is the news now, right?
Twitter's main competition is not other social media apps.
The Twitter's competition is mainstream media.
It's something that Elon actually said this week.
And I think that's exactly right because you can go on there actually.
I remember trying to explain it to my, um, my division officer when I was in the Intel community once and the Hong Kong protests were going on.
And I said, look, this was the umbrella protest in 2014.
And I said, look, you can go to Hong Kong right here and look at the protests.
We don't need to need some like classified special, whatever.
I can do this in real time.
And he had no idea what I was talking about.
Yeah.
It's pretty funny too.
Like how you explain it that way.
I feel like.
I don't know if Elon is fully aware of the functionality of Periscope as like a separate app as well.
I think he is aware that they acquired it and that was their live streaming capabilities but I think if explained like that he might be more likely to bring it back because like you said he's touched on the fact that Twitter is the news now and how he would like to democratize reporting.
So he wants Twitter to be a source of truth so Having basically an eye on the ground in any given news story, I feel like would be the closest way to get the truth out there.
And it's not through the lens of corporate media.
So I think, yes, it explained that way to Elon, who I feel like would have a renewed focus on bringing that back, possibly.
Plus I always said, you know, with live streams and I remember being in situations where people said, Hey, can you turn that off?
And I said, no, I'm not because this is protecting both me and you.
Right.
Because this is not edited.
This is raw.
Yeah.
It may look like, you know, potato quality or whatever, but it's, it's real.
And everybody knows it's real as opposed to something that I like, like you and I are sitting down right now, this is pretty recorded.
It'll be, it's going to air on Sunday.
And so now, of course, the team's not going to like edit us out of context or anything, but it's different from something that's live on the scene.
And you look at how many people got, got big out of just going to stuff and then being able to film it while live on the ground.
Right.
Yeah.
That, that started a whole industry into itself.
And so I know that he's, he's trying to work on subscribers and subscriber content.
Well, it would certainly be a whole lot easier to push that if you included live streaming.
Correct.
Yeah, that's actually a really good idea to start pushing them in that direction.
And maybe worth a tweet and explaining exactly what it was that made Periscope so valuable.
And the fact that they own it already, and it's probably an easy infrastructure fix on their end where they have to just turn something back on.
I don't know exactly on their end what it would take.
Yeah, when put like that, I think that it would incentivize more people to subscribe to on-the-ground reporters.
I know Drew Hernandez, those types of people that go out on the scene.
I feel like that would be an entire new market of people going out and making money for it Just, just by using the in-app function of the subscribers, which now they're, they're really pushing because it's relaunched this past week.
So yeah, I think that would be an excellent idea to include.
Right.
Because there's already, there's, there's even something, so like I qualified for it.
I got the email the other day and, but then in the back of my head, I'm thinking, well, what do I want to put behind a paywall?
Where do I, what do I want to add?
What do I want to do?
And.
The question, so you remember Periscope had the stars system, so you could tip someone a star, um, which was crazy because I used to get stars, but then it wouldn't even pay them out to me.
So I never even got a cent out of it, but it was like, it was kind of like super chats, I guess on YouTube.
And I, you know, I'm guessing that they would take like whatever percentage of every transaction would go to the app.
Well, boom, there you go right there.
And then you add in, this becomes a question, this becomes a comment, but, um, Getting into like just the memes and different things that have gone on, uh, over the years, there's been some trouble in the meme trenches lately.
And you have brought that trouble to Elon Musk's attention.
And I'd like to play, we have a clip of that right now, guys, play that with Alex's questions, Elon Musk.
And the thing is, I even get trolled.
And I'm like, God, why did I get trolled again?
That was really bad.
Right?
Yeah, I get trolled every day.
And it's like, well, you know, part and parcel of being on Twitter.
Yeah, totally.
It's worth it.
On that note, did you see the guy who got charged for a meme on Twitter?
What were your thoughts on that?
I know you commented on it.
I didn't know if you got to look more into it.
His name's Douglas Mackey.
Oh, that's the guy who, I guess, was accused of election interference or something?
Yeah.
He met the counselor from South Park?
You can text your vote or something?
Yeah, like, people shouldn't believe everything that they see online, and, you know, I don't think that should be criminal.
No.
I think criminal is over the top there.
I would agree with that.
They went too far.
You know, if that's the standard for throwing someone in prison, then there should be a lot of people in prison.
Yeah, what are you in prison for?
Oh, meme crimes.
Exactly.
So why did you ask him that question?
And what do you think of his answer?
Yeah, so I asked him that question because, uh, me and him are always up at like two in the morning.
And, uh, one of the times was just before, like just before while the trial was going on, somebody had posted like an entire thread on Doug Mackey's case.
And then he replied, is there a criminal complaint online for this?
because he was probably shocked that it was an actual thing.
Like, I need more information on how this is going on.
So I replied with the criminal complaint, a bunch of other users did, but he had never followed really back on it to see, like we didn't know if he actually saw the tweets and read the criminal complaints So that's why I asked about it.
And also because he owns the platform.
So I kind of wanted to get his answer on what he thinks of a user in the past on the platform that he owns being criminally charged for something that went on on the platform.
So I agree with his answer in the sense that it goes way over the top.
And I asked him it too because he said, I get trolled all the time and he's laughing about it.
So that goes to the sense that the owner of the company doesn't think it's Twitter's role to tell you what the truth is and what you should believe.
You should go online thinking, I shouldn't believe everything that I see online.
And it isn't Twitter's job to tell you if it's true or not.
So having the owner of the company have that same mentality and being, you know, tricked by memes or whatever or being trolled online shows that he's just another person and he has a tendency to agree with that more than The fact that the entire case was predicated on the fact that Hillary Clinton voters are stupid enough to take their voting advice from in a non-account with Charlie Sheen wearing a MAGA hat.
And that's how they get their advice how to vote.
And it's a meme saying text your vote.
So that was the entire trial.
And now we have the owner of the social media company that we're talking about sharing our sentiment saying Okay.
I got fooled.
Um, not everything online is true and it shouldn't be criminal.
Right.
And, and then that's to the point, plus Elon Musk.
I mean, he's, he's a little bit more than, he's not just the owner of Twitter.
He's, he's one of the richest men in the world.
You know, it's kind of fluctuating state, a richest or number two, but certainly someone who's got massive amounts of influence in the nation, but also someone who I think has become kind of a cultural figure in his own right, because there are people, Who follow him that aren't necessarily, you know, right wing or left wing.
They're just, they're, they're Elon fans.
He's got this huge center right, kind of, even on some issues.
I mean, this is the green car company guy.
So, you know, there are people that, you know, that funded Tesla, that backed Tesla because they love the environment, um, climate change type of guys, even though I don't recall Greta ever thanking him for anything.
But, um, I want to come back in a second because we've got our last break.
And dig into this a little more what it means to live in a country where people can go to jail for memes they post on Twitter, what we do about it.
Stay tuned folks.
Last segment coming up with the ALX.
So Alex, I gotta ask you, man, you and I have known each other for a minute.
Um, did you ever think that Twitter This app that you signed up on would attain the level it has now because we complain about Twitter all the time.
We, we have issues under Jack Dorsey, et cetera, et cetera.
We have issues now we talk about those.
And I feel like we spent a lot of time doing that, but I feel like we don't speak, take enough time to step back and say, this is the most influential app that's ever been created.
It's obviously going to be in the history books because of 2016 and so many things that happened afterwards.
It has become the global public square and it's kind of hard to explain how it happened.
But did you ever think that when you signed up for Twitter originally all those years ago that this is where it would be and this is where it would take you?
No, not at all.
Like you've mentioned, it was a place to make jokes, a place to just hang out with friends and open group chat, if you will, in a public forum.
And over the years, I think this really started, it really started when celebrities and public figures started using it as, you know, their platform to get their message out, their official statements.
And then later government officials, like you had Obama as the first president to use it.
And then Other government officials like senators and Congress people using it as their official means to communicate with their constituents.
I believe that's how it became kind of the global Times Square, if you will, because that's where leaders are.
That's where celebrities are.
That's where athletes are.
And therefore, everyone else in the public are going to be looking to Twitter for that.
And now it's become a source of news.
It's like the new media.
So now people are looking to it to find real time information.
So that's how I believe it has become the public Times Square.
And, you know, I didn't think it would reach this level of importance when I first signed up.
Definitely not.
I mean, none of...
I just thought it was fun.
I actually had a buddy who was super into it and he kept saying, Oh, you got to sign up.
I think you'd be good on there.
Um, it's really great.
Cause I had a buddy who signed up in like oh nine and he had been using it for a couple of years and had been saying, Hey, you should get on there.
You should get on there.
And that's, I started my GOT account on that Game of Thrones to just make fun of the TV show.
And, uh, you know, and I had like, you know, a couple of thousand followers, but that's, Back in those days, like having a couple thousand followers was meant, was pretty big, right?
That, you know, people didn't have these huge follower counts.
Like getting a hundred thousand was a huge deal.
Or in like, even as, as late as 2015, 2016, having over a hundred K was massive.
And if you had told me back then that I would have what I have now, I would like, are you kidding?
That was like the only things that ever, that went over a million were, um, because so many people came on after Trump.
Right.
This user base came on and just massively shifted the audience.
But at the same time, people forget, too, that the United States isn't the only market for Twitter.
They're massive in India and they're also massive in Japan.
Japan is a huge user base for Twitter.
And I always wonder, I thought this during the Jack Dorsey era, and I certainly even think of it more under Elon, is do you ever think that he sits there and goes, you know, These guys are like, you know, whatever percentage of my user base and yet they cause all of the problems and all of the headaches.
That is, yeah, that is a good perspective to say, like, I haven't heard of like anyone other than maybe like the Germans or whatever, or the EU that complained.
Right.
But like in any other country, like you mentioned Japan, like complaining about the new leadership or the new rules or whatever.
There's like, it's just, you know, the way the platform is changing like any other platform changes.
But yeah, the US is full of complainers.
Of course, Canada is going to be full of complainers.
And then it's like the EU.
Those are like the only and loudest voices on the platform or outside of the platform criticizing everything.
But I would also point out, and this is something that, um, that Elon has mentioned a number of times, is that the EU has actually passed laws to protect users on there.
Now they do also have hate speech laws, which is something that I completely oppose.
Um, but they do have laws that prevent you from like viewpoint discrimination, various things on Twitter.
Uh, they have data laws with what, what Twitter's allowed, what they're allowed to collect, what they're not.
And so Elon's whole point has been, and he says it over and over in these, in these videos, like when he had the BBC interview, which also took place on Twitter, on Twitter spaces that, which, you know, you're talking about the live stream.
I think they could just, just add live streaming to Twitter spaces.
It would be good to go.
I just had video to it.
And that's all you really need if you don't have to change everything out.
But he said, if you really have a problem with something, then change a law.
But I think his, what he's pushing back on is this idea that he's going to take action.
That's not required by law.
Yes, exactly.
That's I think the good viewpoint on it in the sense that I think the BBC interviewer was like, oh, wouldn't that incentivize people to pass bad laws or whatever?
I'm like, well, think about what you're saying.
It's like, you know how hard it is to pass a law and the thought that people are going to pass it just for, you know, Twitter is absurd.
That was his follow up question, I believe, James Clayton to Elon saying that.
But it just his point is the fact that If a collection of people in a country feel so strongly about something on Twitter or whatever, that should be reflected in their laws before they're required to take action on a social media platform that's supposed to be the public Times Square, because it's supposed to be reflecting as close as, you know, general life in that country as possible.
Yes, exactly.
So if it isn't required by law, he doesn't have to take action against it and doesn't feel compelled to.
But like I just said, if a populist feels strong enough about something, that they're going to elect leaders that are going to take action and make it into a law if they feel so strongly about that.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Because You know, and to be clear, you know, he does have the community notes now, which is an interesting function.
I don't think it quite gets everything right, but it at least performs some kind of fact checking.
I think it's hilarious when they do it to like, uh, you know, corporations like our Glenn Tesler.
Um, I've pretty much every time I upload a deep fake, they add it to there and it's like, well, you really, you're going to do it on jokes.
This is a meme.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
Um, but, The other part is no, he has changed the doxing policy, which, you know, to take down a lot of those those trackers like the jet tracker that he really didn't like, though I've yet to see it actually be enforced against because he said it's supposed to be like real time doxing with the standard.
But I have yet to see it actually be enforced against some like them real time, like a paparazzi picture or something.
Yeah and I think the distinction that was made too is because James Clayton also brought this up after the interview because he cut into the spaces questions was he's like oh what if somebody's just in a picture at a concert if it isn't at a public setting like a political rally or a concert or whatever in a public space it's not considered doxxing because you're attending a public event.
I think the distinction is posting real-time travel location like
as as it's happening because you're basically reporting to the public the the real-time location of a person rather than you know you just saw someone on a street corner it doesn't really give the coordinates there's ways to figure out like by location of like a photo of like if you see a street sign or whatever but like that that takes more effort than having a dot on a map which is kind of like what the Elon jet tracker did
There was a counter argument against that because it just showed the airport location.
And if you like, if you say, oh, this person is at LAX, even if you went to LAX, there is no guarantee.
But I do see the concern in, you know, reporting location by location in real time on a map.
So I think, I think that's the distinction there.
If somebody is in a public setting and is pictured somewhere, um, that is, that's a lot different than a real time map with a tracker.
We are coming up on our last couple of minutes.
This has been an incredible conversation.
Everybody needs to follow you at ALX.
What are your, just as we wrap up here, where do you think Twitter goes from here?
Do you think Twitter is here to stay?
Elon's talked about evolving it into this sort of everything app under X.
Sounds ambitious.
He's talked about, he's compared it to WeChat.
Do you think that's his ultimate plan?
Yeah, I think to start, he's going to increase the functionality on the app itself.
And then it's going to, I believe, be maybe a separate app.
I know the news came out this week that they officially changed to XCorp.
So Twitter no longer exists, so it's going to be XCorp.
But the app is still going to be called Twitter for now.
But I think the first step in making it the everything app is the enabling of payments, like a Venmo alternative, as you know, like eHelp, PayPal.
So he has some, you know, history there.
And I think like Twitter payments and Twitter coins are in development currently.
So that also goes back to the Periscope thing you were talking about, about awarding stars and comments.
So that's actually, that's in the process.
I'm not exactly sure.
On the platform, how it will work, but there are going to be ways to, you know, send stars or coins or peer to peer, just like Venmo transactions on, on the Twitter app.
And I believe eventually it will evolve into a larger app with different functionality.
Yeah, no, I think that's great.
I think it's awesome.
I think we need it.
I would love to see it.
I love the fact that, that Elon, what he's doing with it.
I do also think, and I sort of had this debate with Destiny last week on this, I do think, though, that being said, just because Elon has it now doesn't mean he'll have it forever.
And I do think that there still needs to be a role for some type of public regulation.
I was actually Alex Jones was on my panel as sort of a surprise guest, and we both agreed that it should be given the same kind of rules as a utility.
Yep, I agree with that.
Making a public utility.
I fully agree.
That these, yeah, the section 230, it's too nebulous.
It's, it's not applied evenly.
And I don't think that makes sense.
Make it a public utility and put it under the common carrier anti-discrimination laws.
Simple.
A hundred percent.
Agree with that.
Where can people follow you?
Um, at ALX on Twitter and truth social, and then ALX the Lord on Instagram.
All right.
A L X one of my oldest Twitter buddies and now longtime actual friend folks, ladies and gentlemen.
