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Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter
Rising star New York Times technology reporters, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, tell for the first time the full and shocking inside story of Elon Musk’s unprecedented hostile takeover of Twitter and the forty-four-billion-dollar deal’s seismic political, social, and financial falloutThe billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media—where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before. While its founder had idealistically dreamed of building a "digital town square," he detested Wall Street and never focused on building a profitable business.Musk joined the platform in 2010 and, by 2022, had become one of the site’s most influential users, hooking over 80 million followers with a mix of provocations, promotion of his companies, and attacks on his enemies. To Musk, Twitter — once known for its almost absolute commitment to free speech — had badly lost its way. He blamed it for the proliferation of what he called the “woke mind virus” and claimed that the survival of democracy and the human race itself depended on the future of the site. In January of 2022, Musk began secretly accumulating Twitter stock. By April, he was its largest shareholder, and soon after, made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for the unimaginable sum of $44 billion dollars. Backed into a corner, Twitter’s board accepted his offer—but Musk quickly changed his mind, forcing Twitter to sue him to close the deal in October. The richest man on earth controlled one of the most powerful media platforms in the world—but at what price? Before long Twitter would be gone for good, replaced by something radically different, as Musk remade the company in his own image from the ground up.The story of the showdown between Musk and Twitter and his eventual takeover of the company is unlike anything in business or media that has come before. In vivid, cinematic detail, Conger and Mac follow the inner workings of the company as Musk lays siege to it, first from the outside as one of its most vocal users, and then finally from within as a contentious and mercurial leader. Musk has shared some of his version of events, but Conger and Mac have uncovered the full story through exclusive interviews, unreported documents, and internal recordings at Twitter following the billionaire’s takeover. With unparalleled sources from within and around the company, they provide a revelatory, three-dimensional, and definitive account of what really happened when Musk showed up, spoiling for a brawl and intent on revolution, with his merciless, sycophantic cadre of lawyers, investors, and bankers.This is the defining story of our time told with uncommon style and peerless rigor. In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost?
480 pages, Hardcover
First published September 17, 2024
About the author
Kate Conger
2 books15 followersKate Conger is a technology reporter for the New York Times. She writes about X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and its owner, Elon Musk. In more than a decade of covering the tech industry, she has written about the underground world of hackers, the use of artificial intelligence in autonomous weapons and labor uprisings in the gig economy. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 122 reviews
October 17, 2024
Elon Musk is, unfortunately for all of us, a consequential person in the world, just not in the way he thinks.
Despite having more money than God and the means to retire comfortably to a tropical island for the duration of several hundred lifetimes, Musk is painfully, embarrassingly, fixated on people's opinion of him, making any quiet enjoyment of his stupendous resources an utter impossibility. Musk and the world are worse off for it.
That's largely what this book is about. One man's myopic pursuit of owning Twitter. This book tells that story, twisty and unbelievable as it is, masterfully. Step by step the authors take you through the billionaires' early interest, his initial efforts, and his disastrous acquisition of the platform. The whole narrative is laid out with the precision of a prosecution case and the told with the verve of a first rate thriller. Despite being recent history that most of us lived through (and were made all too aware of) a thorough, fact based accounting like the one presented here is beneficial.
Unfortunately, an account like this becomes outdated as soon as it's published. Like a war torn country, the devastation that Musk's ego and incompetence wreck on the social media platform and the world at large changes and devolves from minute to minute. God only knows what future follies the world's richest child will perpetrate or how the rest of us will ultimately pay the price for it. One thing is certain though, clear eyed and incisive accounts like the one written in this book are absolutely vital for holding Musk accountable, if only to history.
Despite having more money than God and the means to retire comfortably to a tropical island for the duration of several hundred lifetimes, Musk is painfully, embarrassingly, fixated on people's opinion of him, making any quiet enjoyment of his stupendous resources an utter impossibility. Musk and the world are worse off for it.
That's largely what this book is about. One man's myopic pursuit of owning Twitter. This book tells that story, twisty and unbelievable as it is, masterfully. Step by step the authors take you through the billionaires' early interest, his initial efforts, and his disastrous acquisition of the platform. The whole narrative is laid out with the precision of a prosecution case and the told with the verve of a first rate thriller. Despite being recent history that most of us lived through (and were made all too aware of) a thorough, fact based accounting like the one presented here is beneficial.
Unfortunately, an account like this becomes outdated as soon as it's published. Like a war torn country, the devastation that Musk's ego and incompetence wreck on the social media platform and the world at large changes and devolves from minute to minute. God only knows what future follies the world's richest child will perpetrate or how the rest of us will ultimately pay the price for it. One thing is certain though, clear eyed and incisive accounts like the one written in this book are absolutely vital for holding Musk accountable, if only to history.
October 6, 2024
Ryan Mac and Kate Conger teamed up to pen this terrific book excoriating Elon Musk and his obvious narcissistic personality disorder, which led him to purchase Twitter in a fit of pique, only to destroy the business for no apparent reason other than Elon has the personal functioning of a teenager. The book details from beginning to end, through numerous sourced interviews, of how Elon became addicted Twitter, tried joining it only to buy it, and then destroy it from the inside because only he gets to break things (quite like a child with a toy).
But to say this book only focuses on Elon's destruction of Twitter is not accurate. It also focuses on the other cretins, narcissists, and servile dogs that populate Elon's orbit, along with other personalities that predated Elon at Twitter -- especially Jack Dorsey. Put another way, Elon isn't the only villain of the book. One evil megalomaniac can only succeed when other awful human beings came before him and other awful human beings enable him. That is what is described in this book. I recommend this for anyone who wants to know how the modern billionaire class can destroy pretty much anything, how Elon is one of the worst individuals alive, and/or anyone who likes or has liked Twitter previously. 4.75 stars.
But to say this book only focuses on Elon's destruction of Twitter is not accurate. It also focuses on the other cretins, narcissists, and servile dogs that populate Elon's orbit, along with other personalities that predated Elon at Twitter -- especially Jack Dorsey. Put another way, Elon isn't the only villain of the book. One evil megalomaniac can only succeed when other awful human beings came before him and other awful human beings enable him. That is what is described in this book. I recommend this for anyone who wants to know how the modern billionaire class can destroy pretty much anything, how Elon is one of the worst individuals alive, and/or anyone who likes or has liked Twitter previously. 4.75 stars.
September 19, 2024
the realist in me knows nothing hateful i have to say about this absolute buffoon will ever beat how his own daughter owns him on a regular basis
October 31, 2024
In Character Limit, New York Times technology journalists Kate Conger and Ryan Mac narrate Elon Musk's takeover of social media platform Twitter, now rebranded by Musk as X. For folks who enjoy tales of business schadenfreude (including myself), this is an engaging, well-reported read for which Conger and Mac interviewed over 150 people (some on the record, some off the record) and drew from other sources including, of course, tweets. It is probably an understatement to say that Musk does not come off well in the book; of note, Mac was one of a half dozen reporters whose Twitter accounts were suspended by Musk for unclear reasons (though Mac's account has since been restored), which Mac gleefully points out several times in this takedown (pun intended). I haven't read Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Musk that was also reported on during this time period (Elon Musk), but perhaps that would have a more pro-Musk account on things, if folks are interested in a more balanced story.
Further reading: rollicking tales of business schadenfreude
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork by Reeves Wiedemann
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis (aka, the authorized biography of Sam-Bankman Fried and FTX gone terribly wrong)
Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire by Andrew Chow (similar story, less in-depth focus on SBF)
Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn by Nick Kostov
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric by Thomas Gryta
The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J.Crew by Maggie Bullock
My statistics:
Book 260 for 2024
Book 1863 cumulatively
Further reading: rollicking tales of business schadenfreude
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork by Reeves Wiedemann
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis (aka, the authorized biography of Sam-Bankman Fried and FTX gone terribly wrong)
Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire by Andrew Chow (similar story, less in-depth focus on SBF)
Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn by Nick Kostov
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric by Thomas Gryta
The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J.Crew by Maggie Bullock
My statistics:
Book 260 for 2024
Book 1863 cumulatively
September 21, 2024
wow what a delicious hate-read
September 26, 2024
Boy... if you had a low opinion of Musk before cracking this open, you're going to have an even lower one by the time you finish. I'm a firm believer in the "no great man" theory of history. Oh sure, there are great big buffoonish idiots who get outsize credit for the achievements of a collective mass of humanity engaged in civilization level projects throughout history, but I believe many of these "great" people are likely to have been narcissistic sociopaths whose grandiose opinion of themselves lent an unearned confidence to their every blundering misdeed. Musk seems to me to be the modern poster child for people of this ilk.
Musk comes off as the drunk blowhard you find out at a bar late at night, who's riding high off the idea that he's some kind of wunderkind because he got lucky throwing darts. He loves to crow about his prowess with throwing pointy objects, but he's running up a tab and any statistical analysis of his throws would reveal him to be an abysmal player. But he's buying rounds for anyone who'll shower him with praise, so, he thinks he's the second coming of whoever was a famous dart player (okay, this analogy has probably run its course).
The real world damage his cruelty caused, for no apparent reason other than to assuage his raging ego, is likely never to be fully tabulated. But this book makes a heroic effort, within the narrative structure it follows: more or less a linear timeline accounting for all the major elements of the saga that resulted in "the world's 'richest' man" acquiring, owning, and ultimately, destroying, Twitter.
When I was kid, some of the shops in my hometown had, "you break it, you buy it" signs up. In Musk's case, like a rich child who's never been denied instant kowtowing to his every caprice, he bought something explicitly *to* break it.
Musk is a thin-skinned bully. I've never had much sympathy for bullies.
Musk comes off as the drunk blowhard you find out at a bar late at night, who's riding high off the idea that he's some kind of wunderkind because he got lucky throwing darts. He loves to crow about his prowess with throwing pointy objects, but he's running up a tab and any statistical analysis of his throws would reveal him to be an abysmal player. But he's buying rounds for anyone who'll shower him with praise, so, he thinks he's the second coming of whoever was a famous dart player (okay, this analogy has probably run its course).
The real world damage his cruelty caused, for no apparent reason other than to assuage his raging ego, is likely never to be fully tabulated. But this book makes a heroic effort, within the narrative structure it follows: more or less a linear timeline accounting for all the major elements of the saga that resulted in "the world's 'richest' man" acquiring, owning, and ultimately, destroying, Twitter.
When I was kid, some of the shops in my hometown had, "you break it, you buy it" signs up. In Musk's case, like a rich child who's never been denied instant kowtowing to his every caprice, he bought something explicitly *to* break it.
Musk is a thin-skinned bully. I've never had much sympathy for bullies.
October 2, 2024
Here's the skinny, Elon Musk is a dunce. He's an incredibly petty, incredibly awkward, social dullard whose mythological rise to American titan is less attributable to any sort of Nikolai Tesla-esque genius, and more directly correlated with buying into already existing start-up companies and muscling the founders out.
This book is beautiful and compelling. It's hard to read without your face consistently jellying into absolute secondhand embarrassment – at Musk, who's highest goal is to exist online as a high school edgel0rd; at his sycophants, who would wash Musk's feet with their tongue if asked; for his poor children, who are all essentially fatherless and all left to navigate this world named something like Titan Soothsayer Mechanica Musk. I was never a believer that Twitter would save democracy or would serve a global open forum. It's an app. Even in it's "best days," it was still filled with morons, trolls and bots. But watching Musk explode this company is truly something.
Money can't buy class, as my grandma used to say, and this book is cold, hard proof of that axiom.
This book is beautiful and compelling. It's hard to read without your face consistently jellying into absolute secondhand embarrassment – at Musk, who's highest goal is to exist online as a high school edgel0rd; at his sycophants, who would wash Musk's feet with their tongue if asked; for his poor children, who are all essentially fatherless and all left to navigate this world named something like Titan Soothsayer Mechanica Musk. I was never a believer that Twitter would save democracy or would serve a global open forum. It's an app. Even in it's "best days," it was still filled with morons, trolls and bots. But watching Musk explode this company is truly something.
Money can't buy class, as my grandma used to say, and this book is cold, hard proof of that axiom.
September 22, 2024
The book really has nothing to add to the Twitter clusterfuck other than being slightly more up-to-date on events. Plus a lot more legal details.
November 1, 2024
Read this book for additional confirmation of what you already know: Musk is a total POS. Just the absolute worst that humanity and capitalism have wrought.
Unlike the author, I believe that Musk bought Twitter with the intention to destroy it. Twitter was once a very powerful tool for democracy and now it is (gestures broadly) what it is. In the long term, Musk has more to gain from his $44B investment as it lays in ruins.
Other fun facts: He’s friends with “Puff” 👀 (aka Sean Diddy Combs), which he trotted out during a DEI meeting to “prove” he’s not racist.
Whenever people point to Venezuela as an example of failed socialism I like to point to Musk and his ilk as a failure of capitalism. To quote another huge POS that Musk is (not so) shockingly friends with: No one man should have all that power. Sadly, the existence of this book will change nothing and the Muskettes will continue to gaslight society into believing that Elon has done more good than harm.
Unlike the author, I believe that Musk bought Twitter with the intention to destroy it. Twitter was once a very powerful tool for democracy and now it is (gestures broadly) what it is. In the long term, Musk has more to gain from his $44B investment as it lays in ruins.
Other fun facts: He’s friends with “Puff” 👀 (aka Sean Diddy Combs), which he trotted out during a DEI meeting to “prove” he’s not racist.
Whenever people point to Venezuela as an example of failed socialism I like to point to Musk and his ilk as a failure of capitalism. To quote another huge POS that Musk is (not so) shockingly friends with: No one man should have all that power. Sadly, the existence of this book will change nothing and the Muskettes will continue to gaslight society into believing that Elon has done more good than harm.
September 27, 2024
I have a confession to make, I am fascinated by Elon Musk, the worlds richest man because he somehow managed to convince investors that Tesla deserves to have a market cap higher than all other auto makers combined, because 'tech' and nonsense promises of self driving cars, despite constantly missing sales estimates and the increasing toxicity of the brand. Don't be left holding that bag.
If you've somehow missed the absolute clusterfuck that is Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter then this book really isn't for you, and if you followed it pretty closely there probably isn't a tonne of new information here, but it does a great job of contextualising, as well as provided view points from those around Musk and Twitter at the time.
It starts off strong, pointing out how multibillion dollar acquisitions are not new, companies buy companies, private equity, but a private citizen buying a company for $44b is completely unheard of and beyond bonkers, but so is the life of Elon Musk. To give the man the only credit he deserves, he is good at convincing people he can make money at least.
This book gets into the weeds around the whole process, we all know that Musk is a raging narcissist and obviously this book isn't going out of its way to dispute that, but it actually does a half decent job of humanising him, his obsession with Twitter, his thin skin, proclamations of being a free speech absolutist for himself but noone else, if they're criticising him. We get a lot of information about his 'goons' and the chaos they sow whereever they go, his bizarre loyalty pledges and his utter incompetance at running a social media company.
Still, all the juicy bits we've read before, its the nuance and perspective of a lot of people, especially the previous Twitter execs that you get here, and if anyone came out of this looking bad its Dorsey, obviously he's not as bad as Musk but he also seems to be on another planet and the people working under him deserved far better.
Overall the book is well paced, inciteful and puts the focus on the people who deserved it the most, the employees who watched the company they loved crumble under the strain of the worlds biggest manchild. The ultimate message of this book is a tale as old as time, you can be the richest man in the world, but you can't buy the loving messianic respect you feel you deserve, no matter how many people you scream at in the processes.
If you've somehow missed the absolute clusterfuck that is Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter then this book really isn't for you, and if you followed it pretty closely there probably isn't a tonne of new information here, but it does a great job of contextualising, as well as provided view points from those around Musk and Twitter at the time.
It starts off strong, pointing out how multibillion dollar acquisitions are not new, companies buy companies, private equity, but a private citizen buying a company for $44b is completely unheard of and beyond bonkers, but so is the life of Elon Musk. To give the man the only credit he deserves, he is good at convincing people he can make money at least.
This book gets into the weeds around the whole process, we all know that Musk is a raging narcissist and obviously this book isn't going out of its way to dispute that, but it actually does a half decent job of humanising him, his obsession with Twitter, his thin skin, proclamations of being a free speech absolutist for himself but noone else, if they're criticising him. We get a lot of information about his 'goons' and the chaos they sow whereever they go, his bizarre loyalty pledges and his utter incompetance at running a social media company.
Still, all the juicy bits we've read before, its the nuance and perspective of a lot of people, especially the previous Twitter execs that you get here, and if anyone came out of this looking bad its Dorsey, obviously he's not as bad as Musk but he also seems to be on another planet and the people working under him deserved far better.
Overall the book is well paced, inciteful and puts the focus on the people who deserved it the most, the employees who watched the company they loved crumble under the strain of the worlds biggest manchild. The ultimate message of this book is a tale as old as time, you can be the richest man in the world, but you can't buy the loving messianic respect you feel you deserve, no matter how many people you scream at in the processes.
October 9, 2024
Was Twitter ever good?
Surely, it had moments of goodness. When news was breaking — when there were elections, revolutions and natural disasters — Twitter was often the best place to go to get up to speed in a hurry. It was also capable of creating smart conversations, inspiring the best jokes, helping people make connections.
But it was also a place where “cancel culture” originated — the ability to pile on to some poor, unsuspecting schmuck for having the wrong opinion (or even a slightly wrong opinion) was irresistible to a lot of people: A few folks lost their livelihoods because they became Twitter’s main character. And to no small extent, Twitter gave us Donald Trump’s political career, which may well mean the end of American democracy as we know it. (The jury is still out on that one.)
Like pretty much all social media, Twitter was built for our lizard brains — to make dopamine-addicted monkeys like me mash “refresh” over and over again, part of a generational mindwipe that leaves most of us staring at our phones when we ought to be reading books or spending time with friends.
In that sense, Twitter contained the seeds of its own destruction.
Because one of those dopamine-addicted monkeys was Elon Musk, now and again the richest man in the world. He became infatuated with the platform, bought it, turned it into X — and, quickly, into a cesspool of grift, disinformation and racism that has caused many of its users to flee.
“Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” by New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, is an excellently reported account of how we got to this point — a depiction of how capitalism can go awry in the Internet age.
How so? A few examples:
When “shareholder value” is the highest value: Musk has called Twitter the world’s town square, and there was a time when that wasn’t far from being true. That arguably means that it had a value beyond pure profit. But when Musk made his offer to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share — a wildly inflated price, as everybody knew at the time, but an opportunity for Elon to make a pot joke — Twitter’s board had no choice but to take it. Twitter’s shareholders would never see such a great offer again. They knew that Musk was erratic, that it was likely he would wreak havoc. The cash was too good.
The problem with debt: Oddly enough, the world’s richest man didn’t buy Twitter out of his own pocket: He took big loans from big banks. Having saddled his purchase with debt — and again, having overpaid massively for it — Musk had little choice but to start slashing jobs and other expenses (like data centers!) turning a resilient platform rickety. This is actually an old story, especially in the newspaper industry. Private equity firms regularly buy up companies, load them up with debt, and then more or less strip them for parts. The results can be devastating.
The cult of the billionaire: Elon thinks he’s a genius. He might be where engineering is concerned. Where Twitter — which is less an engineering problem than a human one — he isn’t. But he doesn’t know that. He fires people for refusing to flatter him, or talking shit behind his back. He believes in his own infallibility, and others pay the price.
Job-linked healthcare: I’m not sure there are any heroes in this book. There are victims. The people I feel sorry for the most are the Twitter workers desperate to leave after Musk takes over but can’t because they have ill loved-ones and they can’t go without the health insurance the company provides.
What is X today? Well, it still has its uses. I get story ideas from it regularly. And I guess I prefer to ideologically homogeneous alternatives like Bluesky.
But also there’s this:
"Elon Musk is using his social media network to spread election conspiracy theories about U.S. disasters — just as online falsehoods are complicating the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Musk has helped spread accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “actively blocked” donations to victims of Helene and is “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own” — allegations that FEMA officials call false and which run afoul of state and local Republican leaders’ praise for the assistance from Washington."
And this:
"A study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that in the first seven months of 2024, Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US election generated 1.2 billion views. “Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as owner of a small, but politically influential, social media platform to sow disinformation that generates discord and distrust,” said Imran Ahmed, the center’s CEO."
And, well, you get the idea.
Was Twitter ever good? I wouldn’t make that claim. What’s now clear, though, is that it could become something worse. Thanks to Elon Musk, it did.
Surely, it had moments of goodness. When news was breaking — when there were elections, revolutions and natural disasters — Twitter was often the best place to go to get up to speed in a hurry. It was also capable of creating smart conversations, inspiring the best jokes, helping people make connections.
But it was also a place where “cancel culture” originated — the ability to pile on to some poor, unsuspecting schmuck for having the wrong opinion (or even a slightly wrong opinion) was irresistible to a lot of people: A few folks lost their livelihoods because they became Twitter’s main character. And to no small extent, Twitter gave us Donald Trump’s political career, which may well mean the end of American democracy as we know it. (The jury is still out on that one.)
Like pretty much all social media, Twitter was built for our lizard brains — to make dopamine-addicted monkeys like me mash “refresh” over and over again, part of a generational mindwipe that leaves most of us staring at our phones when we ought to be reading books or spending time with friends.
In that sense, Twitter contained the seeds of its own destruction.
Because one of those dopamine-addicted monkeys was Elon Musk, now and again the richest man in the world. He became infatuated with the platform, bought it, turned it into X — and, quickly, into a cesspool of grift, disinformation and racism that has caused many of its users to flee.
“Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” by New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, is an excellently reported account of how we got to this point — a depiction of how capitalism can go awry in the Internet age.
How so? A few examples:
When “shareholder value” is the highest value: Musk has called Twitter the world’s town square, and there was a time when that wasn’t far from being true. That arguably means that it had a value beyond pure profit. But when Musk made his offer to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share — a wildly inflated price, as everybody knew at the time, but an opportunity for Elon to make a pot joke — Twitter’s board had no choice but to take it. Twitter’s shareholders would never see such a great offer again. They knew that Musk was erratic, that it was likely he would wreak havoc. The cash was too good.
The problem with debt: Oddly enough, the world’s richest man didn’t buy Twitter out of his own pocket: He took big loans from big banks. Having saddled his purchase with debt — and again, having overpaid massively for it — Musk had little choice but to start slashing jobs and other expenses (like data centers!) turning a resilient platform rickety. This is actually an old story, especially in the newspaper industry. Private equity firms regularly buy up companies, load them up with debt, and then more or less strip them for parts. The results can be devastating.
The cult of the billionaire: Elon thinks he’s a genius. He might be where engineering is concerned. Where Twitter — which is less an engineering problem than a human one — he isn’t. But he doesn’t know that. He fires people for refusing to flatter him, or talking shit behind his back. He believes in his own infallibility, and others pay the price.
Job-linked healthcare: I’m not sure there are any heroes in this book. There are victims. The people I feel sorry for the most are the Twitter workers desperate to leave after Musk takes over but can’t because they have ill loved-ones and they can’t go without the health insurance the company provides.
What is X today? Well, it still has its uses. I get story ideas from it regularly. And I guess I prefer to ideologically homogeneous alternatives like Bluesky.
But also there’s this:
"Elon Musk is using his social media network to spread election conspiracy theories about U.S. disasters — just as online falsehoods are complicating the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Musk has helped spread accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “actively blocked” donations to victims of Helene and is “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own” — allegations that FEMA officials call false and which run afoul of state and local Republican leaders’ praise for the assistance from Washington."
And this:
"A study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that in the first seven months of 2024, Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US election generated 1.2 billion views. “Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as owner of a small, but politically influential, social media platform to sow disinformation that generates discord and distrust,” said Imran Ahmed, the center’s CEO."
And, well, you get the idea.
Was Twitter ever good? I wouldn’t make that claim. What’s now clear, though, is that it could become something worse. Thanks to Elon Musk, it did.
September 28, 2024
The enormous and avoidable devastation of the Death of Twitter told brilliantly by two longtime reporters on matters of Musk and Twitter itself, Ryan Mac and Kate Conger. So much of what is missing or poorly told by Ben Mezrich’s hastily rushed out book is laid bare in excruciating and well-laid-out details here, so coherent that more than once I could guess the title of the next chapter ahead of time.
With one self-inflicted punch in the face after another, Musk has accidentally ghostwritten the “how not to do business, like, ever” book for the ages.
All you can do is shake your head as the world’s dumbest genius, a former hero of mine, deliberately wrecks the most impactful social media company of all time based on nothing but his own everyday experiences with the site and poorly informed hunches. And it was so influential. During the Iranian crises and Arab Spring in general, Twitter saved lives and was the de facto internet for much of North Africa and the Middle East. The Trans Rights movement, Weird Twitter, gamers, politicians going back and forth, all of it was on Twitter. And then there was the news. It broke on Twitter.
Then Elon broke Twitter.
With no due diligence, in fact a DELIBERATE lack of due diligence, Musk pratfalls into buying Twitter sight unseen for at least twice its worth, fails to wriggle out of it in court, shitposts his way into everyone’s bad graces and then proceeds to gut the guardrails, moderation, HR, finance and engineering teams as soon as he swans into the building carrying a kitchen sink. You couldn’t make it up. It wouldn’t pass the fiction test.
He dreams up conspiracies about ghost employees, short sellers (Twitter was at that point already a private company) and lives in constant fear that activist engineers would organise a collapse of the side. Predictable results ensue. Those of us who watched it unfold on Twitter will find it strange to relive those era defining posts that were the death knell of the platform woven into the story. It’s an obscure sorrow. I term it “the wrong kind of nostalgia”.
A massively overlooked fact about the Twitter takeover is the absolute insecurity of your personal data in one of these potential buyouts or takeovers - or at all. The authors don’t explicitly go into this on a wider user level, but in the course of the book’s retelling, random journalists are given back door access to Twitter to write their Twitter Files,which was a massive and utterly ignored huge breach of any data and user privacy rules in almost any country. Nobody prevented any of it. Twitter DMs were never encrypted, meaning certain company employees could read these - albeit with hoops to jump through first. Twitter Data servers were moved in rented trucks across state lines (a story you’ll also find in Isaacson’s comparatively laughable book on Elon written during the time covered in this book, with Isaacson himself showing up as a spineless cameo). Lawsuits anticipated by colleagues over proposed changes to the site are laughed off or ignored by Musk and his yes-at-all-costs men. Impersonation accounts cause real world harm. And then there are the Doxxing events in the book. The company is an incorporated crime scene.
You should consider all your data to be in absolute peril in the hands of any social media company. Once it’s in their hands, you can assume it to be stolen, compromised or sold. All it takes is time, or a wealthy idiot, company or government who wants it. “We care about your privacy” is code for “we already regret the fines we will have to pay for data breaches but that’s the cost of doing business.”
The subsequent crash in users in the US, Brazil and U.K. due to well-covered stories I won’t rehearse here have led to a steep drop in an already declining user base. Twitter will go bankrupt. Advertisers fled an increasingly Sieg-Heiling platform that began to more closely resemble the 4chan adjacent Parler, Gab or Truth Social. Saddled with $13,000,000,000 in debt from the Musk buyout, and with an 84% drop in valuation, it’s only a matter of time until Musk either sells even more Tesla stock to prop up his broken plaything or abandons it all together at a catastrophic loss of billions of dollars, tanking the number one outlet for news and promotion of his own remaining companies, Neuralink, SpaceX and of course Tesla. Twitter was the de facto advertising vector for these companies, and it was free advertising at that.
And when he does (and he ultimately will) throw the whole sordid project into the already flaming dumpster, he’ll instead blame advertisers for their flight from a platform that served ads for iPhones and Banking services next to memes glorifying the Third Reich, never quite putting 2 and 2 together that it was his ketamine-addled manic depressive paranoiac “character limit” that self-owned him into the largest business failure of all time. Criticism from all fronts will not register, much as it doesn’t in the stories the authors relay here (some of the stories about Musk’s utterly un-self-aware refusals of responsibility are laugh out loud horrifying.)
Instead Musk’s copious “finfluencer” lackeys who all became rich off Tesla stock and had millions of combined followers on Twitter will defend him - to him - to the end. And when the site finally 404s one day they’ll perhaps realise that he broke the one thing that gave them an outsize voice on the net to begin with, ever propped up by his following their accounts, retweeting or replying to their adulation and undying support.
Or perhaps they won’t realise. Musk certainly hasn’t.
With one self-inflicted punch in the face after another, Musk has accidentally ghostwritten the “how not to do business, like, ever” book for the ages.
All you can do is shake your head as the world’s dumbest genius, a former hero of mine, deliberately wrecks the most impactful social media company of all time based on nothing but his own everyday experiences with the site and poorly informed hunches. And it was so influential. During the Iranian crises and Arab Spring in general, Twitter saved lives and was the de facto internet for much of North Africa and the Middle East. The Trans Rights movement, Weird Twitter, gamers, politicians going back and forth, all of it was on Twitter. And then there was the news. It broke on Twitter.
Then Elon broke Twitter.
With no due diligence, in fact a DELIBERATE lack of due diligence, Musk pratfalls into buying Twitter sight unseen for at least twice its worth, fails to wriggle out of it in court, shitposts his way into everyone’s bad graces and then proceeds to gut the guardrails, moderation, HR, finance and engineering teams as soon as he swans into the building carrying a kitchen sink. You couldn’t make it up. It wouldn’t pass the fiction test.
He dreams up conspiracies about ghost employees, short sellers (Twitter was at that point already a private company) and lives in constant fear that activist engineers would organise a collapse of the side. Predictable results ensue. Those of us who watched it unfold on Twitter will find it strange to relive those era defining posts that were the death knell of the platform woven into the story. It’s an obscure sorrow. I term it “the wrong kind of nostalgia”.
A massively overlooked fact about the Twitter takeover is the absolute insecurity of your personal data in one of these potential buyouts or takeovers - or at all. The authors don’t explicitly go into this on a wider user level, but in the course of the book’s retelling, random journalists are given back door access to Twitter to write their Twitter Files,which was a massive and utterly ignored huge breach of any data and user privacy rules in almost any country. Nobody prevented any of it. Twitter DMs were never encrypted, meaning certain company employees could read these - albeit with hoops to jump through first. Twitter Data servers were moved in rented trucks across state lines (a story you’ll also find in Isaacson’s comparatively laughable book on Elon written during the time covered in this book, with Isaacson himself showing up as a spineless cameo). Lawsuits anticipated by colleagues over proposed changes to the site are laughed off or ignored by Musk and his yes-at-all-costs men. Impersonation accounts cause real world harm. And then there are the Doxxing events in the book. The company is an incorporated crime scene.
You should consider all your data to be in absolute peril in the hands of any social media company. Once it’s in their hands, you can assume it to be stolen, compromised or sold. All it takes is time, or a wealthy idiot, company or government who wants it. “We care about your privacy” is code for “we already regret the fines we will have to pay for data breaches but that’s the cost of doing business.”
The subsequent crash in users in the US, Brazil and U.K. due to well-covered stories I won’t rehearse here have led to a steep drop in an already declining user base. Twitter will go bankrupt. Advertisers fled an increasingly Sieg-Heiling platform that began to more closely resemble the 4chan adjacent Parler, Gab or Truth Social. Saddled with $13,000,000,000 in debt from the Musk buyout, and with an 84% drop in valuation, it’s only a matter of time until Musk either sells even more Tesla stock to prop up his broken plaything or abandons it all together at a catastrophic loss of billions of dollars, tanking the number one outlet for news and promotion of his own remaining companies, Neuralink, SpaceX and of course Tesla. Twitter was the de facto advertising vector for these companies, and it was free advertising at that.
And when he does (and he ultimately will) throw the whole sordid project into the already flaming dumpster, he’ll instead blame advertisers for their flight from a platform that served ads for iPhones and Banking services next to memes glorifying the Third Reich, never quite putting 2 and 2 together that it was his ketamine-addled manic depressive paranoiac “character limit” that self-owned him into the largest business failure of all time. Criticism from all fronts will not register, much as it doesn’t in the stories the authors relay here (some of the stories about Musk’s utterly un-self-aware refusals of responsibility are laugh out loud horrifying.)
Instead Musk’s copious “finfluencer” lackeys who all became rich off Tesla stock and had millions of combined followers on Twitter will defend him - to him - to the end. And when the site finally 404s one day they’ll perhaps realise that he broke the one thing that gave them an outsize voice on the net to begin with, ever propped up by his following their accounts, retweeting or replying to their adulation and undying support.
Or perhaps they won’t realise. Musk certainly hasn’t.
September 27, 2024
This book documents the wild episode of Elon Musk buying (and trying to get out of buying) Twitter. A petulant man baby with terrifying influence. From mass sackings to Twitter staff getting death threats and tantrums over Joe Biden getting more retweets on him, this is a revealing look at the narcissist who now owns Twitter (or X as he called it).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 9, 2024
A fascinating and disturbing look at the people responsible for the cesspool of the Internet formerly known as Twitter. Following the story of the decline of Twitter under Elon Musk was gripping, especially as I recalled many of the events from the outside. And seeing the behavior of Musk in particular filled me with many emotions, most of them unpleasant—how anyone trusts this man with their investment money is beyond me! Strong recommendation!
November 10, 2024
Luck of the library waiting–list draw put this in my hands just ahead of the election, and I finished it on Election Day. Excellent reporting, drily knowing tone; a convincing indictment of a uniquely malevolent figure.
Read the audiobook, not yet listed on Goodreads.
Read the audiobook, not yet listed on Goodreads.
October 15, 2024
incredibly thorough, satisfying, and detailed reporting about the biggest, richest dumbass in the whole entire world and a bunch of other dipshits with too much money
November 4, 2024
Enthralling and juicy af
Read
October 11, 2024I heard the highlights as the trainwreck unfolded, like most people who once enjoyed Twitter, but the whole thing lined up and given context is...pretty jaw-dropping.
October 20, 2024
incredible reporting. depressing story
October 9, 2024
unsurprisingly this dude sucks
October 31, 2024
The authors didn't spare anyone, but compared to what they wrote about Musk, everyone else mentioned in this book might be thanking their stars that at least it wasn't that bad.
While I am not on Twitter or X, as now it is known (sounds more like a p0rn site than a social network), I thoroughly enjoyed every second I spent reading this book.
September 23, 2024
Riveting from start to finish
November 19, 2024
I used to be a big Twitter user. Then, after Musk bought it, I found the site less and less usable. At one point I noticed that for every five tweets, there was one ad. I would block the advertisers. It didn't help. The same dumb ads kept appearing, because the advertisers had a ridiculous number of accounts. I started looking at alternatives. Mastodon was unusable. Threads was another Facebook nightmare, where the algorithm controls what you see. But Bluesky seemed like it had possibility. And eventually I moved there, and found a new community. And I play there now.
Recently, what with Musk basically marrying Donald Trump, Twitter was seen yet another mass exodus of people. It's kind of amazing to see, every time it happens. When Musk pissed off Brazil, and they shut down Twitter in that country, Brazilians poured in to Bluesky. People joked we would all have to learn Portuguese.
All of this to say, I am somewhat familiar with the nonsense that took place when Musk bought Twitter and slowly started hammering it into the ground. When he got rid of verified accounts, it was painfully obvious to me and everyone that this was a dumb move. When he started ranting about the "woke mind virus", my circle of friends were horrified.
Reading this book is like having all the dumb decisions, crazy actions, and foolish statements of Musk all neatly organized in a row. Up until reading the book, I knew of some of these things. Seeing it put together as a story is stunning, hilarious, depressing, and bizarre. And there are details I was unaware of, like "Twitter Hotel" and some cult-like activity in the company.
I have friends who used to believe Musk is a genius. It gets harder and harder to hold on to that, as the man's behaviour gets more and more erratic. This book both makes me hate the man, and pity him. He does such terrible things (getting people doxed and attacked by his followers) and then whines that nobody likes him.
As much as I hate to admit it, his saying he has Asperger's kind of explains a lot. He does not have emotions or empathy like a normal person. His desire to be liked, respected, powerful, and rich appears to be slowly driving him insane.
Sorry, this is a rant. Back to the book. It's excellent, linear, and clean. I listened to the audiobook, and it was well read and easy to follow. Yes, there are many many people in the story, and I sometimes lost track of who is who. But all the same, it was compelling and fascinating.
Recommended.
Recently, what with Musk basically marrying Donald Trump, Twitter was seen yet another mass exodus of people. It's kind of amazing to see, every time it happens. When Musk pissed off Brazil, and they shut down Twitter in that country, Brazilians poured in to Bluesky. People joked we would all have to learn Portuguese.
All of this to say, I am somewhat familiar with the nonsense that took place when Musk bought Twitter and slowly started hammering it into the ground. When he got rid of verified accounts, it was painfully obvious to me and everyone that this was a dumb move. When he started ranting about the "woke mind virus", my circle of friends were horrified.
Reading this book is like having all the dumb decisions, crazy actions, and foolish statements of Musk all neatly organized in a row. Up until reading the book, I knew of some of these things. Seeing it put together as a story is stunning, hilarious, depressing, and bizarre. And there are details I was unaware of, like "Twitter Hotel" and some cult-like activity in the company.
I have friends who used to believe Musk is a genius. It gets harder and harder to hold on to that, as the man's behaviour gets more and more erratic. This book both makes me hate the man, and pity him. He does such terrible things (getting people doxed and attacked by his followers) and then whines that nobody likes him.
As much as I hate to admit it, his saying he has Asperger's kind of explains a lot. He does not have emotions or empathy like a normal person. His desire to be liked, respected, powerful, and rich appears to be slowly driving him insane.
Sorry, this is a rant. Back to the book. It's excellent, linear, and clean. I listened to the audiobook, and it was well read and easy to follow. Yes, there are many many people in the story, and I sometimes lost track of who is who. But all the same, it was compelling and fascinating.
Recommended.
November 18, 2024
** Should you read this book?**
Are you interested in how Elon and Vivek might go about leading the Dept of Gov Efficiency (DOGE) approaching cuts? I think this book might offer a timely insight and preview by telling the story of how Elon & Co went about massive cuts @ Twitter. Conger & Mac pull back the curtain on the acquisition to reveal that the man building a real world of Sci-Fi really loves a space opera. His actions and edicts juxtapose Star Wars Emperor’s power with the ineptness of Space Balls commanders. He’s often one of the most intelligent people in the room yet consistently makes the dumbest business decisions. Takeaways: 1. Elon is a narcissist. 2. A social media company is a far cry from a hard science based company like Tesla or SpaceX 3. The emotional intelligence required to run a company literally build around people and their emotions renders point #1 a fatal flaw. Bonus insight: There’s not room in DC for two narcissists, DT will boot Elon when he gets too much attention.
///
I am a big fan of SpaceX and the commercial space flight enterprise as a whole. I’ve read narrowly on Musk in that context. But with his full throated leap into right wing politics I picked up this book. It laid bare the limits of genius and pitfalls of narcissism. I will read Isaacson’s biography on Musk to see how he treats this material. I’m sure it will be a much more flattering picture.
Are you interested in how Elon and Vivek might go about leading the Dept of Gov Efficiency (DOGE) approaching cuts? I think this book might offer a timely insight and preview by telling the story of how Elon & Co went about massive cuts @ Twitter. Conger & Mac pull back the curtain on the acquisition to reveal that the man building a real world of Sci-Fi really loves a space opera. His actions and edicts juxtapose Star Wars Emperor’s power with the ineptness of Space Balls commanders. He’s often one of the most intelligent people in the room yet consistently makes the dumbest business decisions. Takeaways: 1. Elon is a narcissist. 2. A social media company is a far cry from a hard science based company like Tesla or SpaceX 3. The emotional intelligence required to run a company literally build around people and their emotions renders point #1 a fatal flaw. Bonus insight: There’s not room in DC for two narcissists, DT will boot Elon when he gets too much attention.
///
I am a big fan of SpaceX and the commercial space flight enterprise as a whole. I’ve read narrowly on Musk in that context. But with his full throated leap into right wing politics I picked up this book. It laid bare the limits of genius and pitfalls of narcissism. I will read Isaacson’s biography on Musk to see how he treats this material. I’m sure it will be a much more flattering picture.
October 31, 2024
It was already clear to me that Elon Musk is a petty narcissist who will anything to get attention or punish people he feels wrong him. This book exposed that he is also deeply paranoid. He was convinced that bad actors at Twitter would delete code or crash the site to embarrass him, even though that would have put said actor(s) in line for lawsuits and made no sense. He also had executives "prove" that every single Twitter Employee was a "real person," and not a fake name on a book to get a paycheck without working. He had his brother and a cousin working for him and tasked one of them with spying on Twitter employee Twitter, Slack, and other accounts to see if anyone was talking badly about Musk so those people could be fired.
More than anything, this book convinced me that Musk is a younger, richer version of Donald Trump. He breaks rules because he can pay any fine like it's nothing, knowing it won't have any impact on his billions of dollars. He buys himself out of every problem he creates for himself. In a world where money is power, Musk is not just an obnoxious nuisance, he's dangerous.
More than anything, this book convinced me that Musk is a younger, richer version of Donald Trump. He breaks rules because he can pay any fine like it's nothing, knowing it won't have any impact on his billions of dollars. He buys himself out of every problem he creates for himself. In a world where money is power, Musk is not just an obnoxious nuisance, he's dangerous.
October 26, 2024
A pretty searing account of how Twitter was both founded, nurtured and then butchered into a cruel semblance of itself. Conger & Mac go into detail and gives lots of recent history as context for the decisions people made.
Conger and Mac present this as a “we’re not saying Musk is crazy, but here’s all the crazy shit he did and said”. If you or I tried running a social media company like he does we’d be out of business in a month, if the FTC hadn’t already shut us down or former employees hadn’t sued us into oblivion. Conger and Mac present a Musk that can use vast wealth to escape the consequences the rest of us would face.
In the end, Twitter legally no longer even exists, and what’s been left in its place is an app where people who pay for a check mark find Elon bending over backwards to make sure they end up on the screens of people who have no interest in what they have to say.
Conger and Mac present this as a “we’re not saying Musk is crazy, but here’s all the crazy shit he did and said”. If you or I tried running a social media company like he does we’d be out of business in a month, if the FTC hadn’t already shut us down or former employees hadn’t sued us into oblivion. Conger and Mac present a Musk that can use vast wealth to escape the consequences the rest of us would face.
In the end, Twitter legally no longer even exists, and what’s been left in its place is an app where people who pay for a check mark find Elon bending over backwards to make sure they end up on the screens of people who have no interest in what they have to say.
November 7, 2024
Incredibly detailed, insightful indictment of how cults of personality, left unchecked, can completely erode established bureaucracies. I truly can't believe the extent to which Musk was making massive decisions about the platform based almost exclusively on his own experience/problems, without fully thinking through the consequences and, often, against the advice of established professionals. Also, his wonton disregard for the law, and obvious safety warnings around content moderation, is deeply unsettling. Two most shocking tidbits from this one: 1) the fact that serious internal controls exist at Tesla and SpaceX to limit/control Musk's focus and reach but no such controls exist at Twitter and 2) how close Walter Isaacson got to Musk to the point where Isaacson was offering advice about how to change the platform (never reading that mf biography lol).
October 15, 2024
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"
Conger and Mac have done their job of presenting a dispassionate and objective portrait of Musk, cutting through his own self-mythology and the cult hero worship of his fanboys with the exacting patience of a roadie clearing dry ice from the Spinal Tap stage with a hand-held rotary fan. The only problem for the reader is what's left is a shallow, vain but utterly unremarkable man. You don't learn anything about Musk you couldn't have guessed. However, it is reassuring to have confirmation that his chaotic and impulsive behaviour is not part of some broader genius strategy or emblematic of the driving personality that got him to where he is, but actually the actions of a man coming to terms with his own mediocrity - he is not Mozart, he is Salieri.
Conger and Mac have done their job of presenting a dispassionate and objective portrait of Musk, cutting through his own self-mythology and the cult hero worship of his fanboys with the exacting patience of a roadie clearing dry ice from the Spinal Tap stage with a hand-held rotary fan. The only problem for the reader is what's left is a shallow, vain but utterly unremarkable man. You don't learn anything about Musk you couldn't have guessed. However, it is reassuring to have confirmation that his chaotic and impulsive behaviour is not part of some broader genius strategy or emblematic of the driving personality that got him to where he is, but actually the actions of a man coming to terms with his own mediocrity - he is not Mozart, he is Salieri.
October 26, 2024
I’m not a Twitter person, so some of the intricacies of the platform were unknown to me. This book totally solidifies Elon’s rep as a capricious, impulsive, thin-skinned, insecure, non-strategic, overly-impressed-with-himself guy. But it also goes into Silicon Valley culture - not a lot of people come out looking good in this book. Twitter may have gone downhill a lot faster post-Elon, but it wasn’t some great blue chip beforehand. A lot of people are responsible for how the platform is today.
November 12, 2024
I never thought a book retelling the story of a corporate acquisition could be so gripping. This book pulls no punches and critiques everyone involved in the downfall of the “digital town square” that Twitter once was. Naturally, it particularly focuses on how Musk drove it into the ground.
The narrative is filled with intricate details of the behind-the-scenes events, all conveyed through exquisite storytelling that makes it hard to put down. It’s honestly mind-boggling that this is a true story about real people, and not a screenplay for an episode of Succession.
The narrative is filled with intricate details of the behind-the-scenes events, all conveyed through exquisite storytelling that makes it hard to put down. It’s honestly mind-boggling that this is a true story about real people, and not a screenplay for an episode of Succession.
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