1 00:00:00,700 --> 00:00:06,920 I don't know if that's my first tweet, but it probably is. 2 00:00:06,920 --> 00:00:09,320 Yeah, "Digesting a burrito." There you go. Yeah. 3 00:00:10,140 --> 00:00:12,500 Look at me with my dumb tweets. 4 00:00:12,500 --> 00:00:14,600 "Eating a baked potato and green beans." 5 00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:15,680 You know, like... 6 00:00:17,800 --> 00:00:20,800 "Hi. It's me. I'm on Twitter." 7 00:00:20,800 --> 00:00:22,840 For none of my followers at the time. 8 00:00:24,080 --> 00:00:25,600 HE LAUGHS OK. 9 00:00:25,600 --> 00:00:27,560 "Continuing to work on things that will, apparently, 10 00:00:27,560 --> 00:00:29,160 "destroy modern society." 11 00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:34,200 I mean, that's a real hit-, by the gift of prophecy, 12 00:00:34,200 --> 00:00:36,360 -in-the-face-type situation. 13 00:00:39,200 --> 00:00:41,280 The social media platform Twitter 14 00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:44,040 is now in the hands of the world's richest person. 15 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:46,000 Elon Musk completed the takeover, 16 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:48,840 which is worth more than £38 billion, 17 00:00:48,840 --> 00:00:51,640 and swiftly began making changes at the company. 18 00:00:52,640 --> 00:00:55,800 On the 28th of October 2022, 19 00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:58,160 Elon Musk bought Twitter, 20 00:00:58,160 --> 00:01:02,720 the most disruptive social media platform the world has ever seen. 21 00:01:03,920 --> 00:01:06,920 Musk scrapped many of its controls on hate speech, 22 00:01:06,920 --> 00:01:11,520 reinstated banned accounts, and changed the name to X. 23 00:01:11,520 --> 00:01:14,880 Andrew Tate is back on Twitter. 24 00:01:14,880 --> 00:01:16,200 It's good to be back on Twitter. 25 00:01:22,240 --> 00:01:26,880 It was the end of a dream that had begun nearly 20 years earlier. 26 00:01:31,760 --> 00:01:34,800 Among hipsters and high-school kids, Twittering is all the rage. 27 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:35,880 Do you Twitter? 28 00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:38,960 It asks users one simple question - what are you doing? 29 00:01:38,960 --> 00:01:42,840 T-W-T-T-R - Twitter. 30 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:45,120 Why do so many people want so many other people 31 00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:46,880 to know everything about them? 32 00:01:48,480 --> 00:01:51,800 Twitter's creators said they wanted to connect the world 33 00:01:51,800 --> 00:01:53,640 and make it a better place. 34 00:01:55,640 --> 00:01:57,240 People are using it for activism. 35 00:01:57,240 --> 00:01:59,480 CHEERING 36 00:01:59,480 --> 00:02:02,120 The smallest voices in the world should be heard. 37 00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:05,000 A platform, in order to be a platform, has to be free. 38 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:06,120 Follow the tweets. 39 00:02:06,120 --> 00:02:07,960 World leaders are on it, celebrities are on it. 40 00:02:07,960 --> 00:02:09,880 Boom! It's in their brains. 41 00:02:09,880 --> 00:02:11,080 What is happening? 42 00:02:15,920 --> 00:02:21,040 This is the story of how their dream of a digital utopia turned sour 43 00:02:21,040 --> 00:02:25,320 when they failed to control the dark side of their creation. 44 00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:28,880 BLEEP all of them. 45 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:31,960 So are we the bad guys? 46 00:02:37,400 --> 00:02:39,240 Please introduce yourself. 47 00:02:39,240 --> 00:02:40,680 I'm Biz Stone. 48 00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:42,720 I'm Jack Dorsey. Evan Williams. 49 00:02:42,720 --> 00:02:45,160 And who are you? What do you do? 50 00:02:45,160 --> 00:02:46,200 I'm Biz Stone. 51 00:02:46,200 --> 00:02:47,600 THEY LAUGH 52 00:02:49,120 --> 00:02:50,480 In 2005... 53 00:02:52,280 --> 00:02:54,840 ..uh, well, let's see. 54 00:02:59,480 --> 00:03:03,720 We're just a ragtag group of people in a crummy office in San Francisco. 55 00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:08,760 Just trying to, like, break new ground on new ideas 56 00:03:08,760 --> 00:03:10,200 in a tech start-up. 57 00:03:12,880 --> 00:03:15,880 I was just really excited about the possibilities. 58 00:03:15,880 --> 00:03:18,520 And there's Evan in there. 59 00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:22,440 Back then, it was really exciting. It was fun. 60 00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:24,240 It was like, anything's possible. 61 00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:27,880 And we really believed in the promise of the internet 62 00:03:27,880 --> 00:03:31,560 and the promise of the democratisation of media 63 00:03:31,560 --> 00:03:33,960 and everybody having a voice. 64 00:03:33,960 --> 00:03:38,600 There was just a sense that something was happening. 65 00:03:40,320 --> 00:03:44,680 A few miles away from their downtown office in South Park, San Francisco, 66 00:03:44,680 --> 00:03:48,280 social media is exploding across Silicon Valley. 67 00:03:49,720 --> 00:03:52,520 Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Myspace 68 00:03:52,520 --> 00:03:55,560 are all starting to reshape how the world connects. 69 00:03:57,200 --> 00:04:01,360 Ev Williams wants his start-up to be part of this revolution. 70 00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:03,480 My favourite thing is 71 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:05,760 getting together with people and inventing stuff, 72 00:04:05,760 --> 00:04:08,080 building stuff, coming up with new ideas, 73 00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:11,240 collaborating, like, "Oh, we do this, we do this." It's... 74 00:04:11,240 --> 00:04:13,200 It's a blast. 75 00:04:13,200 --> 00:04:15,880 When you have amazing people and really creative people, 76 00:04:15,880 --> 00:04:18,480 there's just this unbounded creativity and potential 77 00:04:18,480 --> 00:04:20,240 that's in front of you. 78 00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:21,760 And every so often... 79 00:04:21,760 --> 00:04:24,080 One day Jack came into the office 80 00:04:24,080 --> 00:04:26,480 and he wore a T-shirt that he had printed himself, 81 00:04:26,480 --> 00:04:28,800 and it was a white T-shirt with big black letters, 82 00:04:28,800 --> 00:04:31,440 and it had his phone number on it. 83 00:04:31,440 --> 00:04:34,640 And it was a social experiment to see, 84 00:04:34,640 --> 00:04:37,040 as he walked around San Francisco, 85 00:04:37,040 --> 00:04:38,880 whether or not anyone would call him. 86 00:04:38,880 --> 00:04:41,520 And if they did call the number, he would answer it, 87 00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:43,520 and then he would have a conversation with the person. 88 00:04:43,520 --> 00:04:46,720 Was there someone who was skilled in the ways of the pinata? 89 00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:49,200 It was lively. There were a lot of characters. 90 00:04:49,200 --> 00:04:51,440 It was a lot of fun. 91 00:04:51,440 --> 00:04:53,680 Grab the rope. 92 00:04:53,680 --> 00:04:55,520 It was very inventive. 93 00:04:55,520 --> 00:04:57,360 Let's see real quick and say goodbye. 94 00:04:57,360 --> 00:05:02,160 We were a real mix of, like, actual anarchists and, 95 00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:04,000 you know, people who were dreamers, 96 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:05,840 people who, like, you know, believed in a world 97 00:05:05,840 --> 00:05:08,240 that could be created through the internet. 98 00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:10,560 INDISTINCT CHATTER 99 00:05:10,560 --> 00:05:12,960 We were writing ideas on whiteboards, 100 00:05:12,960 --> 00:05:15,480 kind of typical small start-up, 101 00:05:15,480 --> 00:05:19,080 where you show up every day and you try to invent the future. 102 00:05:19,080 --> 00:05:22,600 And we did what we called a hackathon. 103 00:05:22,600 --> 00:05:24,040 We want to make something cool. 104 00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:29,400 Everybody in the company was invited to take 105 00:05:29,400 --> 00:05:32,520 their favourite interesting ideas 106 00:05:32,520 --> 00:05:35,640 and interesting software or things they had always wanted to build, 107 00:05:35,640 --> 00:05:38,960 and we all sort of put them on the virtual table. 108 00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:43,200 At that moment, the internet wasn't quite yet on our phones. 109 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:46,240 This was pre-iPhone, but we sensed it. 110 00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:48,680 It was, like, this is going to happen on the phones. 111 00:05:48,680 --> 00:05:52,480 Let's, like, poke around and figure out what the right, 112 00:05:52,480 --> 00:05:54,120 you know, version of that is. 113 00:05:54,120 --> 00:05:56,480 Something like pictures with your phone. 114 00:05:56,480 --> 00:05:59,400 Like, share a photo. I don't know, what... Something easy. 115 00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:00,920 Like, one photo a day or something. 116 00:06:00,920 --> 00:06:02,720 It was Hellodeo... 117 00:06:04,400 --> 00:06:07,440 ..that let you record, with your webcam, short videos 118 00:06:07,440 --> 00:06:09,560 and post them to Myspace. 119 00:06:09,560 --> 00:06:14,200 Something to do with album covers or something to do with music. 120 00:06:14,200 --> 00:06:16,680 What are you listening to? Or something like this. 121 00:06:16,680 --> 00:06:20,480 Jack and I had been finding every reason to work on projects together. 122 00:06:20,480 --> 00:06:22,680 It's like when you're a little kid and you're in gym class 123 00:06:22,680 --> 00:06:24,480 and the teacher says, like, "Find a partner." 124 00:06:24,480 --> 00:06:27,000 And it was like, "I want Jack." 125 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:30,280 Jack was like, "What about, like, status updates 126 00:06:30,280 --> 00:06:31,840 "where you can look at your group of friends 127 00:06:31,840 --> 00:06:34,480 "and you don't even have to ask them how are they feeling, 128 00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:37,160 "or what are they thinking or whatever, you could just see it." 129 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:39,920 And he said, "Do you think that's enough of a thing 130 00:06:39,920 --> 00:06:42,680 "to make a whole thing out of?" 131 00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:44,600 And I was like, I love it. It's so simple. 132 00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:47,800 It's so simple that you could type something on the web 133 00:06:47,800 --> 00:06:50,560 and it would make someone's pocket buzz. 134 00:06:50,560 --> 00:06:52,560 And then they would look, you know, 135 00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:54,960 fumble and take out their phone and see a message. 136 00:06:54,960 --> 00:06:58,520 And it was just... We got excited about it. 137 00:06:58,520 --> 00:06:59,720 And, um... 138 00:07:01,760 --> 00:07:03,240 ..nobody thought it was a good idea. 139 00:07:05,040 --> 00:07:07,440 Jack's first idea was a list of your friends 140 00:07:07,440 --> 00:07:09,440 and what they were doing, and that's it. 141 00:07:11,400 --> 00:07:17,120 But I thought what felt novel and new ground was 142 00:07:17,120 --> 00:07:20,120 right now. Like, oh, what's happening right now? 143 00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:24,600 That felt intriguing. 144 00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:26,440 That idea was evolving. 145 00:07:26,440 --> 00:07:28,400 We were trying to come up with a name. 146 00:07:29,680 --> 00:07:31,240 Someone suggested Ketchup 147 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:33,120 because you could catch up with your friends. 148 00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:39,080 And someone suggested Friend Stalker. 149 00:07:39,080 --> 00:07:41,840 Friend Stalker. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 150 00:07:43,080 --> 00:07:46,240 One of our co-workers, Noah Glass, liked the word "jitter". 151 00:07:46,240 --> 00:07:48,320 And then he had a rhyming dictionary. 152 00:07:48,320 --> 00:07:53,680 Noah sits in the back of the office, and he starts with A. 153 00:07:53,680 --> 00:07:58,880 And he looks at every page for weeks until... 154 00:07:58,880 --> 00:08:02,040 And, like, writing down the names he thinks might be good names, 155 00:08:02,040 --> 00:08:04,080 until he gets to Tw... 156 00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:09,280 And he discovers that "twitter" is a word, which is 157 00:08:09,280 --> 00:08:13,880 the short bits of communication between birds. 158 00:08:13,880 --> 00:08:16,280 You guys, this word is... It means... 159 00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:18,520 It, like, describes what we're talking about, and it has 160 00:08:18,520 --> 00:08:22,000 a reference to nature and birds. Like, that... It's perfect. 161 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:24,440 Twitter. That's a great name. 162 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:29,520 So after two weeks working on, you know, coding and stuff, 163 00:08:29,520 --> 00:08:32,720 Jack was hooking things up in the background, 164 00:08:32,720 --> 00:08:35,960 he was doing the programming and he was saying, 165 00:08:35,960 --> 00:08:38,480 "Hey, I'm about to hook up so that 166 00:08:38,480 --> 00:08:41,320 "when you write something into the field on the website, 167 00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:44,000 "it should go to the phone. It should go to my phone." 168 00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:47,480 He's like, "Are you ready?" 169 00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:56,280 We built Twitter in two weeks 170 00:08:56,280 --> 00:08:58,160 and after that we invited friends 171 00:08:58,160 --> 00:08:59,960 and then invite, invite, invite. 172 00:08:59,960 --> 00:09:01,840 PHONE BUZZES 173 00:09:01,840 --> 00:09:05,840 You could hear everyone's phone buzzing, basically. 174 00:09:05,840 --> 00:09:08,120 There was something that was easy about it, 175 00:09:08,120 --> 00:09:09,800 that was seductive about it. 176 00:09:11,200 --> 00:09:14,120 That interaction, it's just... It feels electric. 177 00:09:16,640 --> 00:09:20,480 SMS was limited to 160 characters. 178 00:09:20,480 --> 00:09:24,520 So we started limiting tweets to 150, 179 00:09:24,520 --> 00:09:26,600 minus the length of your username. 180 00:09:26,600 --> 00:09:28,400 I think Jack just decided 181 00:09:28,400 --> 00:09:31,760 every message will only be 140 characters. 182 00:09:31,760 --> 00:09:34,280 We embraced the constraint. 183 00:09:34,280 --> 00:09:36,320 Make the canvas very small 184 00:09:36,320 --> 00:09:39,280 and then anything you put on it is a masterpiece. 185 00:09:39,280 --> 00:09:42,320 And you know what most people said when we signed them up for - 186 00:09:42,320 --> 00:09:44,600 like, we got them using Twitter and we showed it to them? 187 00:09:44,600 --> 00:09:47,120 They were like, "This is the stupidest thing ever." 188 00:09:47,120 --> 00:09:49,720 And then some people would say, 189 00:09:49,720 --> 00:09:52,080 "This is the stupidest thing ever," 190 00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:54,560 and become utterly addicted to it. 191 00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:01,240 # One, two, three Take my hand and come with me 192 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:02,760 # Because you look so fine 193 00:10:02,760 --> 00:10:04,800 # That I really wanna make you mine... # 194 00:10:04,800 --> 00:10:07,480 South by Southwest, 2007. 195 00:10:07,480 --> 00:10:10,600 Exactly what I'm talking about. Woo! 196 00:10:10,600 --> 00:10:12,280 That's fuckin' weird. 197 00:10:12,280 --> 00:10:15,560 I would encourage you to now use the internet. 198 00:10:15,560 --> 00:10:18,360 Twitter needs to break out of its San Francisco bubble 199 00:10:18,360 --> 00:10:20,680 and connect with the wider tech community. 200 00:10:21,800 --> 00:10:24,680 They head to a music festival - South by Southwest. 201 00:10:25,840 --> 00:10:27,880 This was a music and film festival, 202 00:10:27,880 --> 00:10:30,200 and then we'll let some nerds show up, 203 00:10:30,200 --> 00:10:32,120 to talk about the internet for a while. 204 00:10:34,040 --> 00:10:37,240 So Ev had this idea of, we should do a marketing thing. 205 00:10:37,240 --> 00:10:39,320 Everyone hangs out in the hallway 206 00:10:39,320 --> 00:10:41,760 around the conference room where they have the panels. 207 00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:45,000 So we put up a screen in the hallway. 208 00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:49,360 Hi, Twitter. Panels, hallways or parties? 209 00:10:49,360 --> 00:10:51,000 There was a lot of people there. 210 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:52,520 You could send something to your phone, 211 00:10:52,520 --> 00:10:54,120 it would show up on the screen, 212 00:10:54,120 --> 00:10:57,040 and you were able to see sort of which session was interesting, 213 00:10:57,040 --> 00:10:58,800 which parties were people planning to go to. 214 00:10:58,800 --> 00:11:00,880 It was this way in which people felt like, 215 00:11:00,880 --> 00:11:02,360 oh, like, I need to be a part of this. 216 00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:05,560 Twitter felt like this massive, 217 00:11:05,560 --> 00:11:08,280 huge group text where just everyone was letting everyone know 218 00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:10,280 about everything that was cool, that was happening. 219 00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:15,240 We would be glued to our phones, 220 00:11:15,240 --> 00:11:17,800 like, walking down the sidewalk looking at, like, 221 00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:20,240 "Oh, wait, oh, there's a cool party happening here, 222 00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:22,160 "and there's a bunch of people over here." 223 00:11:22,160 --> 00:11:25,120 And because all of us, all of us bloggers 224 00:11:25,120 --> 00:11:27,320 and tech people were there using it, 225 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:30,920 it just became this instant way of meeting up with people. 226 00:11:32,720 --> 00:11:35,040 What was just totally amazing was 227 00:11:35,040 --> 00:11:37,360 the story of this guy who had gone to this party, 228 00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:40,320 and it was really loud and crowded, and it was too loud and crowded. 229 00:11:40,320 --> 00:11:42,560 He wanted to talk shop with fellow nerds. 230 00:11:42,560 --> 00:11:44,280 So he sent out a tweet saying, 231 00:11:44,280 --> 00:11:46,840 "Does anyone want to meet over at this other place?" 232 00:11:46,840 --> 00:11:49,280 And it was because he had sent the tweet to all the people 233 00:11:49,280 --> 00:11:51,200 that followed him, and then they had sent the tweet saying, 234 00:11:51,200 --> 00:11:52,920 "We're going here", "We're going here", "We're going"... 235 00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:54,240 And it just multiplied like crazy. 236 00:11:54,240 --> 00:11:58,000 And it was within, like, you know, a couple of minutes or something, 237 00:11:58,000 --> 00:11:59,440 the place was completely filled 238 00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:02,000 and there was a line around the block to get in. 239 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:04,240 As soon as I heard that, I remember thinking, 240 00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:06,320 oh, my God, there's, like - 241 00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:09,320 there isn't anything like this in among humans. 242 00:12:09,320 --> 00:12:11,800 There's no technology that can make this behaviour happen. 243 00:12:11,800 --> 00:12:13,280 From what I understand, 244 00:12:13,280 --> 00:12:18,000 like, birds flying together in a flock and then coming to a tree 245 00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:20,280 and then moving around it as if they're one organism. 246 00:12:20,280 --> 00:12:22,560 And I thought, there's a lot of those types of things in nature, 247 00:12:22,560 --> 00:12:24,640 but this is the first time I've ever heard of 248 00:12:24,640 --> 00:12:27,040 one person able to mobilise 249 00:12:27,040 --> 00:12:29,360 hundreds of people within, like, two minutes. 250 00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:33,120 And I was like, oh, my God, I think we invented a whole new thing. 251 00:12:51,840 --> 00:12:54,640 Where are we, anyways? We're at Twitter headquarters. 252 00:12:54,640 --> 00:12:56,760 Twitter headquarters. 253 00:12:56,760 --> 00:12:59,760 In beautiful South Park, San Francisco. 254 00:12:59,760 --> 00:13:02,400 Yeah, it's beautiful. And who are you? 255 00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:05,080 I'm Biz Stone. Now, what happened yesterday? 256 00:13:05,080 --> 00:13:07,440 Oh, we got, uh... We got funding for Twitter. 257 00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:12,840 Twitter receives $5 million in venture capital funding. 258 00:13:14,800 --> 00:13:17,200 Ev becomes the largest shareholder 259 00:13:17,200 --> 00:13:20,200 and must now appoint a CEO to run the new company. 260 00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:25,960 Looking around the room, Jack was, you know, 261 00:13:25,960 --> 00:13:29,920 the driver of the idea from day one. So I was like, run with it. 262 00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:33,760 Jack Dorsey, Twitter's daddy. 263 00:13:33,760 --> 00:13:37,040 CEO, right? Right. 264 00:13:37,040 --> 00:13:38,960 I was happy to give him the shot, 265 00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:41,680 but growth started to be the really hard problem. 266 00:13:41,680 --> 00:13:44,200 It started growing more quickly than we could handle. 267 00:13:45,840 --> 00:13:47,440 It's like you're playing a video game. 268 00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:49,360 You get better as you're playing the game, 269 00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:54,160 and it depends on how fast the video game gets hard - 270 00:13:54,160 --> 00:13:57,320 does it get hard faster than you get better? 271 00:13:57,320 --> 00:14:01,080 And Twitter got very hard, very fast. 272 00:14:05,520 --> 00:14:07,920 I was in a situation where I had had a stalker 273 00:14:07,920 --> 00:14:10,400 and that stalker followed me online. 274 00:14:13,560 --> 00:14:15,880 Different social networks would often take the 275 00:14:15,880 --> 00:14:19,000 harassing or abusive posts down, 276 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:21,680 and that was what was standard. 277 00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:26,120 But then when I would go to Twitter, they weren't willing to do that. 278 00:14:27,880 --> 00:14:30,120 Less than a year into the job, 279 00:14:30,120 --> 00:14:34,440 Jack is facing the first evidence that Twitter has a dark side. 280 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:37,800 After South by Southwest, 281 00:14:37,800 --> 00:14:41,760 I would regularly go to lunches with people from Twitter, 282 00:14:41,760 --> 00:14:46,760 and I had known Jack as a, you know, acquaintance. 283 00:14:46,760 --> 00:14:48,960 So I had this phone call with Jack, 284 00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:51,560 and there was a concern from him about, 285 00:14:51,560 --> 00:14:54,880 "Well, if we, you know, remove this account, 286 00:14:54,880 --> 00:14:56,520 "if we remove these posts, 287 00:14:56,520 --> 00:14:58,640 "that's not going to stop your stalker." 288 00:15:00,160 --> 00:15:03,600 It's, like, this isn't about your responsibility 289 00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:05,640 to take care of my stalker. 290 00:15:05,640 --> 00:15:10,160 This is about your service being used to threaten and harass someone. 291 00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:19,320 You know, you should absolutely ban this user. 292 00:15:19,320 --> 00:15:22,000 But at the extreme least, 293 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:25,560 at least you should send a warning letting them know 294 00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:27,880 that they're violating your terms of service. 295 00:15:27,880 --> 00:15:30,040 At minimum, that's what I requested. 296 00:15:31,880 --> 00:15:33,840 My impression of Jack on this phone call was 297 00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:36,480 someone who is kind and listening, 298 00:15:36,480 --> 00:15:39,520 but not necessarily understanding. 299 00:15:39,520 --> 00:15:41,800 Someone who seemed a little bit confused about 300 00:15:41,800 --> 00:15:43,400 why this was their problem. 301 00:15:46,960 --> 00:15:49,880 About a month later, after eight more instances of 302 00:15:49,880 --> 00:15:54,160 abuse and harassment, this is the reply that I got from Jack. 303 00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:56,480 "Ariel, apologies for the delay here. 304 00:15:56,480 --> 00:15:58,560 "We've reviewed the matter and decided it is not 305 00:15:58,560 --> 00:16:00,360 "in our best interest to get involved. 306 00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:02,200 "We've tasked our lawyers with a full review 307 00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:03,960 "and update of our terms of service. 308 00:16:03,960 --> 00:16:06,400 "Thank you for your patience and understanding 309 00:16:06,400 --> 00:16:09,480 "and good luck with resolving the problem. Best, Jack." 310 00:16:20,400 --> 00:16:24,360 There's a very strong tension between being open 311 00:16:24,360 --> 00:16:26,680 in a way that allows everybody to have a voice... 312 00:16:28,080 --> 00:16:31,200 ..and to create a civil place where... 313 00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:34,120 ..trash doesn't take over. 314 00:16:35,680 --> 00:16:40,960 And because of the speed of growth, you could say in retrospect, 315 00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:43,320 we weren't as focused on the negatives 316 00:16:43,320 --> 00:16:45,840 as we should have been in the early days. 317 00:16:45,840 --> 00:16:47,120 There was a lot going on. 318 00:16:50,040 --> 00:16:51,720 I think it was Ev who originally 319 00:16:51,720 --> 00:16:54,840 coined the term hallucinogenically optimistic, 320 00:16:54,840 --> 00:16:57,200 and that's what we were. That's what we were like. 321 00:16:57,200 --> 00:17:00,400 You know, "Everyone's great. Everyone's very well-behaved." 322 00:17:00,400 --> 00:17:02,920 The internet is swarming with sexual predators 323 00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:05,480 who constantly stalk chat rooms, searching for children. 324 00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:06,920 But Del Harvey is fighting back 325 00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:10,280 by hunting down online paedophiles and bringing them to justice. 326 00:17:10,280 --> 00:17:13,400 Please welcome, from perverted-justice.com, Del Harvey. 327 00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:14,560 APPLAUSE 328 00:17:14,560 --> 00:17:18,480 Del, what is it that you do exactly? 329 00:17:18,480 --> 00:17:22,320 Well, essentially the organisation goes into online chat rooms 330 00:17:22,320 --> 00:17:24,200 with underage profiles, 331 00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:27,240 and if adults then contact those underage profiles 332 00:17:27,240 --> 00:17:30,000 and solicit them for sex, we then contact the police 333 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,200 and work with them to prosecute and convict them. 334 00:17:32,200 --> 00:17:33,680 To trap them, essentially. 335 00:17:33,680 --> 00:17:36,840 Del Harvey is hired to manage any problems with content. 336 00:17:38,760 --> 00:17:43,080 I started out as the first person 337 00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:46,400 on what was originally called Spam and Abuse. 338 00:17:46,400 --> 00:17:49,840 As they came across something new and awful, 339 00:17:49,840 --> 00:17:54,360 they would be like, "Del, it looks like this is yours." 340 00:17:55,960 --> 00:17:58,320 There's this analogy that I use, 341 00:17:58,320 --> 00:18:01,640 which is an engineer comes to you and they're like, 342 00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:04,160 "I've made the perfect kitten. 343 00:18:04,160 --> 00:18:06,800 "It doesn't need food, doesn't need water. 344 00:18:06,800 --> 00:18:09,240 "It will never grow old. It will never die. 345 00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:11,280 "It is the perfect kitten." 346 00:18:11,280 --> 00:18:13,600 And you look at the kitten and you're like, 347 00:18:13,600 --> 00:18:16,120 "Why can this kitten shoot bullets?" 348 00:18:16,120 --> 00:18:17,600 And they're like, "Well, that's not 349 00:18:17,600 --> 00:18:19,240 "what you're supposed to use the kitten for. 350 00:18:19,240 --> 00:18:21,920 "I told you all the things the kitten was intended to be used for." 351 00:18:21,920 --> 00:18:23,160 And I'm like, "Yes." 352 00:18:24,800 --> 00:18:30,160 And someone - whether accidentally or on purpose - 353 00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:32,920 is going to shoot a bullet with this kitten. 354 00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:36,440 Del was in charge of, you know, 355 00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:38,440 Spam and Abuse or something like that. 356 00:18:38,440 --> 00:18:40,560 Who wants to be on that team? That sounds terrible. 357 00:18:40,560 --> 00:18:42,400 Let's make it Trust and Safety. 358 00:18:42,400 --> 00:18:43,920 When I started Twitter, 359 00:18:43,920 --> 00:18:46,640 they just asked me to come up with a plan for spam. 360 00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:49,320 I came up with a three-strikes policy of, 361 00:18:49,320 --> 00:18:52,840 you know, warning, second warning, then you're out. 362 00:18:52,840 --> 00:18:55,240 I was like, "OK, guys, when do you want to meet and go through it?" 363 00:18:55,240 --> 00:18:56,960 And they were like, "No, no, we're sure it's fine." 364 00:18:56,960 --> 00:18:59,640 And I was like... 365 00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:00,600 "Oh!" 366 00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:03,600 There was a lot going on. 367 00:19:07,120 --> 00:19:10,160 I wouldn't say we spent no time on it, 368 00:19:10,160 --> 00:19:13,880 but other people are thinking about this stuff a lot. 369 00:19:13,880 --> 00:19:17,760 I'm trusting people who I think are very good, and they were. 370 00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:22,600 I mean, at that point, they were really more focused 371 00:19:22,600 --> 00:19:24,120 on keeping the site up. 372 00:19:24,120 --> 00:19:27,160 I'd be like, "Guys, my... This isn't working." 373 00:19:27,160 --> 00:19:30,560 And they were like, "Yes, nothing is working. The whole site is down." 374 00:19:33,160 --> 00:19:36,320 Whenever demand spikes, the site can't cope, 375 00:19:36,320 --> 00:19:38,240 and it crashes constantly. 376 00:19:40,600 --> 00:19:43,640 If you've ever played Jenga, it was like that. 377 00:19:44,760 --> 00:19:47,920 When something broke, the whole pile fell down in a big mess. 378 00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:53,080 It would break so often that I was like, well, 379 00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:57,480 we need something right away to at least say, like, 380 00:19:57,480 --> 00:19:59,880 "Hey, you know, we feel bad about it," you know? 381 00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:03,920 I came across this really cute image of 382 00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:06,160 a whale being lifted up by a bunch of little birds. 383 00:20:06,160 --> 00:20:08,280 I thought, oh, this is a good metaphor. They're like, 384 00:20:08,280 --> 00:20:11,480 "We're all working hard on a big job to fix the thing." 385 00:20:11,480 --> 00:20:13,680 People nicknamed it the Fail Whale. 386 00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:18,240 And then this weird thing happened. 387 00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:19,600 It got popular. 388 00:20:20,920 --> 00:20:23,280 I got invited to speak at the Fail Whale Conference. 389 00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:25,160 People got tattoos of it. 390 00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:27,880 When you go to the Twitter site, it's got the cute little whale 391 00:20:27,880 --> 00:20:29,760 and it's all the light-blue picture... 392 00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:32,200 It showed up so much 393 00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:35,400 that it kind of became a cultural fetish object of its own. 394 00:20:35,400 --> 00:20:39,160 The image of the whale itself became identified with this era. 395 00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:41,880 You savaged the Fail Whale! 396 00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:49,080 So we'd always be like, "Oh, the Fail Whale again." 397 00:20:49,080 --> 00:20:51,640 And it's because either they had a surge in usage 398 00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:53,120 or they're just incompetent. 399 00:20:53,120 --> 00:20:56,480 They constantly were down and people were worried about 400 00:20:56,480 --> 00:20:58,280 the ability of the company to stay afloat 401 00:20:58,280 --> 00:21:00,600 because they couldn't run their service. 402 00:21:00,600 --> 00:21:04,160 We'd raised funding and the pressure's on to make it grow, 403 00:21:04,160 --> 00:21:06,280 and we're just still in survival mode. 404 00:21:06,280 --> 00:21:10,120 Like, is this thing going to work?, is still the question. 405 00:21:10,120 --> 00:21:12,800 I'm emailing Jack, like, "What are we going to do to make it grow?" 406 00:21:14,200 --> 00:21:16,000 That started to get very, very stressful. 407 00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:20,320 It was Jack's job to make it work. He's running the company. 408 00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:22,520 Is Jack going to be the chief executive that, 409 00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:24,800 like, goes through a hyper growth phase? 410 00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:28,200 Is Jack going to be the one to stop the Fail Whale? 411 00:21:28,200 --> 00:21:31,080 Is Jack going to be the CEO that's there to take you public 412 00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:33,400 who, like, you know, investment banks are going to look at and say, 413 00:21:33,400 --> 00:21:36,280 "Yeah, that's someone we can do business with"? 414 00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:37,640 And it just didn't seem credible. 415 00:21:38,840 --> 00:21:40,120 At least to me. 416 00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:49,560 People were saying, like, well, also he was, like, you know, 417 00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:52,880 leaving at 5:00 and he was taking these classes after work. 418 00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:56,080 Jack has an eclectic range of outside interests - 419 00:21:56,080 --> 00:21:59,360 yoga, sailing, drawing and tailoring. 420 00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:02,240 I really wanted to see the world. 421 00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:03,640 I wanted to be a sailor. 422 00:22:05,360 --> 00:22:06,960 And I really wanted to be an artist. 423 00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:08,480 I wanted to create something. 424 00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:12,640 I wanted to show the world a new way to see itself. 425 00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:16,920 We had a company, we had money. 426 00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:19,960 We weren't just college kids in a garage - 427 00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:21,400 we were a venture-funded company. 428 00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:26,040 And it was just sort of... It was a mess. 429 00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:33,160 Jack didn't have the experience and it felt very high stakes. 430 00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:37,560 The people who decided to fire Jack, 431 00:22:37,560 --> 00:22:40,400 in my head, it was just "the board" - 432 00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:42,960 but it was really the people... It was the people I worked with. 433 00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:46,720 And it was Evan, Jason Goldman 434 00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:49,360 and some of our investors. 435 00:22:49,360 --> 00:22:51,040 That sucks. Like, it sucks. 436 00:22:51,040 --> 00:22:55,880 Like, you don't go into it, like, sort of hoping that the CEO fails. 437 00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:01,640 Ev totally understood what Twitter could do, 438 00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:04,400 and was frustrated with how it was being led 439 00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:07,160 and decided that he wanted to take a turn. 440 00:23:08,120 --> 00:23:11,760 And it was his company to choose. 441 00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:16,000 HE CHUCKLES 442 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:21,600 Yeah, we fired him as CEO of a company he co-founded, 443 00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:24,400 and he didn't really see it coming. 444 00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:26,880 And that's bad. 445 00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:31,200 And, um, you know, he was very upset. 446 00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:33,720 He was very upset. 447 00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:36,920 "So you all just fired him?" 448 00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:39,160 Ev was like, "Yeah." 449 00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:42,880 "So he's just wandering around somewhere 450 00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:44,920 feeling really upset and alone?" 451 00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:46,360 And Ev was like, "Oh, yeah, I guess so." 452 00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:53,240 I could have taken that idea, 453 00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:55,840 not told it to Ev, not told it to Biz, 454 00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:58,640 not told it to all my other co-workers 455 00:23:58,640 --> 00:24:01,080 and tried to start my own company with that idea. 456 00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:04,560 But we had a great team. 457 00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:08,480 So I found him and we met up at the Whole Foods, 458 00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:10,040 where we used to have lunch a lot. 459 00:24:11,360 --> 00:24:14,520 Jack was... He just felt terrible. 460 00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:16,480 He said, "Well, I'm going to go back to the office. 461 00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:19,600 "I'm going to tell everybody what I really feel, this was horrible. 462 00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:21,120 "I feel like I've been punched in the gut. 463 00:24:21,120 --> 00:24:23,160 "This was a bad decision." 464 00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:25,680 And I said, "No, I don't... No. 465 00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:27,840 "I don't think you should do that. You're still the man. 466 00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:29,920 "Like, it's still a thing. 467 00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:31,560 "You just don't get to work here every day." 468 00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:40,680 I was angry. I was angry at the board. 469 00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,880 I was angry at my co-founders. I was angry at myself. 470 00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,480 I remember him saying this - "I'll come back like Steve Jobs." 471 00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:51,360 And I remember thinking, like, 472 00:24:51,360 --> 00:24:54,400 whatever makes you feel better. HE LAUGHS 473 00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,880 After Jack was fired as CEO, he stayed on the board as chairman. 474 00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:09,040 But in the two years after he's fired, 475 00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:11,160 he refuses to speak in board meetings. 476 00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:13,040 Like, literally never says a word again. 477 00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:16,160 This is Lady Gaga, queen of Twitter. 478 00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,560 May you always have soft cuticles while tweeting. 479 00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:22,120 May you never have carpal tunnel. 480 00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:25,960 With Lady Gaga leading the way, 481 00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:28,960 Twitter has become a magnet for celebrities, 482 00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,480 just as Ev takes over as CEO. 483 00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:38,280 I'm doing an interview. 484 00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:42,160 The future is here and things like Twitter allow, 485 00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:44,440 you know, you to cut out the actual middleman. 486 00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:47,400 I'm a Twitterer and I am obsessed with Twitter. 487 00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:49,880 I just type something into my iPhone 488 00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:51,720 and - boom! - it's in their brains. 489 00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,240 When you have celebrities on Twitter, 490 00:25:56,240 --> 00:26:00,160 you feel like you are part of the ephemeral of their lives. 491 00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:04,720 There's an intimacy that you share on social media 492 00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:06,600 that you don't share on other things, 493 00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:09,040 and that was always there from the very beginning. 494 00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:11,520 It's like, "Hi, I'm putting on a sock," 495 00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:13,840 and I've got 400,000 people reading this. 496 00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:18,920 So anybody here on Twitter? 497 00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:20,760 CHEERING 498 00:26:20,760 --> 00:26:23,400 Hi, it's Friday Live and I'm on Twitter for the first time. 499 00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:26,600 Sitting next to me is Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter. 500 00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,160 Can you believe all this Tweedlee Dee stuff going on? 501 00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:30,320 LAUGHTER 502 00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:34,280 If you make a list of the best possible things that could happen, 503 00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,120 going on Oprah, maybe number one. 504 00:26:37,120 --> 00:26:39,000 But I hear you're a small company. 505 00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:41,840 We're about 35 people right now. That's going to change, Evan. 506 00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:44,680 Right. That's going to change. Yeah. Yeah. 507 00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:46,200 She was going to send her first tweet. 508 00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:49,040 Her producer was like, "Treat her like she's a kindergartener 509 00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:50,920 "when it comes to the computer." 510 00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:55,160 She types in her first tweet and then, by mistake, 511 00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:58,400 she hits refresh on the browser 512 00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:01,440 and we lose what she typed in the box. 513 00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:05,760 So her first tweet had disappeared, but then they cut to commercial. 514 00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:10,440 So I take the laptop back and I retype her tweet 515 00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:12,520 and hit submit. 516 00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,120 And so I actually sent Oprah's first tweet, 517 00:27:15,120 --> 00:27:17,680 but I don't think anyone noticed. 518 00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:19,840 Have a great weekend, Twitterers. 519 00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,960 I think we had 400,000 sign-ups that day. 520 00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:26,320 Twitter just captured media attention 521 00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:28,640 in a way that almost nothing else did. 522 00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,920 Like celebrities, democracy activists discover 523 00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:36,560 Twitter gives them a direct line to their followers. 524 00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:44,880 It is a political protest wrapped in a technological revolution. 525 00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:46,720 Call it the Twitter effect. 526 00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:48,720 It's helping getting information out. 527 00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:50,480 THEY CHANT 528 00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:52,560 People are using it for activism. 529 00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:55,000 World leaders are on it. Celebrities are on it. 530 00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:59,400 And we're, like, 30 people in an office in San Francisco. 531 00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:00,560 What is happening? 532 00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:02,000 THEY CHEER 533 00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:04,880 The implications of this are far bigger than 534 00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:09,000 just, like, the users of our little website talking to each other. 535 00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:10,960 All Twitter posts have to be short. 536 00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:12,400 Some find it limiting. 537 00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:14,240 But, as one posting read today... 538 00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:25,200 We had lots of utopian thinking 539 00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:30,120 that, like, we have this new tool of liberation, 540 00:28:30,120 --> 00:28:33,320 and because we can all connect in this new way, 541 00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:36,800 all social problems will be easily dealt with. 542 00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:42,920 You see your thing blowing up 543 00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:44,520 and everybody using it and talking about it, 544 00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:48,640 and we were pretty optimistic at that time. 545 00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:54,240 This is great. This is providing this information, 546 00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,400 awareness and knowledge that was not there before. 547 00:28:57,400 --> 00:28:58,840 And it's changing the world. 548 00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:05,760 While Twitter is saving the world, Kanye West turns up at the office 549 00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:08,600 and performs an impromptu freestyle rap. 550 00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:13,120 But the company is still failing to deal with the tech problems 551 00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:15,320 that have plagued it from day one. 552 00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:17,720 # Pour the champagne, let your watch show 553 00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:21,040 # Shawty got a man watch, wrist look colossal... # 554 00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,040 I wish I could say, man, isn't it going great? 555 00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:26,280 We were on Oprah, and, like, 556 00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:29,160 Kanye is coming by and, like, it's going awesome. 557 00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:33,680 But the reality is, the service didn't work very well. 558 00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:35,160 And so it was just like, 559 00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:39,320 we're going to lose what's possible with this company. 560 00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:41,760 I mean, how are we not going to mess this up? 561 00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:43,880 CHEERING AND APPLAUSE 562 00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:51,920 You have to imagine you're just 563 00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:55,600 showing up to a very hard job every day, 564 00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:59,080 that's very exciting, but you feel like 565 00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:02,080 the whole thing could die at any moment. 566 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:07,400 And so my efforts and the team's efforts, 90% are... 567 00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:09,200 ..how do we survive? 568 00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:10,960 It didn't work a lot, and it was 569 00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,440 a site that had to work perfectly all the time. 570 00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:16,400 And it didn't. Nothing else went down like that, I'll tell you. 571 00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:18,720 Facebook didn't. Google never did. 572 00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:21,920 The time that really sticks out to me about that was Medvedev - 573 00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,680 at the time, the president of Russia - comes to Twitter. 574 00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:31,120 And he's going to tweet after he's created his account. 575 00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:32,400 Like, wow. 576 00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:35,640 And the site goes down. 577 00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:39,600 Literally, no joke, the site crashes. 578 00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:43,040 You've got snipers on the roof, bomb-sniffing dogs, 579 00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:45,760 local law enforcement, secret service, 580 00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:48,720 a bunch of Russians in John Wick outfits. 581 00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:54,000 That morning at 8am, the US scores a goal 582 00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,520 in stoppage time in the World Cup to avoid elimination. 583 00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,320 CHEERING 584 00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:01,040 Everyone tweets "Goal!" at the same time, 585 00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:03,080 and the site goes down hard. 586 00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:08,920 Dmitry Medvedev, who's, like, all of 5'7" 587 00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:11,040 and wearing a denim suit for some reason, 588 00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:13,920 is touring our cafeteria 589 00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:15,840 and is going to send the first tweet 590 00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:19,080 with, like, the political press corps covering this. 591 00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:24,120 For security reasons, they shut down the elevators, 592 00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:27,200 and I am in the third floor 593 00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,480 and I've got to get to the sixth floor. 594 00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:35,680 I've got to get past, like, the German Shepherds 595 00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:39,680 and, like, the bomb squad and, like, the Counter Assault Team, 596 00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:43,360 and, like, get up to the sixth floor and be like, "Stop!" 597 00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:47,920 We were like, "Oh, why don't we show you around?" 598 00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:49,600 Like, oh, God, what are we going to do? Like... 599 00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:53,640 We had to walk real slow and we were like, 600 00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:56,240 "Over here is the restroom. You have to use it? You could use it. 601 00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:58,520 "If you want to use it, take your time. There's no rush." 602 00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:03,320 When the windows are open, it's a lot better. Yeah. 603 00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:04,880 I'm now up there. 604 00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:06,760 I've, like, been calling down to the third floor. 605 00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:09,600 "Is it OK for him to tweet?" "Yes, we think it will go through." 606 00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:10,720 It's like, OK! 607 00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:14,680 CHEERING 608 00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:16,480 There we go. All right. 609 00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:20,480 "Greetings to everyone," he says, 610 00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,400 "I'm at Twitter and this is my first tweet." 611 00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:26,000 I remember thinking, like, yeah, this is an example of, like, 612 00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:28,920 hey, we need to get serious about, like, 613 00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:31,240 getting this place buttoned up. 614 00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:35,600 Twitter's technical issues cripple its growth 615 00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:38,440 and deter crucial investment in its future. 616 00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:41,800 Twitter has always underperformed, all the time. 617 00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:45,120 It's really kind of hysterical how bad they are. 618 00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:48,960 It's the loudest platform and the saddest little business. 619 00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:50,880 Why - you know, as entrepreneurs - 620 00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:55,520 why are you so little focused on the dollars at this point? 621 00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,520 Um, I wouldn't say we're not focused on the dollars. 622 00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:00,760 We're trying to take a really long-term perspective 623 00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:05,760 about how we build a valuable 624 00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:10,520 and large company, and it's... 625 00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:12,720 That takes time. We only have so many resources. 626 00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:20,240 My Spidey-Sense started to indicate that maybe Ev had started to 627 00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:22,920 kind of lose the plot with some of the board. 628 00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:25,400 I thought things were going reasonably well, 629 00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:29,760 given the chaotic nature of this beast we had created. 630 00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,480 But there were complaints. 631 00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:34,080 Um... 632 00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:36,160 And then I was kneecapped. 633 00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:41,160 Somehow I'd lost enough control to be fired without notice. 634 00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:42,320 I just went from... 635 00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,560 ..running the company that I owned 100% of... 636 00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,160 ..a little, you know, a few years earlier, 637 00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:51,960 to, I was out. 638 00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:58,840 After the whole thing, I was really hurt 639 00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:01,480 and I kind of wanted to crawl into a hole and leave. 640 00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:07,400 But also, like, I helped do the same thing to Jack, 641 00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:10,320 you know, years before, and so maybe it's karma. 642 00:34:13,680 --> 00:34:16,480 So I'm like, why is my friend being fired? What's happening? 643 00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:18,800 I'm like, I don't understand why people are behaving like this. 644 00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:21,040 It took me a long time to realise - 645 00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:23,840 money and power. HE CHUCKLES 646 00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,200 Dick Costolo, Twitter's chief operating officer 647 00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:33,080 and a seasoned businessman, takes over from Ev. 648 00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:37,160 All the rooms are named for birds? Yeah. Oh, I love that. 649 00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:38,840 I definitely want that one. 650 00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:42,440 When I first started at Twitter as CEO, I think it's fair to say 651 00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:45,200 that I thought it was a little too, like, lax. 652 00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:46,720 Let me get a wide shot, and then... 653 00:34:46,720 --> 00:34:48,920 VOICEOVER: I was on the elevator at one point, 654 00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,520 and one of the people on the team was like, "The site crashed again." 655 00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:53,360 And he kind of laughed. 656 00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:57,720 I remember thinking, like, man, I mean, enough is enough, you know? 657 00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:02,000 The two things we had to do were start to make money 658 00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:03,920 and stop the site from crashing. 659 00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:06,400 Oh, thanks, Kelly. 660 00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:08,200 Dick knew user growth was going to be, 661 00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:10,120 you know, a massive thing that we needed. 662 00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:12,040 We needed to have a reliable site. 663 00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:14,800 So his number-one priority was killing the Fail Whale. 664 00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:21,200 Dick orders his engineers to focus on one thing only - 665 00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:23,640 rebuilding the site from the bottom up. 666 00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:27,760 Like, redoing the underlying architecture 667 00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:31,120 so that we can add more users and add more tweets per second 668 00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:34,040 without taking the system down was a Herculean effort. 669 00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:37,200 They thought it was impossible. They thought, this isn't going to work. 670 00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:40,480 And Dick was just like, "It has to be possible." 671 00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:42,920 Five months later, we killed the Fail Whale 672 00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:44,760 and it never came back. 673 00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:46,760 I mean, it's crazy to think about, 674 00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:48,760 but it was like a momentous occasion in the company. 675 00:35:50,240 --> 00:35:53,520 CHEERING 676 00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:01,760 So now the CEO is a guy that we hired from outside of Twitter. 677 00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:04,760 And I don't know how many months later it was, 678 00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,480 but I was like, what am I doing? 679 00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:09,320 What should I do? You know? 680 00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,120 So I said, "Hey, Dick, I'm thinking I'm just going to leave 681 00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,080 "and go work with Ev down the street." 682 00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:15,800 And he was like, "OK." 683 00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:17,640 I was like, all right. That was easy. 684 00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,640 I think it was a mistake to get rid of the founders. 685 00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:27,200 And it's because the founders of companies 686 00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:29,480 have the vision of where it comes from. 687 00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:34,720 And if you come in as a takeover CEO 688 00:36:34,720 --> 00:36:37,240 and you don't have people in the room that were there 689 00:36:37,240 --> 00:36:39,120 from the beginning, 690 00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:42,280 then you lose the threat. 691 00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:46,200 If we go around the room and introduce yourself. 692 00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:48,360 VOICEOVER: So when Biz went off with Ev to do his new thing, 693 00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:50,360 I mean, people looked at me as, like, 694 00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,720 the business guy who's now in charge of the whole company. 695 00:36:53,720 --> 00:36:57,400 So I decided we need to have one of the founders back at Twitter. 696 00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:07,200 Dick was going to focus on the monetisation of the business, 697 00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:08,520 growing globally. 698 00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:11,200 You know, make the right strategic moves to build Twitter. 699 00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:17,400 Jack wanted to keep Twitter truly like an open, 700 00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:21,240 global town square, where everyone of all different views 701 00:37:21,240 --> 00:37:24,520 can come together and speak openly. 702 00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:29,920 I didn't meet Jack until he came back. 703 00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:32,600 And that was just weird... 704 00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:36,400 ..for a lot of reasons. 705 00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:39,600 Jack's weird. 706 00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:42,840 I mean, this is not going to be the first time you hear this. 707 00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:45,480 This is not going to be the last time you hear it. Jack's weird. 708 00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:48,600 And weird in a way that I can't even begin to describe. 709 00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:51,240 And I've met a lot... I mean, I've met a lot of weird people. 710 00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,600 There was one meeting where he started off the meeting by 711 00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:01,160 just playing The Beatles song Blackbird. 712 00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:07,560 Kind of the plaintive music, quiet music, 713 00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:09,320 you know, in the room. 714 00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:13,600 # Blackbird singing in the dead of night 715 00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:17,280 # Take these broken wings and learn to fly 716 00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:23,040 # All your life 717 00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:28,080 # You were only waiting for this moment to arise. # 718 00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:35,400 He gets up on stage and everyone is dead silent. 719 00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:39,440 It seemed very conceptual. He showed pictures of a bridge. 720 00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:41,280 For some people, I think it was really meaningful 721 00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:42,440 and meant something to them. 722 00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:44,920 A bunch of other people were like, 723 00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:46,640 "What in the actual heck is this supposed to mean to me?" 724 00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:49,120 Like, what is happening? 725 00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:52,120 Is this just a bird-themed song that you're using 726 00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:55,800 while talking about Twitter taking flight? OK. 727 00:38:57,600 --> 00:39:01,240 Yes, it was like a big moment. People were teary-eyed. 728 00:39:01,240 --> 00:39:03,440 It felt like this big moment, you know? 729 00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:07,520 There was a great deal of respect for Jack across the employee base. 730 00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:11,600 And Jack was as close to anyone on 731 00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:13,480 this planet in terms of 732 00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:15,080 what we wanted Twitter to be. 733 00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:17,920 And he had that founder authority. 734 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:21,960 NEWSREADER: Outrage in a St Louis community today after an unarmed 735 00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:24,760 teen was shot and killed by police. 736 00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:28,800 We are... PROTESTERS: ..Mike Brown! 737 00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:32,200 You must disperse immediately. 738 00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,440 You are in violation of a state-imposed curfew. 739 00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:36,960 PROTESTERS: Don't shoot! 740 00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,200 The death of Mike Brown, a young African American, 741 00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:42,480 sparks months of protests 742 00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:46,400 helping ignite the Black Lives Matter movement. 743 00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:49,040 NEWSREADER: Protesters walking the street, remembering Michael Brown, 744 00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:51,160 demanding justice by tweeting it 745 00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:53,840 all out on their smartphones and tablets. 746 00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:55,440 Their ability to do that 747 00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,800 defined, in part, by this very ordinary-looking guy 748 00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:00,960 who took to the streets himself yesterday. 749 00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:03,880 St Louis native Jack Dorsey 750 00:40:03,880 --> 00:40:06,160 is the billionaire co-founder of Twitter. 751 00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:07,960 I was just wondering whether, can we just have a few 752 00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:10,040 words with you? No. No, you're not chatting. 753 00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:13,480 OK, so we need to look you up online. 754 00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:15,960 OK. I'm there. I'm easy to find. OK. 755 00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:17,800 I remember being in Ferguson, Missouri, 756 00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:19,120 and all of a sudden I look up 757 00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:21,560 and it's this white guy in a T-shirt 758 00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:22,840 and a hat, and I'm like, 759 00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:24,400 I think that's the Twitter guy. 760 00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,680 I'm like, I feel pretty confident that's the Twitter guy. 761 00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:30,480 But what I appreciated about Jack 762 00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:33,520 was that it was solidarity without... 763 00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:35,280 You know, he made the StayWoke T-shirts, 764 00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:38,160 he like, cared, he was willing to, like, be up front 765 00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,280 and public about it without apologising. 766 00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:42,640 And I respected that because a lot of people, 767 00:40:42,640 --> 00:40:44,160 especially in tech at the time, were, like, 768 00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:45,360 hedging their bets around it. 769 00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:47,520 And he was like, "I was at the protest," and you're like, 770 00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:49,240 "Yes, you were at the protest," you know? 771 00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:55,480 No justice... PROTESTERS: ..No peace! 772 00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:57,160 On one screen, 773 00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:02,440 I have the CNN website and Fox News and MSNBC, 774 00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:05,280 and on the other I have my Twitter streams. 775 00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:10,120 And I'm watching photos of fires 776 00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:12,280 and police overreacting 777 00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:14,080 and militarised vehicles 778 00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:16,040 and people being arrested and beat. 779 00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:20,720 There is nothing on MSNBC or Fox or CNN. 780 00:41:20,720 --> 00:41:24,000 SCREAMS 781 00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:26,320 People there are saying, "We're being tear gassed" 782 00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:29,280 and the police are, like, "We're not using tear gas." 783 00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:30,960 And I'm looking at a picture of 784 00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,880 a tear gas canister on the ground 785 00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:35,880 from my Twitter feed. 786 00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:37,840 Twitter fundamentally changed 787 00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:41,600 a lot of how the public perceives the mainstream media. 788 00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:45,360 And sometimes I think about that as being a good thing, 789 00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:46,760 and maybe not such a good thing. 790 00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:50,160 PROTESTERS: Hands up! PROTESTERS: Don't shoot! 791 00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:55,560 With Twitter spreading the message, protests mount across America. 792 00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:02,200 There is a reason that Black Lives Matter started out as a hashtag. 793 00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:05,560 The social media platforms gave the people an ability to have 794 00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:07,880 a voice and have connection, 795 00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:11,040 and reach an audience, and build a network. 796 00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:13,360 Does a platform have to be neutral? 797 00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:15,280 I think a platform is best 798 00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:17,440 when it carries every voice 799 00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:20,400 and every voice... You carry every voice but got an opinion. 800 00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:21,760 You're wearing a stay StayWoke shirt. 801 00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:23,720 You went out and protested in Ferguson. Yeah. 802 00:42:23,720 --> 00:42:25,680 Your politics - seems like we could identify 803 00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:27,680 what some of your politics are. 804 00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:28,920 HE CHUCKLES 805 00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:32,680 Yeah. I do believe we need to build a platform that respects 806 00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:37,160 and amplifies every voice in a way that the world needs to hear it. 807 00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:41,440 We said, "We're the free-speech wing of the free-speech party." 808 00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:43,640 You know, the notion that the smallest voices 809 00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:46,160 in the world should be heard is 100% true. 810 00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:49,880 There was a real belief that good speech would outweigh bad speech. 811 00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:55,320 That the solution was to be radically open. 812 00:42:56,720 --> 00:42:59,960 You know, this is how Twitter got the reputation of being 813 00:42:59,960 --> 00:43:02,040 the free-speech wing of the free-speech party. 814 00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:07,280 But the problem is, there's always a dark underbelly. 815 00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,040 How are they going to moderate people being a jerk? 816 00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:12,880 It's like a bar that suddenly turns bad, right? 817 00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:14,400 If you don't have a bouncer in there, 818 00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:16,200 you're going to have a bad situation. 819 00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:18,320 And they never had a bouncer. 820 00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:21,640 NEWSREADER: Tonight, violent depictions of women being beaten, 821 00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:23,600 raped and run over by cars. 822 00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:26,280 It's not the movies, it's video games. 823 00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:29,920 And now the women calling for change in this multibillion dollar virtual 824 00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:34,400 industry are facing a very real backlash, including death threats. 825 00:43:36,720 --> 00:43:38,920 Twitter's free-speech stance makes it vulnerable 826 00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:42,760 when a group of female video game creators are targeted. 827 00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:47,240 Known as Gamergate, it's the first 828 00:43:47,240 --> 00:43:50,000 coordinated harassment campaign of its kind. 829 00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:54,040 And you could see the aggression 830 00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:57,720 that was lurking in the dark recesses of this site. 831 00:43:57,720 --> 00:44:00,840 It's not all fun and games in the world of online gaming. 832 00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:03,520 Last weekend, one woman was forced out of her home. 833 00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:04,880 She's believed to be the third 834 00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:06,960 woman who's needed to go into hiding as a result. 835 00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:09,200 They threatened to murder me, 836 00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:10,600 to rape me. 837 00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:13,920 They threatened to sever my husband's genitals 838 00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:16,160 and choke me to death with them. 839 00:44:18,240 --> 00:44:21,920 Anti-men, anti-gamers, yeah, fuck all of them! 840 00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:29,240 We can't unleash the ability of everyone to communicate 841 00:44:29,240 --> 00:44:33,000 and not expect everyone to communicate. 842 00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:38,320 And not all of those people are going to be a reflection 843 00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:39,880 of your values. 844 00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:43,040 And if you're one of these feminazis... 845 00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:44,880 She should just fricking die in a fire. 846 00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:50,920 We obviously already had a policy that was like Whac-A-Mole. 847 00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,160 Harm is done, we respond to 848 00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:58,040 that harm by warning people and removing tweets. 849 00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:00,480 But by that point in 2014, 850 00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:03,040 we had a billion tweets about every couple of days. 851 00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:05,600 So even if you're getting all the bad stuff 852 00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:08,720 99.9999% of the time, 853 00:45:08,720 --> 00:45:11,640 that's still a lot of not-good stuff slipping through the cracks. 854 00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:13,440 People would say, "Well, just ban these words." 855 00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:15,640 "OK, well, those words are in a Kanye song, 856 00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:17,680 "so can he not post the lyrics to his song?" 857 00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:20,040 It turns out it's always more complicated and there are always 858 00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:22,280 consequences you didn't consider that happen next. 859 00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:24,920 Ooh, death threat, ooh. 860 00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:27,560 In truth, it's the feminists who are the oppressors. 861 00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:32,560 Misogynistic abuse on Twitter spreads to the UK. 862 00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:39,320 Well, joining me now from our studio in San Francisco 863 00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:42,480 is Twitter's Head of Trust and Safety, Del Harvey. 864 00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:44,320 Do you accept you've messed this up? 865 00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:49,480 It's a heck of an opening. Thanks for having me here. 866 00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:51,320 I'm like, all right, 867 00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:54,480 I think I'm ready for anything. 868 00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:56,800 And the first question that they hit me with is, 869 00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:01,200 "Del Harvey, do you agree that you have failed women?" 870 00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:06,760 Like, all of them? 871 00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:09,240 Have you failed these women who have 872 00:46:09,240 --> 00:46:11,320 to go to local police forces 873 00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:14,320 to report the appalling abuse they're getting on Twitter? 874 00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:17,680 Well, we actually take action on the accounts as is. 875 00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:18,920 So I think that... 876 00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:20,720 Have you failed them so far, though? 877 00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,720 This highlighted that, had some of the tools and systems that I asked 878 00:46:25,720 --> 00:46:28,440 for been in place, those accounts would have been suspended 879 00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:30,000 without getting to that point. 880 00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:34,880 Honestly, a lot of the tooling that was built to fight abuse 881 00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:37,800 was written by interns. 882 00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:39,920 It just wasn't a priority, 883 00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:42,920 and it wasn't a priority because the majority of people 884 00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:47,320 at Twitter weren't ever exposed to the abuse. 885 00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:49,680 And I think that was why 886 00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:53,120 Del wouldn't get the resources she needed. 887 00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:55,480 It's not just a naive philosophy. 888 00:46:55,480 --> 00:46:57,600 It's a privileged philosophy. 889 00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:04,320 I want to live in a world where I can actually see all opinions. 890 00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:07,880 It's up to me to decide which one is truly valuable. 891 00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,720 I mean, I think the main purpose of Twitter is to make sure 892 00:47:10,720 --> 00:47:13,200 that we let every voice flow. 893 00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,480 It's a great aspirational ideal. 894 00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:21,840 If only there weren't certain types 895 00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:23,960 of content that were actually inherently 896 00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:27,280 damaging for people to be exposed to. 897 00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:30,320 Jack was more of a purist on the free-speech issue, I'd say. 898 00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,600 He can be a bit obtuse at times, you know. 899 00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:35,160 I think he would say, "Go figure out the details for yourself." 900 00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:38,080 But the devil is in the details on free speech. 901 00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:39,360 That's the problem. 902 00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:44,400 Do you regret going all out on the free speech? 903 00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:48,320 No, I don't, because it was, like, so inspiring and awesome 904 00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:50,160 when it was working. 905 00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:55,800 I felt like we were slow to evolve to a more 906 00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:57,920 complex understanding of free speech. 907 00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:00,880 I wrote an internal email that got published externally 908 00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:04,320 about how bad we were at dealing with abuse. 909 00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:07,920 "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, 910 00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:09,880 "and we've sucked at it for years. 911 00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:12,400 "I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt 912 00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:14,800 "with this issue during my tenure as CEO. 913 00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:18,040 "It's absurd. There's no excuse for it." Signed, me. 914 00:48:18,040 --> 00:48:21,240 When Dick emailed the company and was like, 915 00:48:21,240 --> 00:48:25,520 "We suck at abuse," in a lot of ways, my reaction to that was, 916 00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:29,400 "Yes, because you haven't invested in combating it." 917 00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:35,080 Twitter's moderation policies are failing. 918 00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:39,720 BURST OF GUNFIRE 919 00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,720 Islamic State got on to Twitter pretty much the same way as 920 00:48:45,720 --> 00:48:46,760 everybody else. 921 00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:48,720 They had been creating accounts 922 00:48:48,720 --> 00:48:52,880 that had, like, four variations of their flag, 923 00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:56,840 and we started pattern matching those and taking action on those. 924 00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:00,760 And so they started changing their profile pictures 925 00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:03,920 while they were trying to gain followers to pictures 926 00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:06,040 of kittens or puppies. 927 00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:09,880 So there were all of these adorable, 928 00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:12,480 cute kittens or puppies 929 00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:14,760 in the profile picture and then it would be like, 930 00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:18,160 "Isis will take revenge on America." 931 00:49:18,160 --> 00:49:20,800 You know, we did do a lot of moderation and taking 932 00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:24,320 their accounts down, and so they started to target us. 933 00:49:25,720 --> 00:49:28,480 Twitter CEO Dick Costolo confirmed that 934 00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:30,560 he and his employees received death threats 935 00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:33,280 after deleting accounts associated with Isis. 936 00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:36,920 Now cut to July 2015. 937 00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:40,000 I was, like, getting death threats all the time. 938 00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:45,000 I was the target for all these things that people - 939 00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,280 the bad things that happen to people and, like, doing that on a daily, 940 00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:50,560 daily basis after you feel like you've accomplished your goals, 941 00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:52,400 I was like, enough is enough. 942 00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:53,600 How you doing? 943 00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:56,600 Good. Dick. Dick, over here. Turn that mic on. 944 00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:58,360 How are you? Good, how are you? Good. 945 00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:00,680 What do you think you'll do next? Ah, we'll see. 946 00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:03,720 I'm going to give myself a bunch of time to take 947 00:50:03,720 --> 00:50:06,520 some time off and think about that. Thanks. Thank you. 948 00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:14,800 CHEERING AND APPLAUSE 949 00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:24,280 REPORTER: It's official. Jack Dorsey is Twitter's new permanent CEO. 950 00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:26,320 There he is. He's walking in the door. 951 00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:27,360 He's right there. 952 00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:30,440 Hey. Good morning. 953 00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:32,520 Eight years after being fired, 954 00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:35,960 Jack Dorsey is back on the throne as Twitter's CEO. 955 00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:40,480 It certainly had to be a moment of, "I'm back." 956 00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:43,440 I mean, there's no way you can be human 957 00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:45,640 and having been removed from a role 958 00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:47,600 and then asked to please come back 959 00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:51,200 and take this role and not think, "Hell, yes." 960 00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:53,360 Like, "All right, I'm back." 961 00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:56,680 I mean, there has to be some of that in your mind, or you're not human. 962 00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:08,400 Pretty soon after Jack got back as CEO, 963 00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:14,240 he started wrapping his head around, like, what the situation really was. 964 00:51:14,240 --> 00:51:16,600 REPORTER: Dorsey needs to address key problems. 965 00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:18,280 Twitter's shares are sagging. 966 00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,760 There were pressures that you have from investors and advertisers. 967 00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:28,720 We'd had two rounds of lay-offs. It was not good. 968 00:51:28,720 --> 00:51:29,840 It was awful. 969 00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:32,640 REPORTER: Look at Twitter. That company 970 00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:36,640 is suffering from zero user growth. OK? 971 00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:39,240 It just stagnated. And in this industry, 972 00:51:39,240 --> 00:51:41,320 if you stop growing, you die. 973 00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:46,800 Twitter is facing fierce competition from new platforms like Instagram, 974 00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:50,560 which are siphoning off potential users and advertisers. 975 00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,640 But an unlikely saviour emerges. 976 00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:57,240 CHANTING: We want Trump. We want Trump. 977 00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:02,960 There's this idea that the goal of 978 00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:06,080 the Twitter game is to never be the central character, 979 00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,560 because that's the one everyone is hating on. 980 00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:14,240 Trump pushes himself into prominence 981 00:52:14,240 --> 00:52:18,400 by learning how to make himself the central villain of every day. 982 00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:29,120 It was just like, "Oh, this guy understands how 983 00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:32,040 "to capture media attention using the platform." 984 00:52:37,240 --> 00:52:39,280 He knew how to, like, write a tweet 985 00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:41,600 and, like, that's what people would report on. 986 00:52:43,640 --> 00:52:47,400 With Twitter at its heart, Trump's campaign gains momentum. 987 00:52:47,400 --> 00:52:50,080 ..the politicians, number one... 988 00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:51,880 REPORTER: Focusing on the debate tonight, 989 00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:55,320 the market could react if Trump has a very good showing. 990 00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:57,680 One stock worth watching today - Twitter. 991 00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:00,080 Shares jumping more than 4% on Friday. Wow. 992 00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:04,520 In the beginning, it was the - quote, unquote - "Trump Bump". 993 00:53:04,520 --> 00:53:06,480 Advertisers were throwing a heck 994 00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:08,200 of a lot of dollars at Twitter 995 00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:10,200 because the conversation was there 996 00:53:10,200 --> 00:53:11,560 and the people were there. 997 00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:17,840 SHOUTING 998 00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:19,960 When you are running these places, 999 00:53:19,960 --> 00:53:23,280 the thing that creates traffic is anger and rage. 1000 00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:25,000 And so one of the things I always say was 1001 00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:26,960 enragement equals engagement. 1002 00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:33,200 He made it OK to wear your hate on your sleeve. 1003 00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:39,000 And he did it in such a way that it made it harder for companies 1004 00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:43,920 like Twitter to moderate that type of content. 1005 00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:47,240 When you have 50 million accounts tweeting, 1006 00:53:47,240 --> 00:53:49,720 retweeting, reposting hate speech... 1007 00:53:49,720 --> 00:53:52,160 There was content coming out in 2016 1008 00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:55,520 where we were imploring Jack to ban him. 1009 00:53:55,520 --> 00:53:57,560 We were just like, "Dude, you have got to get this guy off 1010 00:53:57,560 --> 00:53:58,840 "your platform." 1011 00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:01,000 Every small act of kindness... 1012 00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:02,680 CHEERING AND APPLAUSE 1013 00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:06,800 It didn't matter how bad Trump was, 1014 00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:10,720 he always was using Twitter to dominate the news cycle. 1015 00:54:10,720 --> 00:54:13,760 And if he was removed, it would 1016 00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:17,120 be damaging to shareholder value 1017 00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:20,080 and the board would remove the CEO. 1018 00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,080 Between Facebook and Twitter, 1019 00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:23,600 and I guess Instagram, 1020 00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:25,560 I have 28 million people. 1021 00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:28,640 It's a modern form of communication. 1022 00:54:28,640 --> 00:54:30,560 This should be nothing you should be ashamed of. 1023 00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:32,960 It's where it's at. 1024 00:54:39,800 --> 00:54:43,360 REPORTER: Donald J Trump will soon be our 45th president. 1025 00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:53,400 I think it is true that you probably didn't have 1026 00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:54,920 a lot of Trump supporters 1027 00:54:54,920 --> 00:55:01,560 or Trump voters in the executive suite of Twitter. 1028 00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:05,160 When Trump was elected, 1029 00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:09,840 I think there was a little bit of a beat inside on, 1030 00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:12,840 "Have we enabled Donald Trump to such 1031 00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:16,640 "an extent that it put him into the White House?" 1032 00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:18,760 I remember HR might have offered 1033 00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:22,880 the next day off for people who were, like, 1034 00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:24,560 emotionally overwhelmed. 1035 00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:32,000 Even more extreme voices now flood the platform. 1036 00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:37,320 CHANTING 1037 00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:40,160 SHOUTING 1038 00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:46,000 A lot of people are puzzled why... 1039 00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:50,320 Like, how hard is it to get rid of Nazis from Twitter? 1040 00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:52,760 And we're waiting. And we look in 1041 00:55:52,760 --> 00:55:56,400 and you're showing this extraordinary calm, 1042 00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:58,160 but we're all standing outside saying, 1043 00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:00,200 "Jack, turn the ...'kin wheel." 1044 00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:03,520 I mean, will you do that? 1045 00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:07,360 Yeah, yes. And we have been moving substantially. 1046 00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:10,880 I mean, we are working as quickly as we can, 1047 00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:14,160 but quickness will not get the job done. 1048 00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:21,920 Facing mounting criticism, Jack withdraws from the spotlight. 1049 00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:25,360 CHANTING 1050 00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:27,600 He really withdrew from people. 1051 00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:31,000 Like, he did a lot of meditation, 1052 00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:33,120 he did these retreats. 1053 00:56:33,120 --> 00:56:35,280 It didn't feel like he was 1054 00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:37,080 really talking to anybody at Twitter. 1055 00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:43,400 There ended up being this weird cult of a personality around him. 1056 00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:46,360 All these, like, lifestyle articles about 1057 00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:50,600 what his diet is this week and what exercise he does. 1058 00:56:50,600 --> 00:56:53,320 Sometimes he'd show up, sometimes he wouldn't. 1059 00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:55,800 Then he'd lay down a track and then he'd leave. 1060 00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:57,000 Like, that kind of thing. 1061 00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:00,880 "Genius. Got to go. 1062 00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:06,600 "I'm going to Sri Lanka to stare at, you know, a finch." 1063 00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:09,200 I don't know. Whatever. He was always on to something like that. 1064 00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:13,440 It felt as though there were a lot of performative aspects into how 1065 00:57:13,440 --> 00:57:15,040 he was presenting himself. 1066 00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:19,360 And then people wanted to believe that this was like... 1067 00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:22,360 Here's somebody who is a founder who they could believe in. 1068 00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:26,320 And then things just got weirder. 1069 00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:28,520 # Love where you work 1070 00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:32,480 # Love who you work with... # 1071 00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:39,040 In January 2020, there was a huge Twitter-wide conference called 1072 00:57:39,040 --> 00:57:42,360 OneTeam in Houston, Texas. 1073 00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:43,680 Ha-ha! 1074 00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:46,000 There we go. OK. OK. We got some sun. 1075 00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:48,040 How's everyone feeling now? 1076 00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,480 It was really a blast. I mean, we just had fun. 1077 00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:54,120 It was a chance for everyone to connect. 1078 00:57:54,120 --> 00:57:57,240 MUSIC: We Will Rock You 1079 00:57:57,240 --> 00:57:58,880 Jack really wanted just 1080 00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:01,760 to go back to the roots of the heart of Twitter. 1081 00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:03,760 Bringing everyone together, 1082 00:58:03,760 --> 00:58:07,040 just lifting up the culture, you know? Mm. 1083 00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:09,560 That was what we wanted. That's what we wanted. 1084 00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:11,240 At one point, Jack 1085 00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:15,000 stood in front of 4,000 colleagues and said 1086 00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:19,160 that he would be leading us in a 15-minute silent meditation. 1087 00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:31,840 There were, like, little salt juice packets under everybody's seats. 1088 00:58:31,840 --> 00:58:34,960 It was like the weirdest Oprah "check under your seat" giveaway 1089 00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:36,440 you can imagine. 1090 00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:44,240 Water, Himalayan salt and lemon juice. 1091 00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:46,280 I mean, listen, I drank the Twitter Kool-Aid, 1092 00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:48,400 but I didn't do the... I didn't do the lemon water. 1093 00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:51,560 There were elements of OneTeam 1094 00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:53,360 that were absolutely fun, right? 1095 00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:59,880 And then there's also like, sometimes, like, forced fun. 1096 00:58:59,880 --> 00:59:02,480 Why not dial in Elon Musk to OneTeam? 1097 00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:05,000 Whoo! 1098 00:59:15,360 --> 00:59:17,160 LAUGHTER 1099 00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:19,280 Wow. It's, like, prophetic. 1100 00:59:29,800 --> 00:59:31,960 And then a number of folks got sick. 1101 00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:36,000 We did have team members, I believe, 1102 00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:38,680 that were flying through Wuhan, 1103 00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:41,480 to get to OneTeam. 1104 00:59:41,480 --> 00:59:42,720 There was literally a hashtag, 1105 00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:44,840 hashtag, like, #OneVirus 1106 00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:47,680 that everybody was talking about. 1107 00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:49,120 From this evening I must give 1108 00:59:49,120 --> 00:59:52,320 the British people a very simple instruction. 1109 00:59:52,320 --> 00:59:54,000 You must stay at home. 1110 00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:59,400 REPORTER: Efforts to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus 1111 00:59:59,400 --> 01:00:03,760 are being strained as infections and deaths rise rapidly worldwide. 1112 01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:10,560 Now there's this technology that is potentially 1113 01:00:10,560 --> 01:00:13,560 spreading misleading information really rapidly. 1114 01:00:13,560 --> 01:00:15,480 Like, you know, if you get Covid, 1115 01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:18,200 all you got to do is take a gallon of Ivermectin 1116 01:00:18,200 --> 01:00:19,680 and you'll be fine in the morning. 1117 01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:22,360 That was actually 1118 01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:25,040 what led us to roll out the first labels around misinformation. 1119 01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:28,440 We were no longer taking 1120 01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:30,560 a hands-off approach on this stuff. 1121 01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:33,840 It probably won't come as a surprise to you 1122 01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:36,720 that Jack was not a fan of labelling, 1123 01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:43,200 and he was even less of a fan of removing content. 1124 01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:46,440 I don't know that we ever convinced Jack that we were right, 1125 01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:51,600 but we at least got him to sign off on the policies. 1126 01:00:52,680 --> 01:00:57,480 The next thing you know, like, we have a misinformation policy 1127 01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:00,320 and it was a rushed job, right? 1128 01:01:00,320 --> 01:01:02,080 Like, the policy was... 1129 01:01:03,680 --> 01:01:06,600 ..written quickly and constantly changing. 1130 01:01:06,600 --> 01:01:08,880 And when you start saying, like, something is true 1131 01:01:08,880 --> 01:01:13,000 or it is not, like, you are becoming an arbiter of truth. 1132 01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:17,920 Facts are problematic these days. Like, whose facts? 1133 01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:19,520 Which facts? Who were they from? 1134 01:01:19,520 --> 01:01:21,120 Twitter was the perfect place 1135 01:01:21,120 --> 01:01:23,840 for tons and tons of misinformation about many things, 1136 01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:28,280 including from Donald Trump - particularly in an election year. 1137 01:01:29,640 --> 01:01:31,160 NEWSREADER: President Trump responding 1138 01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:32,960 after Twitter flags two of his tweets, 1139 01:01:32,960 --> 01:01:34,080 the president tweeting - quote - 1140 01:01:43,400 --> 01:01:46,640 There's a lot of pushback on the censorship of speech. 1141 01:01:46,640 --> 01:01:52,400 It became a cause celebre for the right to say, like, 1142 01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:54,840 oh, these companies are run by a bunch of squishy liberals 1143 01:01:54,840 --> 01:01:57,960 and they're using their tools to, like, oppress us. 1144 01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:00,240 And so we're going to have a bunch of hearings. 1145 01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:06,040 Mr Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of 1146 01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:08,800 what the media are allowed to report and what the American 1147 01:02:08,800 --> 01:02:11,400 people are allowed to hear? We're not doing that. 1148 01:02:11,400 --> 01:02:15,320 And this is why I opened this hearing 1149 01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:17,040 with calls for more transparency. 1150 01:02:17,040 --> 01:02:18,920 We realise we need to earn trust more. 1151 01:02:18,920 --> 01:02:20,040 We realise... 1152 01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:24,120 I think it stopped being fun for Jack. 1153 01:02:26,200 --> 01:02:28,480 He was so unhappy about having to weigh in. 1154 01:02:28,480 --> 01:02:30,000 We were trying to figure out, 1155 01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:31,680 what can we do proactively here? 1156 01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:34,360 We would cast stones 1157 01:02:34,360 --> 01:02:36,880 and read tea leaves in an attempt 1158 01:02:36,880 --> 01:02:39,880 to interpret whatever it was that Jack actually wanted. 1159 01:02:39,880 --> 01:02:44,600 Joseph R Biden Jr is elected the 46th President 1160 01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:47,520 of the United States, winning the White House and 1161 01:02:47,520 --> 01:02:50,240 denying President Trump a second term. 1162 01:02:50,240 --> 01:02:53,280 It is announced that Joe Biden is the winner, 1163 01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:57,120 and then the conversation is, like, is Donald Trump going to come on 1164 01:02:57,120 --> 01:03:00,120 the platform and deny the election results, right? 1165 01:03:00,120 --> 01:03:02,200 Because he was doing it verbally. 1166 01:03:02,200 --> 01:03:03,560 He did. 1167 01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:08,320 DONALD TRUMP: We were getting ready for a big celebration. 1168 01:03:08,320 --> 01:03:11,120 We... We were winning everything. 1169 01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:13,800 And all of a sudden it was just called off. 1170 01:03:15,520 --> 01:03:16,720 Trump gets on Twitter, 1171 01:03:16,720 --> 01:03:18,880 starts denying the election results. 1172 01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:23,880 I remember sending messages to folks in leadership saying, 1173 01:03:23,880 --> 01:03:29,120 like, "I am very concerned about what is going to happen." 1174 01:03:29,120 --> 01:03:32,760 But there was a fear - we'll go too far, 1175 01:03:32,760 --> 01:03:36,360 we'll piss Donald Trump off. Like, something will happen. 1176 01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:39,720 Indecision became the decision. 1177 01:03:41,360 --> 01:03:43,520 And then came the morning of January 6th. 1178 01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:50,880 I am not allowed to say what's going to happen today... 1179 01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:54,800 ..because everyone's just going to have to watch for themselves. 1180 01:03:54,800 --> 01:03:57,400 But it's going to happen. 1181 01:03:57,400 --> 01:03:59,680 CROWD SHOUTING 1182 01:04:01,120 --> 01:04:04,160 I was literally on Twitter, right? Like, I was on twitter.com, 1183 01:04:04,160 --> 01:04:07,320 scrolling, seeing what was happening. 1184 01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:09,280 CROWD SHOUTING 1185 01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:14,040 We're trying to help you. We're trying to help you. 1186 01:04:14,040 --> 01:04:17,360 I had gotten called into a meeting when the Capitol was breached. 1187 01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:21,920 #ExecuteMikePence is trending. 1188 01:04:25,480 --> 01:04:29,280 And I was given the instructions, "Make the insurrection stop." 1189 01:04:29,280 --> 01:04:31,480 CROWD CHANTS: USA. 1190 01:04:31,480 --> 01:04:35,000 Within a couple of hours we had new guidance 1191 01:04:35,000 --> 01:04:37,560 that was drafted specifically for January 6th. 1192 01:04:37,560 --> 01:04:41,440 And, you know, we started taking down tweets, right? 1193 01:04:41,440 --> 01:04:43,560 MAN'S VOICE: There's a real nightmare scenario unfolding. 1194 01:04:43,560 --> 01:04:46,280 So many entrances and tunnels and mazes. 1195 01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:48,840 And then Trump starts tweeting. 1196 01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:54,560 There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened, 1197 01:04:54,560 --> 01:04:57,520 where they could take it away from all of us - from me, 1198 01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:01,760 from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. 1199 01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:09,680 So we didn't really have a choice 1200 01:05:09,680 --> 01:05:12,440 but to take it down and suspend the account. 1201 01:05:12,440 --> 01:05:17,000 We said if there are any other violations of any kind, 1202 01:05:17,000 --> 01:05:19,400 this account will be permanently suspended. 1203 01:05:21,360 --> 01:05:22,920 48 hours later, 1204 01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:25,320 Trump's temporary suspension is over. 1205 01:05:25,320 --> 01:05:27,680 He starts tweeting again. 1206 01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:33,680 DONALD TRUMP: You'll never take back our country with weakness. 1207 01:05:34,840 --> 01:05:39,480 The responses to his tweets were, like, message heard loud and clear. 1208 01:05:39,480 --> 01:05:42,080 You have to show strength and you have to be strong. 1209 01:05:42,080 --> 01:05:44,160 We got it. We know what to do. 1210 01:05:44,160 --> 01:05:47,600 It was very much this dog whistle of violence. 1211 01:05:47,600 --> 01:05:51,760 With Trump deemed to have violated Twitter's rules yet again, 1212 01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:53,960 a decision must now be made. 1213 01:05:55,240 --> 01:05:56,720 Because it's Donald Trump, 1214 01:05:56,720 --> 01:06:01,920 goes up to Jack Dorsey, who was in French Polynesia on his yacht. 1215 01:06:10,240 --> 01:06:12,640 I think Jack was very concerned about, 1216 01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:14,800 are we biased in our enforcement? 1217 01:06:14,800 --> 01:06:17,480 This goes against so many things 1218 01:06:17,480 --> 01:06:21,080 that he really passionately believed. 1219 01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:24,200 But the degree to which people 1220 01:06:24,200 --> 01:06:28,440 were taking this as a call to violence was clear. 1221 01:06:29,520 --> 01:06:31,440 I think that's why when we made 1222 01:06:31,440 --> 01:06:33,640 the recommendation to ban the President, 1223 01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:35,240 there was not pushback. 1224 01:06:37,800 --> 01:06:40,280 And so Donald Trump was kicked off of Twitter. 1225 01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:49,800 CROWD SHOUT 1226 01:06:58,800 --> 01:07:00,920 SCATTERED APPLAUSE 1227 01:07:05,200 --> 01:07:08,040 Everyone telling you that you're responsible 1228 01:07:08,040 --> 01:07:13,600 for the ruin of politics around the world sucks. 1229 01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:17,840 It sounds miserable. I mean, would you want that? 1230 01:07:21,040 --> 01:07:22,080 NEWSREADER: The social media and 1231 01:07:22,080 --> 01:07:23,200 business world was rocked today, 1232 01:07:23,200 --> 01:07:24,600 by the surprise resignation of 1233 01:07:24,600 --> 01:07:26,680 Jack Dorsey as CEO of Twitter. 1234 01:07:28,720 --> 01:07:30,760 So I think that, in some ways, 1235 01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:33,440 Jack may have been struggling with a company that was going 1236 01:07:33,440 --> 01:07:37,040 in a direction very different from the direction that he hoped for. 1237 01:07:39,640 --> 01:07:42,720 As the only significant shareholder on the board, 1238 01:07:42,720 --> 01:07:45,880 Jack still holds power over Twitter's future. 1239 01:07:47,080 --> 01:07:51,080 For Jack, only one person can now restore Twitter to being 1240 01:07:51,080 --> 01:07:53,920 the platform where all voices can be heard. 1241 01:07:55,040 --> 01:07:56,840 I think what he decided to do 1242 01:07:56,840 --> 01:07:58,440 in the first instance was just to say, 1243 01:07:58,440 --> 01:08:01,680 "I'm going to quit and turn the company over to someone else." 1244 01:08:01,680 --> 01:08:04,120 But then he came up with idea two, 1245 01:08:04,120 --> 01:08:06,920 which was - maybe Elon should just buy it. 1246 01:08:06,920 --> 01:08:09,240 Jack and Elon were very friendly 1247 01:08:09,240 --> 01:08:13,120 and Elon has proven himself at other organisations. 1248 01:08:13,120 --> 01:08:15,440 Is there anyone else on earth 1249 01:08:15,440 --> 01:08:17,760 that could best figure this thing out? 1250 01:08:17,760 --> 01:08:19,640 And I think he turned to his friend Elon. 1251 01:08:19,640 --> 01:08:22,120 Any more comments? Were you guys listening? 1252 01:08:22,120 --> 01:08:25,040 But I'm curious, what do you guys think? 1253 01:08:25,040 --> 01:08:30,120 NEWSREADER: Breaking news. Twitter has just accepted Elon Musk's offer. 1254 01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:36,440 Twitter will become a privately owned company by Elon Musk. 1255 01:08:46,160 --> 01:08:50,440 Jack's tweet about how Elon was the singular solution 1256 01:08:50,440 --> 01:08:55,280 and the light of consciousness that he would trust to lead Twitter, 1257 01:08:55,280 --> 01:08:58,120 seemed like it was just going to clearly be one of 1258 01:08:58,120 --> 01:08:59,920 the worst tweets of all time. 1259 01:08:59,920 --> 01:09:01,880 Like, how did you come up with 1260 01:09:01,880 --> 01:09:03,680 "he's the only one that can fix Twitter"? 1261 01:09:03,680 --> 01:09:06,560 I want to know, what evidence did you have that he could do that? 1262 01:09:06,560 --> 01:09:10,880 It went from being something that we tried very hard to not have - 1263 01:09:10,880 --> 01:09:15,200 be a political tool, in a lot of ways - to a political tool. 1264 01:09:17,360 --> 01:09:19,680 NEWSREADER: Elon Musk says he would reverse former 1265 01:09:19,680 --> 01:09:23,040 President Trump's ban on the social media platform, 1266 01:09:23,040 --> 01:09:25,680 Musk calling the ban "morally wrong". 1267 01:09:27,360 --> 01:09:30,080 Musk reinstates thousands of banned accounts 1268 01:09:30,080 --> 01:09:33,240 and rolls back restrictions on misleading information. 1269 01:09:34,720 --> 01:09:39,360 He lays off around 80% of the staff working to reduce harmful content. 1270 01:09:41,120 --> 01:09:43,080 Elon decimated the Trust and Safety team. 1271 01:09:43,080 --> 01:09:44,160 He didn't care about it. 1272 01:09:44,160 --> 01:09:46,000 He didn't care about trust or safety. 1273 01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:49,720 He was a real mistake. It was a real mistake to do that. 1274 01:09:49,720 --> 01:09:53,480 I didn't think Elon would destroy Twitter 1275 01:09:53,480 --> 01:09:55,040 or tear it apart the way he did. 1276 01:09:55,040 --> 01:09:57,600 CROWD CHEERS 1277 01:09:57,600 --> 01:09:59,880 Elon's purchase of Twitter was very calculated. 1278 01:09:59,880 --> 01:10:02,360 I think he wanted more power. You know, 1279 01:10:02,360 --> 01:10:04,480 he is shifting rightward. I could see it. 1280 01:10:19,560 --> 01:10:23,160 ELON MUSK: Er, here we are at the...at the merch thing, 1281 01:10:23,160 --> 01:10:27,960 and there's an entire closet full of... Secret closet. ..of #Woke. 1282 01:10:33,200 --> 01:10:36,360 There's this narrative of Jack Dorsey, the benevolent, 1283 01:10:36,360 --> 01:10:41,720 and, like, Elon Musk of the evil, in the sort of wicked versus good, 1284 01:10:41,720 --> 01:10:45,960 right? And I think it does us a disservice to make these, 1285 01:10:45,960 --> 01:10:48,480 like, fairy tales out of this story. 1286 01:10:49,920 --> 01:10:54,440 If the Twitter of yesteryear was so perfect, 1287 01:10:54,440 --> 01:10:57,760 how did it crumble so fast? Right? Clearly, 1288 01:10:57,760 --> 01:11:01,960 the foundation wasn't as good as a lot of people thought that it was. 1289 01:11:03,280 --> 01:11:05,520 What all of us were doing 1290 01:11:05,520 --> 01:11:08,680 was democratising the means of communications. 1291 01:11:08,680 --> 01:11:12,880 But the reality is that you can't have universal free speech, 1292 01:11:12,880 --> 01:11:16,760 because the speech of some silences the speech of others. 1293 01:11:16,760 --> 01:11:21,560 Everybody always sees it subjectively. 1294 01:11:21,560 --> 01:11:24,160 "Why don't you moderate those bad people?" 1295 01:11:24,160 --> 01:11:26,240 "Why are you censoring me?" 1296 01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:32,320 The social media site Twitter is going through a radical rebrand. 1297 01:11:32,320 --> 01:11:35,520 Elon Musk, who owns it, of course, says it's now called X. 1298 01:11:35,520 --> 01:11:39,680 Elon reinstated my Twitter account 1299 01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:43,160 after taking it back - personally. 1300 01:11:43,160 --> 01:11:44,880 My name is Katie Hopkins. 1301 01:11:44,880 --> 01:11:48,120 I am a straight white Christian. 1302 01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:51,120 CROWD CHANTS Come on, get back, get back. 1303 01:11:51,120 --> 01:11:52,440 It's good to be back on Twitter. 1304 01:11:52,440 --> 01:11:55,120 Don't believe what you read. Don't believe the mainstream. 1305 01:11:57,240 --> 01:11:59,920 Talk to this gentleman, look, this gentleman here. 1306 01:11:59,920 --> 01:12:02,840 Argh! Argh! 1307 01:12:02,840 --> 01:12:06,920 It turns out that Twitter is harder than rocket science. 1308 01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:14,640 It's actually really, really, really sad 1309 01:12:14,640 --> 01:12:19,680 because people really believed in Jack. 1310 01:12:21,400 --> 01:12:24,280 Part of what has been so hard about what's happened has been 1311 01:12:24,280 --> 01:12:27,480 the really sense of deep personal betrayal 1312 01:12:27,480 --> 01:12:29,280 that a lot of employees have felt. 1313 01:12:33,120 --> 01:12:34,360 It's hard to be, like, 1314 01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:37,680 very kind of pro- the Twitter legacy at this point. 1315 01:12:37,680 --> 01:12:39,920 It's going to be remembered 1316 01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:43,400 for this long tail of knock-on effects, 1317 01:12:43,400 --> 01:12:48,520 of people trying to advance right-wing authoritarianism 1318 01:12:48,520 --> 01:12:51,880 and explicitly anti-democratic agenda, 1319 01:12:51,880 --> 01:12:55,000 both domestically but also across the world. 1320 01:12:58,280 --> 01:13:00,480 We built this thing that took on a life of its own. 1321 01:13:00,480 --> 01:13:02,320 It has these bad elements and its good elements, 1322 01:13:02,320 --> 01:13:04,960 and the battle is trying to have the good outweigh the bad. 1323 01:13:04,960 --> 01:13:08,440 And that's what felt like is maybe a losing battle over time - was, like, 1324 01:13:08,440 --> 01:13:09,600 is it worth it? 1325 01:13:09,600 --> 01:13:11,560 And there's Mr Evan in there. 1326 01:13:11,560 --> 01:13:13,240 Is this whole idea flawed? 1327 01:13:13,240 --> 01:13:14,640 Haha! Ooh! 1328 01:13:14,640 --> 01:13:18,920 Is social media good or is it just, like... Was it a bad idea? 1329 01:13:18,920 --> 01:13:21,400 Was it just the wrong idea? Should we just move on? 1330 01:13:21,400 --> 01:13:23,200 Should we say, hey, that was an interesting experiment... 1331 01:13:23,200 --> 01:13:24,400 Follow me! 1332 01:13:24,400 --> 01:13:25,560 ..goofy things happened... 1333 01:13:25,560 --> 01:13:26,600 I'm Biz Stone. 1334 01:13:26,600 --> 01:13:27,840 ..we had some laughs... 1335 01:13:29,600 --> 01:13:30,880 ..and let's move on? 1336 01:13:30,880 --> 01:13:32,160 I don't know. 1337 01:13:35,040 --> 01:13:40,680 MUSIC: Helicopter by Bloc Party