Elon Musk: Too Big to Scam | 124
Scamfluencers
Wondery
4.1 • 7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Elon Musk bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion, he made headlines for the mess that followed — including flip flopping on the deal and immediately firing most of the site’s employees. In this special episode of Scamfluencers, Scaachi Koul talks with New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about their new book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. They explain how Musk leveraged his Silicon Valley clout to take over, and tank, everyone’s favorite hellsite and we’re left wondering: is Elon Musk the ultimate Scamfluencer?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Scam Fluencers fans, Sarah here. |
| 0:02.8 | If you love the drama, deception, and mind-blowing reveals, Wondery Plus is your VIP ticket to more. |
| 0:09.2 | Add free episodes, early access to the juiciest scandals, and deep dives you won't find anywhere else. |
| 0:15.1 | Get the full Scampluencers experience. Sign up today. |
| 0:28.2 | Sarah, you're pretty active on Twitter, right? |
| 0:31.3 | Or X. I know we have to call it X, but I just don't want to. |
| 0:32.7 | Yeah, I'm never calling it X. |
| 0:34.5 | Yeah, I'm still pretty active. |
| 0:39.4 | What do you remember about the day it was announced that Elon Musk might take over Twitter? |
| 0:45.7 | I remember a lot of eulogies of people being like, well, I guess I'm not going to be here anymore. |
| 0:50.4 | And guess what? They're still freaking there because Twitter is an addiction. |
| 0:55.9 | Well, my friend, today we're going to talk about our good friend Elon Musk. but we're going to do it in a way that we know he'll absolutely hate by talking to a few reporters from the |
| 1:00.9 | failing New York Times. It's June 2023, and Mark Zuckerberg is probably in Menlo Park, California, at the sprawling |
| 1:12.3 | campus that serves as headquarters for Meta, the company he started as Facebook in 2004. |
| 1:18.4 | Mark is a pasty white Harvard dropout who created social media as we know it, and right now, |
| 1:23.3 | he's getting ready to launch a new app that might get him some sweet, sweet revenge. |
| 1:28.6 | The app is Threads, and it's a direct competitor to Twitter. |
| 1:32.3 | It's been eight months since Elon Musk bought Twitter and took it private. |
| 1:35.6 | And it hasn't been going great. |
| 1:37.4 | He's fired 80% of the workforce, and advertisers have been fleeing in droves. |
| 1:42.2 | Elon himself has suggested the company might declare bankruptcy. |
| 1:45.9 | Of course, Meta is looking to take advantage of Twitter's slow-motion train wreck. And there's some |
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