Is Elon Musk Curing Twitter?
Americast
BBC
4.3 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The online discussion continues...
Since Americast spoke to Dr Anthony Fauci, he has been the subject of Elon Musk tweets. And that’s not all Musk has been up to! The team speaks to a former member of Twitter’s now disbanded Trust and Safety Council about what Musk is doing to online safety.
And, as basketball star Brittney Griner is exchanged for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, a former White House insider takes us through the growing phenomenon of "hostage diplomacy".
Americast is presented by North America editor Sarah Smith, Today host Justin Webb, the BBC's Social Media and Disinformation Correspondent Marianna Spring, and North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher.
Find out more about our "undercover voters" here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63530374.
Email Americast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments and send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, to 03301239480.
This episode was made by Phil Marzouk and Alix Pickles. The studio director was Emma Crowe. The assistant editor was Sam Bonham. The senior news editor was Jonathan Aspinwall.
Credit: Basketball commentary provided by ESPN Productions Inc.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:07.3 | Hello, Americansters. This is Sarah in France. You may remember me as the voice of Walker Watch. |
| 0:12.8 | I'm loving Americanst because I'm really enjoying the broad range of topics covered in every episode. |
| 0:18.1 | You can subscribe to America's on BBC Sounds or wherever you listen to your podcasts. |
| 0:23.1 | Oh, and if you want to be at the start of the podcast just like me, |
| 0:26.3 | then email the team at americastatbbc.co.uk. Bye! |
| 0:34.1 | So a lot's happened since we spoke to Dr Anthony Fauci on the podcast last week. |
| 0:38.8 | He is, of course, the leading health expert who's worked for seven different presidents and who was |
| 0:42.8 | absolutely in the line of fire dealing with the Covid pandemic, under both Donald Trump and |
| 0:48.1 | Joe Biden. And one of the things he talked to us about was the threats, online threats against him |
| 0:53.3 | and his family that he'd had as a result of that. As far as my own safety, I don't let that bother me. |
| 0:58.4 | I have good security protection, but I really think it's so cowardly for people to harass people |
| 1:06.8 | who are completely uninvolved and this including my children, which is really I think just a manifestation |
| 1:14.0 | of the of the low life that does that. We're talking of online threats. Since he talked to us, |
| 1:20.5 | there was, in a sense, a new one. It came from Elon Musk, the boss of Twitter, the new boss of Twitter, |
| 1:25.5 | posting on the site. And I quote, my pronouns are prosecute Fauci, which leads you to think that, |
| 1:32.9 | well, maybe he's been listening to what Dr Fauci's been saying to us and to others as well. |
| 1:36.6 | Yeah, maybe he is an americast listener. And by saying that, he has thrust himself back into our |
| 1:43.2 | podcast again because we're now going to have to talk about the debate over Twitter. We don't |
| 1:48.6 | want to turn this into Twitter cast, but it's quite important to discuss what Musk's trying to do and |
| 1:53.6 | what all of it means for the general fight against misinformation. Well, Elon Musk may now |
| 1:57.9 | longer be the world's richest man, but this is still the richest podcast that the BBC makes about |
... |
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