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The Lawfare Podcast

Lawfare Daily: ‘How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter’ with Kate Conger and Ryan Mac

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

News, International Law, Foreign Policy, Military, Intelligence, Government, National Security, Rule Of Law, Constitutional Law, Law, Terrorism, Current Events, History, Diplomacy, Politics, International Relations

4.76.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On April 14, 2022, New York Times technology reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac woke up to a stunning four-word tweet from Elon Musk’s Twitter account: “I made an offer.” Having long covered the technology and social media beat, they read Musk’s terse post as the “unbelievable but inevitable culmination of two storylines we had pursued for a decade as journalists in Silicon Valley.”

On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien spoke to Conger and Mac about the cloak-and-dagger corporate dealings that preceded the offer, as well as the drama that unfolded after the ink dried, which they reported in detail in their new book, “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.” They discussed Musk’s predecessors—Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal—as well as the platform’s troubled history of content moderation, and why the billionaire wanted it all for himself.  

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Transcript

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become a material supporter of Lawfair at Patreon.com slash Lawfair. That's Patreon.com

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Visit salesforce.com to find out more. Hello I'm Dr Alex George, host of the Stompcast.

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Thank you.

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You know, in tracing back his history personally personally we wanted to go into how he started using the platform

1:56.8

how he became kind of a hardcore Twitter addict and what really shaped his views around what online speech should look like.

2:04.5

It's the Lawfair Podcast.

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