In August 2016, Twitter secured a $5 million advertising deal with Donald Trump's election campaign, including the promise that an emoji could automatically play alongside a custom hashtag. Most brands use an image for their logo, but the campaign wanted to use an emoji of a robber running away with a bag of money. Hashtag? #FraudHillary.
Days before it was scheduled to go live, Twitter rejected it. Trump's team was furious, and withdrew part of the deal. “to [then chief executive Jack] “Dorsey and Twitter were an awkward and costly introduction to dealing with Trump,” Bloomberg journalist Kurt Wagner wrote in his new book, “Battle Bird.” “It was also a reminder of the power he suddenly gained.”
Dorsey's concern about this power — and the question of what happens when Elon Musk uses it — lies at the heart of Wagner's book. He draws on dozens of interviews, leaked documents, court filings and public statements to chronicle the Dorsey era, which now seems like a distant memory, as well as Musk's dramatic first year at the helm.
Another book, Extremely Hardcore by Zoë Schiffer, is a sharp, deeply sourced account of a similar topic – with a particular focus on the impact of the acquisition on Twitter employees, thousands of whose lives were turned upside down. Through Musk's job cuts and overhaul of the company's culture when he took control of the company in October 2022 and renamed it X.
“It's a business case study, a labor investigation, and a murder mystery,” explains Schiffer, a journalist at Platformer magazine, an online technology publication. “The body count is still being counted.” It's also full of original reporting; Schiffer has single-handedly spread a great deal of news about the inner workings of Twitter.
Dorsey and Musk represent the ultimate in leadership. The authors argue that while Dorsey's laissez-faire approach brought Twitter to its breaking point, Musk's hard-line approach broke it further. While much ink has been spilled on Twitter as this saga unfolds, these titles represent an important exploration of the impact of personality and politics on communication tools so powerful and ubiquitous that some argue they should be public utilities.
But first: Dorsey. Having co-founded Twitter in 2006, he served as CEO until he was fired in 2008, only to return to the position again in 2015. From the beginning, he hated the constant challenge of maintaining a “healthy” space while enabling freedom Expression too. .
According to Wagner's account (Dorsey himself declined to be interviewed), between 2015 and 2021, the eccentric, intermittently fasting, ice-bathing CEO crafted an agitated but collaborative company culture, hosting flashy work events (at one of which, the CFO wore a ” He wears glow sticks around his neck and bright orange suspenders and delegates much of the decision-making.
But over time, Dorsey — who was born to a Republican father and a Democratic mother and is a “huge proponent of transparency” — became uncomfortable with the moderation decisions made by his subordinates. These decisions included limiting misinformation about Covid, suppressing a 2020 New York Post post on Hunter Biden's laptop, and ultimately banning Trump in the wake of the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol.
Instead of stepping in, Dorsey walked out, partly influenced by attempts by aggressive activist investor Elliott Management to oust him, and partly distracted by his own Bitcoin endeavors. He apparently believed that the man to save Twitter was Musk, for whom he has a sycophantic adoration and was instrumental in supporting his $44 billion approach.
As widely reported, Dorsey's trust in Musk turned out to be largely misplaced. With a wealthy agitator, and no board, “the power that Dorsey worried about became more centralized,” Wagner wrote.
What emerges in both books is a wide gulf between Musk's professed devotion to free speech—fighting what he repeatedly called the “woke mind virus”—and the day-to-day, often seemingly capricious, use of his power as a leader. . Neither book explores the enthusiasm for free expression of some prominent figures in the tech industry. Schiffer points out that Musk's hard-line libertarian views (he has previously voted Democratic) may be personal; He believes “woke” culture has influenced his trans daughter, who has now disowned him and become a Marxist.
Perhaps the greatest example of Musk's liberalism in the face of his ego occurred in February 2023, when US President Joe Biden received more views than the billionaire in a tweet about the American football Super Bowl match. According to Schiffer, the Twitter CEO's response was to request “all efforts” from engineers to determine the cause, and artificially boost his tweets.
In the past 15 months, as the platform became increasingly rowdy, advertisers pulled out, pushing the company close to bankruptcy. Just like Dorsey before him, “Musk appears to be learning the hard way that having power and control over global discourse represents a much greater burden than most people realize,” Wagner wrote.
It is worth noting that both accounts miss the visions of those who continued to carry the bag. What about the Wall Street bankers — Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays — who lent Musk $13 billion for the purchase? Or stock investors, like Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle, who invested $1 billion? Do they care about his messy business decisions yet? Or do they trust his ability to turn things around in the long term?
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There are rare flashes of success. In 2023, Twitter embarked on a brutal cost-cutting exercise directed by Musk's inner circle, saving $1 billion — double their goal of $500 million, according to Schiffer. But there always seem to be unintended consequences: It's still unclear whether Twitter will face lawsuits for refusing to pay bills or take regulatory action, as the Federal Trade Commission is looming.
Both books are supposed to be out in 2023, due to their publishing schedules, but that story is by no means over. So far, Musk seems to be a man without a plan. As we head into a year with dozens of elections around the world and growing concerns about the spread of misinformation, Musk seems likely to keep us guessing.
Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter By Zoë Schiffer Portfolio $30, 352 pages
Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the Fight for the $44 Billion Soul of Twitter, by Kurt Wagner Hodder & Stoughton, £25/Atria Books $30, 368 pages
Hannah Murphy is FT's technology reporter based in San Francisco
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