There is no way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.
The problems with the social networking site are not engineering issues. They are related to politics. The tech stack is not worth much to the company. The asset is the user base, which is hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities and other people who should know better. Are you? You are addicted to the social networking site. You are the key to success. You paid $44 billion for yourself.
When the asset is people, it's difficult to regulate how people behave because they are complex and powerful.
You are now the King of Twitter, and people think that you are responsible for everything that happens on the social networking site. When shit goes sideways, absolute monarchs are usually killed.
If you don't promise brand safety in your letters to advertisers, you won't be able to collect any advertising revenue. Racist, sexism, transphobia, and all other forms of speech that is legal in the United States must be banned. If you want to make money, you need to ban a lot of legal speech, but you can make all the promises you want. When you start doing that, your new right-wing fans are going to turn on you just like they turn on every other social network.
It turns out that most people don't want to be involved in internet spaces full of shitty racists and not-all-men fedora bully. This is the reason that social media is small compared to its peers. They want to live at a theme park. You have to make the experience better if you want more people to join. Moderate more aggressively. This lesson has been learned the hard way. It was like over and over and over again.
The government seems bored of the First Amendment and is the biggest threat to free speech. They're banning books. Both Biden and Trump want to repeal Section 230. You don't know why. They keep threatening to repeal the law that allows social networks to exist because the First Amendment prohibits them from making explicit speech regulations. It isn't subtle.
Both Texas and Florida have passed speech regulations that are hostile to the First Amendment. Compliance might be impossible, but figuring out how to comply with these laws is not a problem. The laws are blatantly unconstitutional and the only appropriate response to them is to tell the government to shut up. The courts are dumb about the internet. A challenge to these laws is headed to the Supreme Court, which is the opposite of a predictable system, as it is a group of un cool weirdos with lifetime appointments.
You have to defend the First Amendment against the bad laws in Texas and Florida and you can't use artificial intelligence to do that. What does that look like? Do you want to politely decline to engage in their content capture sessions? Do you want to do any of this without the experts who first harassed and then fired your leader? It's what you signed up for. It is more dull than rockets, cars, and rockets with cars on them.
It gets worse after you leave the US. Germany is a big market for the electric car company. Do you intend to break Germany's speech laws? I don't think so. The Indian government requires social media companies to provide potential hostages in order to operate in that country. If you're ready, you'll be able to experience the pressure of blocking and restricting accounts in the Middle East. The Iranian government will murder people over their social media posts. Are you prepared for how Iranians are using social media to protest? Are you excited for the Chinese government to find ways to hurt the business ofTesla in that country? It is going to occur.
Everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works on social networks. The user experience is what defines content moderation. It's what TikTok makes. They all try to get people to buy good stuff. Do you know why there are so many videos on the internet? To get a second ad slot in the middle, a video has to be watched for at least five minutes. It created incentives to get a certain kind of video, because it wanted a certain kind of video. You are in that business right now. You will be dragged into the deepest possible muck of defending indefensible speech if you keep fighting it or pretend that you can sell something else. If you accept that growth requires aggressive content moderation and push back against government speech regulations, we will see how your fans react.
It's good to be to hell. Your idea was this one.
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