Elon Musk, Twitter, Sarah Fryer discussed on BTV Simulcast
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
Now drop it all up. I want to bring in our own Sarah fryer, our Bloomberg tech editor to cap this crazy day and talk about what this means for the future, Sarah, a lot of huge existential questions here. Let's say Elon Musk does by Twitter. It's a done deal. How do you imagine as someone who has covered social media for the better part of a decade? How do you think he'll change? Twitter and social media. I think he's very quickly going to find out that a lot of the things that he wanted to do to change it such as these broad notion notions of advocating for free speech are a lot easier said than done. I think that he, as we've seen in his text messages, gets a lot of feedback from very powerful people around the world and sometimes acts on it. And so I think he's going to be really grappling with that and trying to figure out what principles to push for and what is worth ignoring. I wonder if Twitter will be under even more scrutiny also with Musk as a sole owner. You know, I think about the security that Mark Zuckerberg has gotten at Facebook. Will the pressure be even higher? The pressure might be higher, but we're not going to get as much information. It's going to be more of a black box. I think that as a private company, Twitter is much less likely to tell us how it's growing or how its business is doing. And Elon Musk will be the main source of information. So it's going to be even more critical for journalists like us to really find out what's happening behind the scenes. I do think that there are going to be a lot of disgruntled employees. People who already tell us that they're not looking forward to leadership under Musk for whatever reason. And I think that it's going to be a big cultural change for the company, especially in issues as simple as work from home as Elon Musk has said that he's not, he's not a big supporter of that. Quickly, are you expecting an exodus of employees or also potentially an influx? Definitely both, right? I think that we're going to see people who are huge fans of Elon Musk and what he's accomplished elsewhere. Say that they'd love to work for him in Twitter. I think we're also going to see employees who disagree with him, try to find other employment. But that's that. It is a tough time. There are hiring freezes across the board at tech companies. Companies that are cutting their budget. So if you are a Twitter employee who is trying to get out of there, you've probably already tried to start your search. I think that a lot of employees are sort of figuring that out right now. And we're a little uncertain. And I think there are still some uncertainty about whether this is going to actually happen. All right, Sarah, thank you for giving us a little view into your version of the crystal ball, big hard questions at hand, Bloomberg Sarah friar. Thank you. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg technology. We're going to be across all developments on this tomorrow, of course, and also Francis haugen. Is joining us. The Facebook whistleblower, one year after her historic testimony before Congress. I'm sure she has some thoughts on Elon Musk owning Twitter as well. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg. You know the difference between your bank and the banking business. The new chief executive will take the bank in