Crossover event: Exploring Twitter with Inside Fintech

As a Marvel and DC fan, I love a good crossover event. So, it is time do one with Inside Fintech with some help from my current favourite tools. Descript which brings you the text and Jasper AI that has provided the images via my imagination.

Backstory: I signed up for Jasper Art last week after the frustration of not being able to find a pelican in a wedding dress for last weeks newsletter. Now. I don't know how I feel about what I've created.

If you're in more of a listening mood, you can listen to the Podcast which goes down more rabbit holes than this newsletter ever could. But if you're more of a traditional reading a newsletter type. You can find a cutdown version of the podcast below featuring myself and Phil Hobden .

Phil: Okay, and this is a bit of an eighties reference question, so you know, this might go over some younger readers heads as it wasn’t in Stranger Things, but my question to pose for you:

Is Elon Musk, the Gerald Ratner of technology? For those who don’t know, Gerald Ratner was the guy that was famously asked how he could sell his jewellery for the price he did and his answer was “because it's crap”.

Adam: Yeah. I remember it.

Phil: he literally saw his company lose billions overnight. Fast forward to 2022 and it's almost like Elon Musk is doing the same.

It does feel like Elon Musk is deliberately out to ruin Twitter. I mean, it's hard to ruin a platform that is effectively garbage anyway.

Adam: Yeah, I mean for those that have read my latest newsletter, just plug in that I refer to it as Ghostbusters 2.

Another eighties reference, remember the slime under underneath New York City. See New York not being the friendliest place on earth anyway, and it's, in some ways it's got better, I suppose. It certainly friendly New York. It was

Phil: I was in New York just before Covid. Within minutes of being in New York City, I saw a guy in a white shirt with braces on a mobile phone, walked past me and every other word was beep. And I was like, we're in New York. Yes.

Adam: I remember going to a Dive bar and it was an amazing place, great atmosphere, but it took us 15 minutes to get served, and I was just like, this guy's not getting a tip. So, I didn't give him a tip. Wow. His response, I gave him a tip just for his response. It was not a nice response, but because it was from a New Yorker, I was like, this is AMAZING.

So, going back to the Ghostbusters thing. Vigo the baddy and Elon have even worn similar things. But we don't have Ghostbusters in real life.

The slime is not real. The slime is digital, and it does feel like the fabric of trust, which has taken a long time to build, whether it's true or not, at least you know the person. Saying the stuff that's coming out their mouth, whether you agree with it or not, you can, you know broadly that they are who they say they are.

Phil: I think there should be ownership. I don't think you should be on a hide behind like an avatar, a cute picture of a panda, and then be brutally horrible to a race driver or a, or whatever, right? So, I think you should have a, so I think Twitter's always been a pile of slime, to use your analogy.

The problem is now Elon Musk has bought it. Basically, I know what he's done with the Blue Tick system, but he's managed to make the only way to verify someone on the platform corrupt. So, he is corrupted the one probable, pure thing on Twitter by making money, trying to make money out, and he's done an utterly catastrophic job of that.

It just, it's made the cesspit even stinkier for me.

Adam: It is stinky in some ways, but when you look at it afterwards, it's actually quite funny as well because everyone, me, yourself, everyone has predicted what's happening is going to happen.

Kind of like watching a Tesla car crash, one where Musk is at the wheel, looking at Twitter on his phone, not paying attention, even though you're supposed to when it's self-drive and slamming into the back of a, 18-wheeler. It's phenomenal and everyone else can see it's happening.

He's so high above everybody else. He's got this ginormous 104 million+ echo chamber of fanatics. And obviously not all these followers are fans. He's just so detached from reality.

Phil: That he’s detached from reality is a great way of putting it. He is, but also, I think we, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't discount it as a folly.

So, in same way that people went, oh, but that Boris guy, Oh, he bit of an idiot. a bit of a wally. He'll never be Prime minister. Oh no. He is Prime minister. Oh, haha.. Look at the catastrophic mess he left.

I think people, the discount Musk as someone who is just like this kind of slightly quirky, slightly out there is actually disingenuous to the fact that he's dangerous.

I think no one should have that much power and influence and have it without, at least when you are President or a Prime Minister, you would think in a, civilized world, at least semi civilized world. The, there, there is some oversight and some control but wait, it was always a thing that was the oversight in control.

You could take Trump off the platform if Trump was. Too Trumpy. Right? But when the lunatic runs the asylum, he's just creating his own echo chamber.

They're laughing and they're going, Hey, I'm gonna create my own Elon Musk Twitter account and tweet out. Funny thing, by the way, for a guide, and I will shut up in a second for a guide that is trying to promote free speech. And, comedy is now legal again, according to Elon Musk, he banned people that have created parody accounts on there.

So therefore, he's banned free speech and he's banned comedy. It's not even, and like racism has gone up on Twitter dramatically since he's taken over, measurably since he's taken over. He’s worse than Zuckerberg at the moment. at least Zuckerberg realizes he can't tank his own company.

Adam: He's has tanked his own company in many ways, going after the Metaverse, which, will have huge FinTech implications in the future?

The way the voting shares are structured, he can't get fired. He's got the most voting rights of anyone, even though he only owns 13% of Meta's shares but controls 54% of the votes thanks to a concentration in a class of stock with super-charged rights.

It's totally engineered for him, and people have invested and bought into that knowing that's the consequence, because they believed in what Zuckerberg was doing.

The difference between Twitter and Facebook is Facebook has gone through so many scandals and so many issues over the years, but it's all kind of played out under the surface until people are found out, and then there's been an outrage. This is real time. This is like this. I sort of likened it to the global equivalent of Matt Hancock going into, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here.

Phil: If things like Twitter collapse, like they've just, lost half their employees. They've effectively got rid of all their safeguarding and all their ethics and all the things that, let's be honest, you, a lot of time you were surprised that Twitter even had, but apparently they did.

Do you remember Woolworths? Everyone remembers Woolworths, like great, pick and mix. yeah. Jackie Chan advertising jeans. I mean, who doesn't remember? (Adam: I don't remember) It's a classic, but what people don't realise is Woolworths collapsed. Right. But Woolworths also owned a company called, Entertainment UK.

They were a distributor of DVDs and films. Now, when Woolworths collapsed behind the scenes it took down entertainment supplies for Zavvi and Virgin Mega stores.

So, because Woolworths went down, Zavvi couldn't get any stock at Christmas and therefore, they couldn't fulfil the Christmas gifting, which for tech shop is a disaster. They were in a good financial position up until that point but they couldn't get any stock or sell anything.

Adam: My experience of Twitter way from a business perspective, started all the way back in 2012. I made a negative response matrix for EDF Energy and it was hard, hard back then, and that was with 140 characters or whatever it was. Yeah. But the point back then was there was you could trust who you were speaking to. And you could have conversations and you could actually use the platform to share your information. Even back then, relatively rudimentary, you could share your information and make sure you got looked after .

There's no trust now with the Twitter platform that's just been blown up. So if you look at someone like Monzo or Curve are particular is very active on Twitter, for example, particularly with I've done it a few times with customer complaints.

Adam: Have you heard of the Elon Musk GOAT coin and the news about the people that made it? These are Elon super fans and have made a statue of Elon Musk head on a goat's body and riding a rocket. Now, just give you an idea of scale. His head is five foot six and the whole thing sits in the back of a trailer.

Phil: Oh my God, that is actually horrific.

Adam: It is, but they're going to deliver it to Tesla's offices in Dallas, Texas in a week or so.

Phil: If that doesn't petrify people, I don't know what would…

So there you have it. Adam and Phil think that Elon Musk taking over Twitter was a really bad idea and could have severe consequences for society as a whole. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments below and listen to the full podcast for more thoughts and opinions.