40 pages of chat records from Silicon Valley tycoons, revealing Musk's idealized Twitter

Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

"the bird is freed"

This is the latest tweet released by Musk, which also means that the Twitter acquisition saga that has dragged on for half a year has basically come to an end.

Previously, this year's most talked-about acquisition went through three reversals:

• The first was in March, when Musk increased his stake in Twitter to 9.2% and was invited to join the Twitter board, but soon Musk stated he would not join the board and declared his intention to privatize Twitter;

• The second was in April, when Musk proposed to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, but shortly after the acquisition agreement was signed, Musk changed his mind and wanted to terminate the acquisition;

• The third was this month, when Twitter shareholders sued Musk in July, forcing him to face a $1 billion breakup fee. After months of back and forth, Musk announced he would proceed with the acquisition as originally planned, until the acquisition was officially completed.

Despite multiple reversals and public disputes, Musk's acquisition of Twitter is widely seen as a long-awaited outcome.

Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey publicly supported Musk in a series of six tweets, stating, "Twitter should not be owned or operated by anyone. It should be a protocol-level public good, not a company. To solve this problem, Musk is the only solution I trust."

On September 28, as Musk's 40-page text evidence regarding the acquisition of Twitter was released, nearly a thousand private conversations between Musk and several industry leaders also came to light. Industry giants such as Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 8VC managing partner Joe Lonsdale, and Musk's brother Kimbal Musk, who were among the earliest advisors for Musk's acquisition of Twitter, expressed their hope that "we really need another Twitter" and actively offered suggestions for Twitter's future model. Additionally, giants like Binance, a16z, and Sequoia Capital publicly pledged to provide Musk with hundreds of millions of dollars in acquisition funding support.

Will Musk, carrying the hopes of many, continue the original intention of founder Jack Dorsey to revitalize Twitter through a decentralized protocol? We attempt to review Musk's original intentions in acquiring Twitter and analyze the possible future directions of Twitter from the 40 pages of text evidence and public statements.

Meanwhile, a group of Twitter revolutionaries, including Bluesky and Lens Protocol, have been operating for some time, but progress has generally been slow. Will Twitter, after Musk's acquisition, be able to act as a catfish to activate the Web3 social track?

The idealized future of Twitter: freedom of speech, decentralized innovation, and banning ads

From beginning to end, maintaining freedom of speech in the public discourse has been Musk's core demand. According to the 40-page text records disclosed by the Delaware Chancery Court, just before proposing the acquisition, Musk chatted with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and several friends, stating, "Freedom of speech is important, even when the people you hate are talking nonsense," and "I might buy Twitter to allow for appropriate free speech."

Yesterday, Musk reiterated his motives and vision for acquiring Twitter in a short post on Twitter, expressing his hope for a place in the world where healthy debates for broad beliefs can occur. He noted that the current unchecked freedom of speech has allowed a large amount of media information aimed at profit to fuel "extreme divisive social hatred," stating, "Twitter cannot obviously be called a hell where everyone can freely express themselves."

Moreover, Musk's supportive attitude towards freedom of speech was clearly reflected in the conversation where he and former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal first fell out. According to the text evidence, Agrawal questioned Musk, "Why do you have to post 'Twitter is dying' on Twitter? You are about to join the board, and you shouldn't publicly criticize the company. This doesn't help change Twitter." This quickly angered Musk, who stated he would no longer join Twitter's board and wanted to privatize Twitter.

In Musk's vision, how will he transform Twitter to uphold his commitment to freedom of speech?

The first idea is to attempt some decentralized innovations. Regarding Jack Dorsey's mention of "rather than letting Twitter continue to be constrained by the traditional corporate model, it should be funded by a foundation that cannot control the underlying public protocol," Musk responded in the chat that "the idea is very interesting" and believes "there indeed needs to be some decentralized innovations to take Twitter in a better direction." Additionally, when he signed the acquisition agreement in April, Musk promised in a tweet to open-source the algorithm to increase public trust.

In terms of payment methods, Musk proposed integrating digital payments into Twitter during an all-hands meeting, making remittances more convenient. Notably, on October 25, well-known tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong revealed that Twitter is developing a cryptocurrency wallet, "the wallet prototype has supported cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals."

Previously, Twitter had already introduced crypto-related features, such as a "tip" service supporting Bitcoin/Ethereum and supporting NFT avatars. Twitter's collaboration with the NFT market to launch the Tweet Tiles feature has also been officially confirmed, allowing users to directly showcase, purchase, and sell NFTs through Twitter.

Additionally, the issues of spam bots, which Musk finds most troublesome, and the editing feature after Twitter's release are also priorities in the transformation plan. Musk's brother Kimbal Musk mentioned that Web3 has a fair voting mechanism, which could be applied to the product to drive out bots and scammers.

In terms of business models, the advertising business will inevitably undergo significant adjustments. In an open letter released on Twitter yesterday, Musk emphasized Twitter's advertising business, stating that if done well, it would benefit users and the ecosystem, and he is also committed to making Twitter an excellent "advertising platform."

However, from the text chats before the acquisition and public statements, Musk and Jack Dorsey both agreed that the advertising model should not be adopted, even though last year 90% of Twitter's revenue came from ads. However, their reasons for opposing it differed. Jack Dorsey believed that the advertising model would enhance the government's and advertisers' control over Twitter. In contrast, Musk argued that relying on advertising for survival would greatly enhance the power of companies to dictate policies, which is not decentralized enough. According to a plan Musk previously submitted to investors, he expects to reduce Twitter's advertising revenue share from about 90% in 2020 to 45% by 2028.

Besides the advertising model, what other revenue-generating plans will be expanded? In the text records, Musk mentioned the idea of charging fees for content publication. "I once had a B plan, which was a blockchain version of Twitter. 'Tweets' would be embedded in transactions, and users would have to pay 0.1 Doge to publish or retweet comments."

In the text chat, Musk also mentioned more ideas about a "blockchain version of Twitter," which may be applied to Twitter in the future.

Specifically, Musk believes that the platform could also allow payments, messaging, and linking like Twitter. The difference is that each message could exist on the blockchain, and users would need to pay a small fee, which would reduce most spam and fake accounts. At the same time, there would be no "choking" censorship, ensuring freedom of speech.

Secondly, a massive real-time database needs to be built to store copies of all blockchain messages, including all information sent and received by users, as well as information about followers and those being followed.

Then, a mobile application similar to Twitter is needed, allowing users to access the database from the cloud.

Although Musk has proposed various ideas for transforming Twitter using blockchain, he is not optimistic about the specific level of implementation, even with advisors like Jack Dorsey and Kimbal Musk, who are advocates of blockchain/Crypto/Web3.

When discussing the acquisition of Twitter with FTX founder SBF, Musk declined to join the blockchain-related debate and expressed a pessimistic attitude, "When peer-to-peer networks cannot reach the bandwidth and speed of the internet, a blockchain Twitter is almost impossible. If every point is 'packed' too large, it contradicts the purpose of a decentralized network."

After the acquisition of Twitter, who will manage it? Will there be significant personnel changes?

As of the time of writing, Musk has not made a clear statement, but according to Bloomberg, Musk (Elon Musk) plans to serve as Twitter's CEO. CNBC finance reporter David Faber also tweeted that Twitter is now under Musk's responsibility, and former CEO Parag Agrawal and former CFO Ned Segal have left the company headquarters. The media outlet The Spectator Index reported that Musk has fired Twitter's head of legal policy, who decided to ban Trump's account.

Parag Agrawal's departure from Twitter is not surprising. From the text chats, it appears that Parag Agrawal and Musk were almost at odds. Musk expressed dissatisfaction with Parag Agrawal's efficiency, stating, "He moves too slowly, trying to please people who will never be happy." After one meeting, Jack Dorsey also told Musk, "At least you can't work together."

Moreover, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who pushed for this acquisition and has a close personal relationship with Musk, is also unlikely to participate in the project. When asked in the text chat whether he would bring Jack Dorsey back to Twitter, Musk replied that Jack Dorsey is focused on Bitcoin and Web3 and will not return.

According to the disclosed texts, Musk prefers to bring in more tech-oriented talent rather than management-oriented talent. In response to headhunters recommending Uber's professional managers, Musk replied, "I don't want to meet any CXOs; I need people who can write good code, hire good engineers, not management talent."

In addition to the core management team, will there be other significant personnel changes after Twitter is acquired? Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported, citing informed sources, that Musk had told potential investors that he planned to lay off nearly 75% of Twitter's 7,500 employees. In a Q&A with Twitter employees in June, he also mentioned the need to "rationalize the workforce" and cut $800 million in personnel expenses.

However, shortly after, Bloomberg reported, citing informed sources, that Musk denied plans for significant layoffs within Twitter.

How are the projects aiming to revolutionize Twitter doing?

As Musk inferred, implementing a decentralized "Twitter" based on blockchain is not easy. Steemit, Block.one's Voice, and others were among the earliest dedicated to decentralized social media, but most have either dissolved or been forced to pivot. Mastodon, which has achieved considerable success with a user interface similar to Twitter, still has a significant gap in user numbers and activity compared to Twitter.

Nevertheless, there are still many projects in the decentralized social track. Previously, ChainCatcher briefly introduced nine representative early projects, including Lens Protocol, Bluesky, DeSo, Mem Protocol, Cyberconnect, Atem Network, BBS Network, 5Degrees, NFTychat, etc.

Among them, the project initiated by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky, is particularly noteworthy. This project was initially launched by Twitter but operates independently from Twitter. This project, which shares common visionary figures with Twitter, may provide some insights for Twitter's path to decentralization.

Currently, Bluesky's mechanism design clearly states that the development and adoption of decentralized protocols are the way to establish a strong technological foundation, and it will be independent of any single blockchain.

From the initial version code released by Bluesky, the review mechanism operates at multiple levels through aggregation algorithms, reputation-based thresholds, and user choices. Additionally, service providers must delete illegal content according to local laws.

In terms of specific architecture, Bluesky combines the portability of "self-certifying protocols" with a user-friendly experience under a delegated custody mechanism, allowing users not to have to run their own infrastructure, while developers can build high-performance applications.

Bluesky has announced its first batch of community projects, including decentralized social networks Mastodon, manyver.se, Planetary, Iris, the encrypted chat tool Element, the peer-to-peer browser BeakerBrowser, video conferencing tool Meething, video playback tool Watchit, music streaming platform Audius, and Web 3.0 privacy and data protection project Mask Network, among others. However, there seems to be no substantial cooperation at present.

Although Bluesky's progress has been relatively slow, it has also been updating its latest developments just before the deadline for Musk's acquisition of Twitter.

On October 19, Bluesky planned to rename its ADX protocol to the Authenticated Transport (AT) protocol. The AT protocol will operate on a federated network, a type of network configuration with a central management framework that can allocate shared resources across multiple connected networks or locations.

Bluesky explained this network model with examples, such as many sites running the protocol, allowing users to choose among providers. In turn, individuals or businesses can choose self-hosting. The effect is that after the AT protocol enables account exchanges between providers, it will not lead to any data loss or affect social graphs, returning greater control over content and connectivity to users.

The project has a still-under-construction official website and is about to release a social-centric Bluesky application based on the AT protocol. It is reported that just 48 hours after the preview application was released, 30,000 people had entered the waiting list to register for its application.

However, compared to Twitter's massive user base, Bluesky's progress is indeed slow. From the blog paper of its current CEO Jake Graber, it can be seen that the immaturity of algorithmic functions based on Web3 is a major obstacle, "The networks we use today rely on content discovery algorithms, but Web3 needs to further refine its algorithmic functions to enhance user experience."

Additionally, in Jake Graber's view, the social graphs, user profiles, identity and reputation proofs, content aggregation, indexing and discovery, as well as curation and moderation methods in Web3 are still not mature enough.

In the future, the social media field will present a situation where multiple reform routes run in parallel: the self-revolution of the old Web2 media Twitter, the token incentive model route of Web3 social media, and the intermediate route of Bluesky, competing and learning from each other, potentially giving birth to a new paradigm of social media.