We Robot, Transparency & Pyramid Schemes
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #219 ❤️
This week, apologies in advance but we’re going to be all things Elon Musk, because it’s just impossible not to following the Tesla We Robot event.
We’re talking futuristic cars, robots, and whether it’s a huge fail or not, plus X’s latest antics, from their recent transparency report to literally paying people to use it.
Plus, what is it actually like to work for the guy?
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Welcome To We Robot
If you’re a friend of the newsletter, or the podcast, you’ll know that we are obsessed with I-Robot and it’s depiction of a robotic, AI-infused future. As, so it seems, is Elon Musk.
At his latest Tesla event, We Robot, Musk introduced us to the Cybercab, the Robovan, and his new humanoid robots, called Optimus. Hiliariously, the director of Irobot posted side-by-side comparison images of the robots, and the cars and public transport in his film and at the Tesla event, with the caption “Hey Elon, can I have my designs back please?”
Despite the blatant plagiarism on the style, iRobot is set in 2035, Tesla is bringing the future forward, right? Wrong, in true Tesla fashion, none of this stuff actually exists yet, and despite claims that the cars will begin development in 2027 at the latest, we’ve learned to doubt his word when it comes to timelines, and so have investors.
Following the event, Tesla stocks were down, and people basically don’t get what they’re trying to sell us with these cars.
When it comes to the robots, Musk promises that the final, but of course, currently non-existent Optimus will be able to mow your grass or even look after your children, and people were impressed by what they saw at the event.
Robots chatting to people, serving drinks wearing cowboy hats, dancing in a glass box… just cool normal stuff.
HOWEVER, the robots are not controlled by AI as hinted at by the boss man, they were actually mostly operated by humans behind the scenes.
So thank you to Elon Musk for showing us literally nothing except his own delusions of grandeur, as usual.
#2 -Transparency First
Or at least, three years later. That’s right, X have published their first transparency report, three years after Twitter’s last report was published.
Back in the heyday of rules and regulations, or, as Musk would say, before he freed free speech, Twitter published a transparency report every year. The report included how many accounts were flagged, what they were flagged for, and the action taken by Twitter in response, i.e. how many of those accounts were suspended or blocked.
For example, in 2021 11.6 million accounts were reported on Twitter, of which 4.3 million were actioned and 1.3 million suspended. According to X’s report, over 224 million accounts or examples of content were flagged, with 5.2 million being suspended.
Yeah, that’s a lot more accounts being flagged. And unsurprisingly, reports of abuse and harassment are high, but the sanctions related to them are not.
While in 2021, 1 million of those 4.3 million accounts sanctioned were in relation with hateful content, in the new X report the company say they’ve taken action on only 2,369 accounts for posting hateful content.
A former member of Twitter’ moderation research team has said that this may be to do with the fact that X changed what counts as hate speech to, well, not a lot. Last year they changed policies around misgendering and deadnaming along with Covid disinformation.
And another thing, why are they posting this transparency report now, after three years of nothing? Well, it’s been described as a “last-ditch” effort to get advertisers back. Like saying, hey, look, we do moderate over here! Your ads aren’t going to appear next to racial slurs or doxing, honestly!
Experts say that they can be as transparent as they want now, but the damage of the last three years might already be done.
#3 – Is X a Pyramid Scheme Now?
The rules of how the artist formerly known as Twitter now works are confusing, unusual, and most of all, change every five minutes.
Since last year, X has shared ad revenue with creators on the platform based on how many verified users see ads in reply to their posts. As long as you had generated at least fifty dollars in ad revenue, you could hope to see a cut of that, and some users reported earning thousands of dollars.
This week, the company have announced that creators will now be paid based on “engagement” with their content from Premium users. The idea being that the more people that subscribe to X Premium and engage with content from other Premium users, the more money they all make.
Is this a pyramid scheme? This is pretty much describing a pyramid scheme… right?
The whole Premium users thing is already a bit weird. They already get priority in tweet replies, the level of which already depends on which tier they subscribe to. Again, a bit pyramid-schemey.
X promises to allow creators to “earn a living” on the platform, but not as a grifter – they’ve stated that they will remove users who artificially inflate their views from the programme, and that only “genuine interactions” will be rewarded.
Also, paying people to talk to each other on your platform… feels like Musk is paying us to come to his party.
#4 - Elon Musk’s Secrets To Success
If you, like us, often find yourself asking – how? How did this man become so successful? Apparently the reasons are the following:
1 – Ability to identify and capitalize on emerging trends and technologies
Maybe. He missed the mark a bit on AI but sure, EV is trendy, spaceX is focused on emerging technology, and he’s capitalized on that.
2 – Willingness to take risks.
We literally can’t argue with that one, homeboy is risky.
3 – Talent in branding and marketing.
His branding isn’t to everyone’s taste and his marketing is often unethical, including capitalizing on natural disasters and wars, but marketing is marketing.
4 – Strong leadership style.
If we’re putting no good or bad judgement on the word strong, again, sure…
5 – Willingness to share knowledge and expertise.
Agreed. The man loves to talk about himself.
6 – Ability to learn from his mistakes and change track.
He’s made business errors, he jumps around a lot, but his net worth is almost 245 billion, higher than Jeff Bezos and over twice as much as Bill Gates, so he must be doing something right.
Love him or hate him, he’s “successful”, it’s just a fact. Is it for these six reasons, or is it just a terrible stroke of luck for us, those who have to deal with him?
#5 - The Inside Track
Sure, he’s successful, but what is it like working for him?
Esther Crawford, a product manager at Twitter when Musk took over, went viral in 2022 for posting “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,”. Three months later, she and her whole team were fired, which she described as “the best gift” after working under Musk.
She described him as someone with a lot of technical knowledge that may make him a formidable boss for SpaceX or Tesla projects, but lacking the empathy and social intelligence it takes to work on a communication platform. Shocker.
More worryingly as a boss, she said that he had no interest in listening to in-house or even external experts on the projects he was working on, preferring to make decisions either on a whim, following his “instinct” or asking the closes sycophant he had to hand, whether that be a friend, a Twitter poll or his biographer (yes, really).
According to her, working under a boss whose humour changed at the drop of the hat and who followed no policies when it came to decision making was a nightmare.
Let’s hope his middle management are easier for employees to deal with, but as we all know, leaders lead by example.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Gen Z Marketing Script
As a bit of a palate cleanser from Musk, go check out the latest trend on TikTok – “we let Gen Z write the marketing script”.
Usually featuring a bemused boomer spouting phrases like “it’s giving (insert niche adjective about the company here)” and the word “slay”.
Funny the first few times, even if Wired magazine describes listening to them as like being “a nail in a linguistic coffin”.
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