On ABC NewsRadio, Angelo Carusone explains how Elon Musk catering to a “niche” far-right audience has hurt Twitter’s revenue
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On ABC NewsRadio, Angelo Carusone explains how Elon Musk catering to a “niche” far-right audience has hurt Twitter’s revenue
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From December 19, 2022, on ABC NewsRadio
THOMAS ORITI (HOST): This is an interesting one. Millions of Twitter users have asked Elon Musk to step down as the head of Twitter in a poll the billionaire created and promised to abide by. So far, there's no word on whether Elon Musk would step aside. He subsequently said there was no CEO who could keep Twitter alive. It's the latest chapter in what's been a chaotic and turbulent period for the social media platform under Musk's leadership, with rapidly sort of changing policies that are issued and withdrawn or changed. Angelo Carusone is chairman and president of the media watchdog group Media Matters. He spoke this morning with ABC News Radio's Tess Orrick, saying it's unclear whether he's going to follow through and honor the poll.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA CHAIR AND PRESIDENT): I mean, the genesis is that he really made a bunch of people mad because he made a series of pretty dramatic policy changes. And some part of that is -- is the journalist thing. But the thing that really set everybody off that he was responding to was on a whim, he changed Twitter’s policy to prohibit the use or the sharing of outside social media accounts. So you couldn't say link somebody to your Instagram or Facebook or your TikTok or your Mastodon account. And a lot of people were really mad about that because that is what creators do. If you're an Internet creator or you -- you cross-pollinate your audiences. And that's kind of how you stay in touch with everybody and how you grow. And the backlash against that was intense. And I think one way in which he tried to navigate the backlash was to give users a chance to sort of, you know, sort of sort of give him the middle finger almost.
TESS ORRICK (ABC NEWSRADIO REPORTER): Yeah. And as you said, Musk has said there's no appropriate CEO to replace him. And one of the problems there is that a lot of the top executives were fired or resigned when Musk took over. So is this a problem of his own making?
CARUSONE: Yes, this is absolutely a problem of his own making it. And I would also argue that it sometimes nothing is better than something. And you could make the case that Twitter would be better off not having a CEO in the form of Elon Musk than actually having Elon Musk. Because what Musk is doing is he is so deeply red-pilled right now, he's so reflexively catering to a very niche or subset right-wing audience that he has really lost his ability to see Twitter as a part of a of a much vaster information ecosystem. And the consequence of that is not just turning off advertisers and sort of suffocating his revenue streams, but it's also making users not feel faith and confidence in the platform and therefore they start to use it less. His power users will start to move off to other platforms. And that's -- that is the challenge here is that I really do think it's the case that because he gutted the company from its top leadership and he's also created the conditions that, you know, of hollowing out so many other parts of the company and sort of positioning it such that he could only be the connective tissue, in some ways, it is a problem of his own making because he's made it such that he is the only one that has the keys. And you know, everybody has a spare set of keys to even the most insignificant things. So it's very strange that he would sort of create a scenario that very purposely makes it so that it can't operate without him. I don't believe what he's saying. But, you know, he has really created a lot of these problems.
And I understand why it would be hard for somebody to come in and continue to do what he's doing. I mean, instead of doing more damage control today, for instance, he spent his time talking to a guy by the name of Ali Alexander, who is one of the organizers of the January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol, assuring him that he would soon have his Twitter account restored. You know, and that's kind of what I mean by focusing so much more on a very niche sort of right-wing extreme audience, as opposed to really thinking about how he can sort of right the ship of Twitter as a whole.
ORRICK: Okay. And so just finally, you obviously know this space very well. We've seen a lot over the last few weeks. You know, as you mentioned, the band Twitter accounts of several journalists, the policy changes. What are you watching for next?
CARUSONE: What am I watching for next? I am watching for Elon Musk to roll out some new features in the beginning of the year that will include things like expanded private groups so that it'll look a little bit more like Telegram, which is an encrypted chat communication tool that's going to end up being a safe haven for extreme activity and in particular, white nationalists. It is definitely something that they've been very excited about. So I think that actually the problem will get worse. Some extremist organizers will use that feature, too.
And then I think the other thing that he's going to do is to continue to poke individuals that have wronged him where he perceives they have wronged him. And that's going to be other journalistic figures and more prominent voices that have been critical of his work. He's going to target investors and he may get into a scuffle or two with another big company like we saw with Apple so that he could try to pull back and woo back some advertising revenue because there's a real serious revenue cliff that he's heading into at the beginning of January, which is that he's going to you know, most of the advertisers have left and the few that are still there are just letting their contracts expire. He has to sell a whole bunch of new ads in January. And right now, it's -- it's basically a desert.
ORITI: It's an interesting saga, isn't it? Chairman and president of the media watchdog group Media Matters, Angelo Carusone there, speaking with ABC NewsRadio's Radio's Tess Orrick.