Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

by Kate Conger, Ryan Mac, Edoardo Ballernini (Narrator)

Rising star New York Times technology reporters, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, tell for the first time the full and shocking inside story of Elon Musk’s unprecedented hostile takeover of Twitter and the forty-four-billion-dollar deal’s seismic political, social, and financial fallout. The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media—where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before. While its founder had idealistically dreamed of building a "digital town square," he detested Wall Street and never focused on building a profitable business. Musk joined the platform in 2010 and, by 2022, had become one of the site’s most influential users, hooking over 80 million followers with a mix of provocations, promotion of his companies, and attacks on his enemies. To Musk, Twitter — once known for its almost absolute commitment to free speech — had badly lost its way. He blamed it for the proliferation of what he called the “woke mind virus” and claimed that the survival of democracy and the human race itself depended on the future of the site. In January of 2022, Musk began secretly accumulating Twitter stock. By April, he was its largest shareholder, and soon after, made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for the unimaginable sum of $44 billion dollars. Backed into a corner, Twitter’s board accepted his offer—but Musk quickly changed his mind, forcing Twitter to sue him to close the deal in October. The richest man on earth controlled one of the most powerful media platforms in the world—but at what price? Before long Twitter would be gone for good, replaced by something radically different, as Musk remade the company in his own image from the ground up. The story of the showdown between Musk and Twitter and his eventual takeover of the company is unlike anything in business or media that has come before. In vivid, cinematic detail, Conger and Mac follow the inner workings of the company as Musk lays siege to it, first from the outside as one of its most vocal users, and then finally from within as a contentious and mercurial leader. Musk has shared some of his version of events, but Conger and Mac have uncovered the full story through exclusive interviews, unreported documents, and internal recordings at Twitter following the billionaire’s takeover. With unparalleled sources from within and around the company, they provide a revelatory, three-dimensional, and definitive account of what really happened when Musk showed up, spoiling for a brawl and intent on revolution, with his merciless, sycophantic cadre of lawyers, investors, and bankers. This is the defining story of our time told with uncommon style and peerless rigor. In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost?

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Politics, Technology, History, Audiobook, Biography

15 pages, Audiobook

First published September 17, 2024

About the author

Kate Conger is a technology reporter for the New York Times. She writes about X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and its owner, Elon Musk. In more than a decade of covering the tech industry, she has written about the underground world of hackers, the use of artificial intelligence in autonomous weapons and labor uprisings in the gig economy. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elon Musk is, unfortunately for all of us, a consequential person in the world, just not in the way he thinks.

Despite having more money than God and the means to retire comfortably to a tropical island for the duration of several hundred lifetimes, Musk is painfully, embarrassingly, fixated on people's opinion of him, making any quiet enjoyment of his stupendous resources an utter impossibility. Musk and the world are worse off for it.

That's largely what this book is about. One man's myopic pursuit of owning Twitter. This book tells that story, twisty and unbelievable as it is, masterfully. Step by step the authors take you through the billionaires' early interest, his initial efforts, and his disastrous acquisition of the platform. The whole narrative is laid out with the precision of a prosecution case and the told with the verve of a first rate thriller. Despite being recent history that most of us lived through (and were made all too aware of) a thorough, fact based accounting like the one presented here is beneficial.

Unfortunately, an account like this becomes outdated as soon as it's published. Like a war torn country, the devastation that Musk's ego and incompetence wreck on the social media platform and the world at large changes and devolves from minute to minute. God only knows what future follies the world's richest child will perpetrate or how the rest of us will ultimately pay the price for it. One thing is certain though, clear eyed and incisive accounts like the one written in this book are absolutely vital for holding Musk accountable, if only to history.

[Sabrina Herr · Rating 5 out of 5]

the realist in me knows nothing hateful i have to say about this absolute buffoon will ever beat how his own daughter owns him on a regular basis

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely reading this feels like the classic *sicko* meme. And I’m not sure anyone now is looking for a book to tell them how stupid Elon is, but if you want to revel in that history a bit, these authors have done a good job at unpacking the business, personality, and culture of the cult surrounding Elon and the death of twitter

[Jibraun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ryan Mac and Kate Conger teamed up to pen this terrific book excoriating Elon Musk and his obvious narcissistic personality disorder, which led him to purchase Twitter in a fit of pique, only to destroy the business for no apparent reason other than Elon has the personal functioning of a teenager. The book details from beginning to end, through numerous sourced interviews, of how Elon became addicted Twitter, tried joining it only to buy it, and then destroy it from the inside because only he gets to break things (quite like a child with a toy).

But to say this book only focuses on Elon's destruction of Twitter is not accurate. It also focuses on the other cretins, narcissists, and servile dogs that populate Elon's orbit, along with other personalities that predated Elon at Twitter -- especially Jack Dorsey. Put another way, Elon isn't the only villain of the book. One evil megalomaniac can only succeed when other awful human beings came before him and other awful human beings enable him. That is what is described in this book. I recommend this for anyone who wants to know how the modern billionaire class can destroy pretty much anything, how Elon is one of the worst individuals alive, and/or anyone who likes or has liked Twitter previously. 4.75 stars.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know Elon Musk personally: let me start with that. I don't know how he behaves behind closed doors. I don't know if he secretly donates millions to charity. I don't know if he, deep down, is a wonderfully good person who loves his kids and respects women and tips his servers with an extremely generous 300% tip, in cash. I don't know what kind of person he is.

Unfortunately, the impression I have of him based on TV appearances and news articles is that he is a flaming douchebag. The fact that he and trump seem to be best buds says a lot. Then, on top of that, I just finished Kate Conger and Ryan Mac's book "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter", and my opinion hasn't changed. If anything, it is further reinforced by Conger/Mac's thorough and intensive investigative journalism.

To be fair, Musk isn't the only douchebag in the book. There is also Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and former CEO, who inexplicably aided and abetted Musk's takeover of Twitter and eventual destruction. Dorsey himself, in pictures, looks like he and Musk could be warring supervillains in the latest Bond film. There are an assortment of other business-y douchebags throughout the book, but I'll let you read about them. Just talking about them makes me feel icky.

I should have also prefaced this review by mentioning that I despise the business world and business people and what I call the "MBA-ification" of the world. I have always harbored a (knowingly unhealthy) hatred for most, if not all, CEOs, although in this politically charged atmosphere, I realize that it's not exactly kosher to say stuff like that. (See "Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare") It's apparently open season on CEOs.

Fuck it. I can't really shed a tear for these people, which I know isn't the most Christian way to feel, but I kind of handed in my "Christian" card years ago when white Christian evangelical nationalists started getting into bed with the Far Right.

Anyhoo: this is a quick and entertaining read, if you find the back room dealing and back-stabbing antics of awful white rich people fun to read about, which I apparently do. Congrats to Conger/Mac for an outstanding job of digging through the shitty and eye-watering mire of Muskworld.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy... if you had a low opinion of Musk before cracking this open, you're going to have an even lower one by the time you finish. I'm a firm believer in the "no great man" theory of history. Oh sure, there are great big buffoonish idiots who get outsize credit for the achievements of a collective mass of humanity engaged in civilization level projects throughout history, but I believe many of these "great" people are likely to have been narcissistic sociopaths whose grandiose opinion of themselves lent an unearned confidence to their every blundering misdeed. Musk seems to me to be the modern poster child for people of this ilk.

Musk comes off as the drunk blowhard you find out at a bar late at night, who's riding high off the idea that he's some kind of wunderkind because he got lucky throwing darts. He loves to crow about his prowess with throwing pointy objects, but he's running up a tab and any statistical analysis of his throws would reveal him to be an abysmal player. But he's buying rounds for anyone who'll shower him with praise, so, he thinks he's the second coming of whoever was a famous dart player (okay, this analogy has probably run its course).

The real world damage his cruelty caused, for no apparent reason other than to assuage his raging ego, is likely never to be fully tabulated. But this book makes a heroic effort, within the narrative structure it follows: more or less a linear timeline accounting for all the major elements of the saga that resulted in "the world's 'richest' man" acquiring, owning, and ultimately, destroying, Twitter.

When I was kid, some of the shops in my hometown had, "you break it, you buy it" signs up. In Musk's case, like a rich child who's never been denied instant kowtowing to his every caprice, he bought something explicitly *to* break it.

Musk is a thin-skinned bully. I've never had much sympathy for bullies.

[Chris March · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's the skinny, Elon Musk is a dunce. He's an incredibly petty, incredibly awkward, social dullard whose mythological rise to American titan is less attributable to any sort of Nikolai Tesla-esque genius, and more directly correlated with buying into already existing start-up companies and muscling the founders out.

This book is beautiful and compelling. It's hard to read without your face consistently jellying into absolute secondhand embarrassment – at Musk, who's highest goal is to exist online as a high school edgel0rd; at his sycophants, who would wash Musk's feet with their tongue if asked; for his poor children, who are all essentially fatherless and all left to navigate this world named something like Titan Soothsayer Mechanica Musk. I was never a believer that Twitter would save democracy or would serve a global open forum. It's an app. Even in it's "best days," it was still filled with morons, trolls and bots. But watching Musk explode this company is truly something.

Money can't buy class, as my grandma used to say, and this book is cold, hard proof of that axiom.

[Namera [The Literary Invertebrate] · Rating 4 out of 5]

⤅ Nonfiction Book of the Month: January 2025

Another year, another attempt to read at least one nonfiction book a month...

January starts off with a bang. I think this is actually the first nonfiction book I've read that's an account of events I've personally lived through and can remember, very different from my usual fare of true crime or disasters or history. In fact, there are tweets from Musk referenced in the book that I can remember actually seeing at the time they were posted.

This book cuts straight to the chase: it's an eminently readable and compelling account of the rise and fall of Twitter, culminating in its death and rebirth as X, the 'everything app'. One of the nice things about the book is that although we get enough of an overview of key founding figures (e.g. Jack Dorsey) and Twitter's birth to let us understand its culture and ethos, we don't waste too much time on its early history, and instead progress rapidly to its frantic last days and Musk's equally frantic first days in the role as Twitter's new owner.

There are eye-popping anecdotes enough (workers having to bring their own toilet paper to work, endless rounds of firing, stories of Musk's unpredictability) to make the book worth reading. My only main complaint would be that the authors' personal politics come across quite blatantly, even when couched in thinly objective terms. For example, Matt Walsh's documentary What is a Woman is described as 'transphobic and trolling'; while I suppose it qualifies as 'transphobic' if one defines that term to mean any questioning of gender identity, I fail to see how merely being humorously incisive qualifies it as 'trolling'. That sort of thing.

Dates can also get a little confusing, since the chapters aren't always 100% chronological and there are a huge number of strands woven into the narrative. And - though we can hardly blame the authors for this - the book, if anything, finishes too soon, around April 2024 or so. It doesn't touch at all on Musk's ever-more-rapid escalation in fame as he hitches his star to Donald Trump's new administration, and the last few chapters give the impression of having been written a bit hastily. I look forward to a newly published account of Musk's next actions - perhaps by these same authors.

[yerk · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow what a delicious hate-read

[theliterateleprechaun · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a friend asked if I’d like to accompany her to the first Vancouver Writers Fest Books & Ideas event, a book talk about Elon Musk, my first response was ‘no’. Then I realized that (1) I knew very little about this man, (2) I’d never used Twitter and didn’t really know how it worked. Yes, this would be the perfect opportunity to learn.

I read half of the 435-page ‘𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐢���𝐢𝐭: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐄𝐥𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐤 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫’ in preparation for the book talk and have just finished the second half, a month later!

First of all, THAT title. I love it when a title gives me pause and then the corners of my mouth curl up in a Cheshire cat grin! Got it. Clever.

Secondly, it was amazing to meet authors and New York Times technology reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. They were open about their research process and approached the book talk like a well-planned lecture! I had respect for their ‘no sides’ approach to reporting.

Thirdly, I enjoyed this book.

“𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙞𝙩’𝙨 𝙖 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡 𝙬𝙚𝙖𝙠𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚𝙙, 𝙖 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡 𝙬𝙚𝙖𝙠𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨,” 𝙈𝙪𝙨𝙠 𝙨𝙖𝙞𝙙, 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙣 𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙛𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙖 𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙤𝙛 𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚. “𝙄 𝙙𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩.” “𝙄’𝙢 𝙘𝙚𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙜𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙤 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙨𝙤𝙧𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙖𝙥 𝙙𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙖𝙢 [“𝙖 𝙙𝙚𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙗𝙚𝙞𝙣𝙜”].

“𝙈𝙪𝙨𝙠 𝙢𝙖𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙞𝙢𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙏𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙡𝙤𝙗𝙖𝙡 𝙩𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙨𝙦𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙧 𝙗𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙’𝙨 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙖𝙥𝙥. 𝘽𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙢𝙪𝙘𝙝 𝙨𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙧. 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙧 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙖𝙙𝙢𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙩, 𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙞𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙞𝙢𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙖 𝙗𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙛 𝙢𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩, 𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩. 𝙃𝙚 𝙤𝙬𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙏𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧 - 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙜𝙤𝙣𝙚.”

$44B! Imagine overpaying to control a platform where he could measure his self-worth in likes and replies. As was shared in the book talk, Musk is “allergic to criticism” and this is perhaps why he bought himself the largest audience in the world. I was glad the authors discussed Trump’s departure from Twitter and how the two men “thawed” and reunited for business and politics. Although I’m Canadian, I still keep an eye on American politics and am curious about what this duo will do next.

I’d read another book written by this duo on this topic!

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Character Limit, New York Times technology journalists Kate Conger and Ryan Mac narrate Elon Musk's takeover of social media platform Twitter, now rebranded by Musk as X. For folks who enjoy tales of business schadenfreude (including myself), this is an engaging, well-reported read for which Conger and Mac interviewed over 150 people (some on the record, some off the record) and drew from other sources including, of course, tweets. It is probably an understatement to say that Musk does not come off well in the book; of note, Mac was one of a half dozen reporters whose Twitter accounts were suspended by Musk for unclear reasons (though Mac's account has since been restored), which Mac gleefully points out several times in this takedown (pun intended). I haven't read Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Musk that was also reported on during this time period (Elon Musk), but perhaps that would have a more pro-Musk account on things, if folks are interested in a more balanced story.

Further reading: rollicking tales of business schadenfreude
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork by Reeves Wiedemann
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis (aka, the authorized biography of Sam-Bankman Fried and FTX gone terribly wrong)
Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire by Andrew Chow (similar story, less in-depth focus on SBF)
Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn by Nick Kostov
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric by Thomas Gryta
The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J.Crew by Maggie Bullock

My statistics:
Book 260 for 2024
Book 1863 cumulatively

[nathan timmel · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book is well-written, the more I read, the more my Spidey Sense tingled, and the less I felt I could trust the authors.

This all came to a head at Chapter 23, supposedly about Peiter Zatko—AKA "Mudge." Zatko wasn't interviewed for the book, which means that even though the reasons provided for his motivations and actions are largely speculative, they are written from a place of authority.

This is not journalism, or fact-finding; it is straightforward bias, and it is unfortunate.

If the chapter about Zatko contains more innuendo than fact, how are we supposed to trust the book as a whole?

We cannot, and the idea it was written from a point of agenda-before-truth becomes apparent, which is sad.

To compliment the Zatko example, later in the book, the authors assign labels to journalists being discussed. Instead of simply noting, "Journalist 'A' wrote..." they added what they thought the journalists' political leanings were.

This was completely unnecessary, and by adding labels, it gave a better perspective of the authors' own agenda/bias, than it said about the journalists being discussed.

While reading the book, I enjoyed watching Elon run Twitter into the ground, and giggled when I read about his mood swings and tantrums.

Now, I fear I was enjoying confirmation bias, and not straightforward factual reporting.

[Jon Koebrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Character Limit is an exceptionally well-researched and well-written history of the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk and how Musk managed his new toy. The book illuminates Musk’s thin skin, impulsiveness, paranoia, and extreme confidence. The book is compelling and includes a staggering amount of detail on the sale, culture, and lay-offs including perspective of the actual participants. 4.5 stars.

[The Bookish Elf · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Character Limit, investigative journalists Kate Conger and Ryan Mac pull back the curtain on one of the most polarizing business takeovers in modern history—the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. This isn’t just the story of a billionaire buying a company. It’s a sharp, deeply reported autopsy of a platform once envisioned as a digital town square, now gutted, rebranded, and repurposed into something wholly different—and arguably more dangerous.

The authors, both seasoned New York Times technology reporters, bring a level of authority, precision, and journalistic rigor that turns Character Limit into a vital document of our times. Through exclusive interviews, internal documents, and behind-the-scenes narratives, they reconstruct not only the political and financial mechanics of Musk’s hostile takeover but also its human cost and cultural fallout.

The Plot: How Musk Broke the Bird

While nonfiction doesn’t unfold like a novel, Character Limit has an undeniably cinematic structure. Divided into three acts, it mirrors a classical tragedy—ambitious rise, chaotic upheaval, and unsettling denouement.

Act I: A Network in Decline: The book traces Twitter’s troubled adolescence—mismanagement under Jack Dorsey, failed monetization strategies, ideological fragmentation, and toxic user culture. Dorsey’s own ambivalence about capitalism, combined with Silicon Valley’s libertarian bent, created a company with cultural influence but no business backbone. This made it vulnerable.

Act II: Musk Enters the Scene: Conger and Mac deftly map out Musk’s entrance—not as a savior, but as a superfan-turned-overlord. From secret stock accumulation to backroom boardroom maneuvers, the authors capture the intrigue and absurdity of Musk’s takeover. His Twitter persona—part troll, part tech messiah—is juxtaposed against his chaotic, impulsive management style.

Act III: Twitter Becomes X: This is where the narrative darkens. Employees are fired en masse, policies are rewritten on a whim, and the platform itself begins to unravel. With moderation gutted, verification systems upended, and Musk’s inner circle consolidating power, what remains is no longer Twitter. It’s Musk’s megaphone, a dystopian echo chamber rebranded as "X."

The authors don’t just chronicle events—they dissect them. Every moment is contextualized within broader questions of free speech, platform responsibility, capitalism, and power.

The Main Characters: From CEO to Cult Leader

Elon Musk: A Mercurial God-King

Musk emerges as a paradox: genius innovator and chaotic despot. Conger and Mac paint a nuanced portrait. He’s not a one-dimensional villain but a complex figure driven by both genuine beliefs (free speech absolutism, distrust of “woke” politics) and darker impulses (narcissism, paranoia, revenge). The narrative doesn’t lean into caricature; it reveals how Musk’s personal insecurities and unchecked power collide disastrously.

Jack Dorsey: The Disillusioned Founder

Dorsey is the ghost haunting this story. His dream of a decentralized, open network crumbles under the weight of real-world complexity. The book doesn't excuse his detachment but sympathetically shows how his ideological purism helped create the void Musk would eventually fill.

Twitter’s Employees: The Collateral Damage

Perhaps the most poignant sections are those that give voice to the rank-and-file. Engineers, data scientists, trust-and-safety teams—many who truly believed in Twitter’s mission—find themselves disoriented, silenced, or discarded. One particularly gripping chapter recounts a data scientist confronting Musk over misinformation, ending in a fiery, expletive-filled dismissal. These moments humanize the story, making its stakes brutally clear.

Writing Style: Analytical Precision with Narrative Flair

Conger and Mac strike an admirable balance between reportorial objectivity and narrative drive. The prose is vivid but not sensational. Every sentence feels measured, sourced, and substantiated. Yet the book never reads like dry reportage. Instead, it crackles with tension, irony, and dramatic beats worthy of a Hollywood adaptation.

- The metaphors are sharp without being overwrought (e.g., likening Musk’s takeover to a siege).

- The pacing is brisk, thanks to short, punchy chapters and fluid transitions between past and present.

- Dialogues are quoted verbatim from transcripts, giving scenes a documentary feel.

In adapting the authors’ voice, one senses a careful restraint—anchored in fact, not flair. It’s the voice of two journalists who let the absurdity of events speak for itself.

Themes: Technology, Power, and the Myth of Free Speech

At its heart, Character Limit is not just a business book—it’s a sociopolitical cautionary tale. Several powerful themes emerge:

- The Myth of the Tech Messiah: Musk’s rise mirrors a cultural tendency to deify tech CEOs as saviors. The book punctures this myth with chilling clarity.

- The Fragility of Institutions: Twitter’s implosion under Musk reveals how platforms meant to support democracy can be reshaped to serve individual egos.

- Free Speech vs. Harmful Speech: The tension between freedom and responsibility plays out across the book’s chapters. Musk’s absolutism is juxtaposed against the real consequences of unmoderated platforms—conspiracy theories, harassment, and disinformation.

- Capitalism as a Weapon: Musk didn’t just buy Twitter—he weaponized capitalism. His financial might allowed him to reshape public discourse with no checks, no balances.

Praise: What the Book Gets Right

- Depth of Reporting: The sheer access Conger and Mac had is remarkable. Internal memos, transcripts, employee interviews—this is not a surface-level story.

- Narrative Cohesion: Despite the sprawling timeline, the authors keep the story tight, clear, and coherent.

- Balance: They are critical without being preachy, detailed without drowning in minutiae.

- Historical Value: This book will stand as a key reference point in understanding the intersection of tech, media, and politics in the 2020s.

Critique: Where It Could Have Gone Further

While Character Limit is impressive in scope and detail, it isn’t flawless.

- Limited Global Lens: The focus remains largely on the U.S. The global implications of Twitter’s transformation—especially in regions where Twitter is a lifeline for dissent—are not fully explored.

- Lack of Psychological Profiling: We get Musk’s actions, but less of his inner life. The book resists speculation, but deeper insights into Musk’s psychology could have added more dimension.

- No Alternative Futures Explored: The epilogue hints at where “X” might go, but doesn’t delve deeply into what alternatives to Twitter might emerge or how decentralization (e.g., Mastodon, Bluesky) could reshape discourse.

Still, these are minor shortcomings in an otherwise compelling and necessary work.

Final Thoughts: The Cost of a Megaphone

In the age of virality and volatility, Character Limit is a timely, essential read. It’s a reckoning with the unchecked influence of tech billionaires, the fragility of digital platforms, and the cost of confusing freedom with chaos.

Twitter was never perfect. But under Musk, it became a mirror—not for society, but for a single man’s ideology, insecurities, and whims. And as Conger and Mac show, that mirror now reflects all of us.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, as one reviewer already mentioned, is a book that becomes outdated the moment it’s published.

With a deadly mix of ego, temper tantrums, and an ungodly net worth, Elon Musk will, unfortunately, always be relevant. No matter how childish and incompetent he’s proven himself to be.

Do I really need to get into his horrible work at DOGE? This is a huge part of the problem that I have repeatedly mentioned. For whatever bizarre reason, far too many people believe that billionaires know everything. Because Elon Musk is a great engineer and did well with Tesla, and Space-X, this somehow qualifies him as a genius on all things.

And don’t simply take my word for it… read this book to understand how his conflicted feelings of needing to be praised and liked vs. feeling this praise should come automatically to him (he should never have to explain himself) results in the destruction of jobs, livelihoods, his family, his own life legacy.

And if a man is willing to sacrifice his own life legacy over a tantrum, then is this really someone we should have entrusted to fire people from much-needed federal jobs (only for so many of them to be called back: oops, our bad, turns out you’re needed to make this country operate after all). 🤦🏼‍♀️

So much of this reading and Musk’s actions following this book gave myself (along with countless others) secondhand embarrassment. I don’t know if it is his mental illness, but I can’t really feel too sorry for someone that thinks it’s a joke to fire millions of workers from their jobs while wielding a bedazzled chainsaw. I’m just glad to see at least HE’S gone.

This book is incredibly well-sourced and many of us will remember this whole nonsense playing out not too long ago. It has a bit of a liberal bias, sure, but not so overwhelmingly that it can’t be read by those of all political stripes. For anyone still heralding Musk as a genius after seeing such idiocy play out for the entire world to see, I worry for you. And if you read this book and still come to that conclusion… well, maybe you didn’t read it all?

You just don’t put someone who has admitted to not understanding how empathy works into such a place of power in the government. For all the people still worshipping him (because apparently as long as you have money, you’ll always have sycophants) - go work for him in his new political party. I’m sure you’ll be happy to do just as much work for him (but without the same paycheck or any of the credit) - just as he expects of all his Tesla and Space-X employees.

4/5.

[Nik Maack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to be a big Twitter user. Then, after Musk bought it, I found the site less and less usable. At one point I noticed that for every five tweets, there was one ad. I would block the advertisers. It didn't help. The same dumb ads kept appearing, because the advertisers had a ridiculous number of accounts. I started looking at alternatives. Mastodon was unusable. Threads was another Facebook nightmare, where the algorithm controls what you see. But Bluesky seemed like it had possibility. And eventually I moved there, and found a new community. And I play there now.

Recently, what with Musk basically marrying Donald Trump, Twitter was seen yet another mass exodus of people. It's kind of amazing to see, every time it happens. When Musk pissed off Brazil, and they shut down Twitter in that country, Brazilians poured in to Bluesky. People joked we would all have to learn Portuguese.

All of this to say, I am somewhat familiar with the nonsense that took place when Musk bought Twitter and slowly started hammering it into the ground. When he got rid of verified accounts, it was painfully obvious to me and everyone that this was a dumb move. When he started ranting about the "woke mind virus", my circle of friends were horrified.

Reading this book is like having all the dumb decisions, crazy actions, and foolish statements of Musk all neatly organized in a row. Up until reading the book, I knew of some of these things. Seeing it put together as a story is stunning, hilarious, depressing, and bizarre. And there are details I was unaware of, like "Twitter Hotel" and some cult-like activity in the company.

I have friends who used to believe Musk is a genius. It gets harder and harder to hold on to that, as the man's behaviour gets more and more erratic. This book both makes me hate the man, and pity him. He does such terrible things (getting people doxed and attacked by his followers) and then whines that nobody likes him.

As much as I hate to admit it, his saying he has Asperger's kind of explains a lot. He does not have emotions or empathy like a normal person. His desire to be liked, respected, powerful, and rich appears to be slowly driving him insane.

Sorry, this is a rant. Back to the book. It's excellent, linear, and clean. I listened to the audiobook, and it was well read and easy to follow. Yes, there are many many people in the story, and I sometimes lost track of who is who. But all the same, it was compelling and fascinating.

Recommended.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

** Should you read this book?**

Are you interested in how Elon and Vivek might go about leading the Dept of Gov Efficiency (DOGE) approaching cuts? I think this book might offer a timely insight and preview by telling the story of how Elon & Co went about massive cuts @ Twitter. Conger & Mac pull back the curtain on the acquisition to reveal that the man building a real world of Sci-Fi really loves a space opera. His actions and edicts juxtapose Star Wars Emperor’s power with the ineptness of Space Balls commanders. He’s often one of the most intelligent people in the room yet consistently makes the dumbest business decisions. Takeaways: 1. Elon is a narcissist. 2. A social media company is a far cry from a hard science based company like Tesla or SpaceX 3. The emotional intelligence required to run a company literally build around people and their emotions renders point #1 a fatal flaw. Bonus insight: There’s not room in DC for two narcissists, DT will boot Elon when he gets too much attention.

///

I am a big fan of SpaceX and the commercial space flight enterprise as a whole. I’ve read narrowly on Musk in that context. But with his full throated leap into right wing politics I picked up this book. It laid bare the limits of genius and pitfalls of narcissism. I will read Isaacson’s biography on Musk to see how he treats this material. I’m sure it will be a much more flattering picture.

[Holly Weston Bull · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been alternating reading about current events with reading about past events, mostly in an attempt to tamp down my anxiety over the state of America today.

Character Limit sort of bridges that gap: the current is Twitter’s transformation into X, and the past is the long and bizarre back story of how Twitter and Musk came to enter into this most surreal of marriages.

Authors Conger and Mac are excellent investigate reporters, and they know how to weave a narrative so that the reader can see how seemingly disparate threads so improbably came together to culminate in Elon Musk owning - and remaking - Twitter.

A couple of small quibbles: a character map would make it less difficult to keep track of the book’s huge cast of Twitter employees, lawyers, bankers, politicians, members of Musk’s posse, etc. There were also a few grammatical mistakes that could have used better editing. But these complaints are minor and not enough to bring the book down a whole star. Character Limit is a terrific piece of investigate reporting told well.

Four and half stars rounded up to five.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a confession to make, I am fascinated by Elon Musk, the worlds richest man because he somehow managed to convince investors that Tesla deserves to have a market cap higher than all other auto makers combined, because 'tech' and nonsense promises of self driving cars, despite constantly missing sales estimates and the increasing toxicity of the brand. Don't be left holding that bag.

If you've somehow missed the absolute clusterfuck that is Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter then this book really isn't for you, and if you followed it pretty closely there probably isn't a tonne of new information here, but it does a great job of contextualising, as well as provided view points from those around Musk and Twitter at the time.

It starts off strong, pointing out how multibillion dollar acquisitions are not new, companies buy companies, private equity, but a private citizen buying a company for $44b is completely unheard of and beyond bonkers, but so is the life of Elon Musk. To give the man the only credit he deserves, he is good at convincing people he can make money at least.

This book gets into the weeds around the whole process, we all know that Musk is a raging narcissist and obviously this book isn't going out of its way to dispute that, but it actually does a half decent job of humanising him, his obsession with Twitter, his thin skin, proclamations of being a free speech absolutist for himself but noone else, if they're criticising him. We get a lot of information about his 'goons' and the chaos they sow whereever they go, his bizarre loyalty pledges and his utter incompetance at running a social media company.

Still, all the juicy bits we've read before, its the nuance and perspective of a lot of people, especially the previous Twitter execs that you get here, and if anyone came out of this looking bad its Dorsey, obviously he's not as bad as Musk but he also seems to be on another planet and the people working under him deserved far better.

Overall the book is well paced, inciteful and puts the focus on the people who deserved it the most, the employees who watched the company they loved crumble under the strain of the worlds biggest manchild. The ultimate message of this book is a tale as old as time, you can be the richest man in the world, but you can't buy the loving messianic respect you feel you deserve, no matter how many people you scream at in the processes.

[Satyajit Chetri · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book really has nothing to add to the Twitter clusterfuck other than being slightly more up-to-date on events. Plus a lot more legal details.

[Ivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The facts were largely available in the public domain even for non-seekers. I'd say primary contribution is having them all in one place, collated with each other and in temporal order

The writing is a bit redundant: "mercurial CEO" and similar adjectives are generously used throughout as substitutes for the name even after the title made a suggestion on what conclusions are to be reached

General one-sidedness is unfortunate even in literary sense (e.g. swinging between the "positive" and "negative" episodes could have added more color). I also can't say the book builds up to a practical conclusion

[Jason Shnipes · Rating 5 out of 5]

unsurprisingly this dude sucks

[Edel Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will preface this by saying that I went into this book already thinking Elon Musk one of the most embarrassing, idiotic and dangerous individuals on the planet. And if you are of a similar disposition, you will absolutely love this book.

I would describe myself as an avid and devoted Twitter user from 2009 up until a couple of months, when the app’s unusability and links to someone I despised meant I officially joined the move to Bluesky. So while there are whole sections of this book that I remember happening in real time, the stories of what was going on behind the scenes is absolutely fascinating. It is impeccably researched and clearly laid out but it almost makes it more frustrating to see the facts, the indisputable facts of this man’s ineptitude and still see the unwavering loyalty and hero-worship he demands and receives from those around him.

Definitely one of my books of the year, highly recommend.

[Breann Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

character limit: story of why the only social media I now use is goodreads

if you want the exhaustive tea on the Twitter acquisition I can’t recommend this enough. points off because it’s a classic “written by a journalist” book and we all know i have beef with that. other points off for the fact there are 2 different people in Elon’s life named Grimes and i just don’t like that

[Jon Gaide · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is humiliating for Musk. A delicious read

[Will Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not much of a Twitter person, and I find Elon Musk pathetic, but I decided to read this because I knew it would give some interesting insight.

If you're in a similar boat and debating reading this, I'd recommend it. It's a testament to how someone with so much money is beholden to nobody, and how an addict running an operation that feeds their addiction is wholly self-destructive, while also being an unlikable person trying to force people to like him.

There is and never was a perfect approach to social media. It's a complex mix of sociology, systems theory, politics, and culture. Many mistakes made back when Twitter was smaller were repeated after the Musk takeover, as he didn't learn from what came before, but believed he knew better.

It's a great encapsulation of the threat that billionaires pose to everyone. I'd say that now that Musk is bankrolling the next US administration and wants to fund the far right in the UK, it's obvious how those with money can sway opinion in their favour, even denying the obvious.

I'd warn that reading this is incredibly frustrating, and half of this is recapping events that many of us remember, while adding useful company-internal context. It paints a stark timeline of the effect one incomprehensibly wealthy person can have on themselves, an organisation, and a society when they think they know best and are financially unlimited.

[Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first rule of absolute power is to make sure as few people as possible know you have it.

Historically the aristocracy has always gone to great lengths to hide the amount of power and influence they have over the lives of the masses. This tradition goes as far back as to the days of Rome where members of the patrician class carefully provided financial support for their desired political candidates from the shadows. Even today, oligarchs have gone through great lengths to evade public disclosures of political donations with dark money, a web of foundations that require multiple years of forensic accounting to follow in a endless spider web of shell companies.

Henry Luce famous for using Time magazine for pushing imperialist interventionist views, Rupert Murdoch with his empire of media outlets that also push political views that align with his economic fortune and even Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post who recently has stepped in and blocked the post from making political statements that could hurst his business interests. These figures are just a few examples of how the wealthy elite come to own media companies that are not always profitable in the sense of return of investment but are very influential in terms of changing the discourse. These figures linger in the background of their media empire. They don't put their face on the front of everything and try not to be the center of attention.

However, due to the decline in trust in institutions and mainstream media, podcasts have risen in immense popularity with audiences that dwarf traditional media.
in the past 5 years we have seen billionaires go on podcasts and essentially spread propaganda. Many of them present themselves as the victim against the government, they label investigations into their businesses as harassment or they try to pivot the countries problems to culture war issues. This has been extremely effective, you can use labels such as WOKE or DEI to describe the problems in this country as a substitute for corruption.


Which brings us to Musk, a man who puts himself at the center of everything. Who blatantly flexes his power whether it’s buying twitter outright or openly stopping bills in the U.S by threatening to primary the entirety of congress or trying to influence European politics with his fortune. Musk operates in the spotlight as the world’s richest human. He openly uses his fortune to get his way even if it comes at the cost of everyone else. The reason why oligarchs have gone through great lengths to hide their influence is because of the inevitable backlash that comes with it. Historically, humans don't like to be oppressed by power. This often leads to a backlash. Musk seems to be unaware of this or he believes that he can keep using populist language and present himself as "man of the people". Look at this passage below on Musk’s reasoning for buying twitter and see how Musk presents himself.

"I didn't do it because it would be easy. I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love. And I do so with humility, recognizing failure in pursuing this goal despite our best efforts is a very real possibility."

Look how Musk portrays himself, the richest man in the world did not buy twitter to make money, totally. Makes sense. He bought it to "Help humanity". One wonders how long this type of framing can last? How much longer can it be believable to the public? Musk has suspended accounts of political opponents to him, he has suspended journalists reporting on stories against candidates he supported, he has amplified views that he agrees with politically and economically. Musk has used twitter as a vehicle for his own political ambitions and power while having the facade of "Helping humanity".

Musk sees himself as self appointed emperor that is here to "save us" from whatever threat he perceives but "us" is usually a substitute for his business interests. Someone tweeted at Musk that Musk is like 50 George Soros's given how much money he gives to political parties. Musk responded that he donates because he perceived the modern day democratic party as going "far left". Notice here that Musk is explicitly determining what direction he determines the country should go in. It's also laughable to call the modern day corporate democratic party as "far left" in reality he is only concerned with anything that impedes his wealth . He is currently suing the national labor relations board as 'unconstitutional' so his workers cannot unionize against him. Is underpaying your workers "Good for humanity"? In the book, its revealed that Musk believes the FTC is weaponing its power against him and used his fortune to lobby against the current administration. The FTC also required him to report how many deaths his "self-driving-cars" account for. Trump who he donated 250 million to has already removed this request from the FTC.


Musk's capture of twitter is really a wild ride. At first he silently buys shares to become the single highest share holder in the company, makes recommendations to the company. Feels unheard and then quickly accelerates to buying the company. He makes an offer to the company and then the markets halve with the Russia-Ukraine war pushing oil prices higher and then interest rates rapidly rise. Musk quickly tries to back out of the deal but in the offer process, the deal is iron clad tight. Musk refuses to sign an NDA during the buyout process which waives his right to take a look at twitters proprietary information. So he has little understanding of what's going on in the company. He tries to back out of the deal, twitter sues him to enforce the deal. Musk is legally caught in an agreement he can't wiggle out from. So he tries to publicly lash out at the company, raising doubts about the company and its staff only to realize he is damaging the public image of the company he's going to buy. Musk creates enemies with the current employees of the company for really no benefit other than shit posting on twitter.

He then inherits the company and a downward spiral begins. Musk treats the entire staff as if they're stupid, proposes the same ideas that twitter internally had already came up with but chose not to go forward due to trade offs they deemed not worthy. They try to explain this to Musk but he thinks they're dumb. "What do they know? I have built rockets" is basically Musk's thought process. He goes ahead with his ideas and they blow up publicly. Embarrassing the company, meanwhile he fires 80% of the staff. He fills up the company with debt in order to buy it so he aggressively starts cost cutting often times going to far and firing people that he actually needs to run the company this leads to more embarrassing debacles on the platform as no one is there to run key aspects of the platform.

From there on Musk demands his staff to be "extremely hardcore", meaning work 24/7 around the clock or be fired. Meetings at 6pm- 3am are very possible. In those meetings, Musk the richest man in the world was paranoid that someone in the company was going to go rogue on him. So he is constantly monitoring his own engagement to see if someone is sabotaging his account. Musk uses an example of Joe Biden tweeting something similar to him but gets way more engagement. Musk the richest person in the world gets angry that Joe Biden gets more engagement on twitter than him. He creates a meeting late into the night to figure out why. Does this sound like someone who cares about humanity or a raging narcissist? The book is filed with entertaining stories like this which does not feel gossipy, it feels like you’re in that world rather than he or she said this.

Overall I had this around 4 stars until the final chapter where the author cites the head of the ADL to make numerous claims. The head of the ADL has smeared college students protesting the genocide in Gaza as pro-jihad, pro-terrorist and pro-hams. He is an ideological partisan that conflicts anti-zionism with anti-semitism as a means to disengage the substance of the issue. In fact wikipedia has labeled the ADL as not a reliable source on the topic of Gaza. The author uses his credibility to make numerous claims. I subtract 1 star for that.

Musk’s continued presence in all of our lives doesn’t seem like it’s going to end anytime soon but I predict a huge backlash will eventually turn its way to Musk. Musk used MAGA as a means to funnel oligarch policies like tax cuts and no regulation from labor or technology in his way. Will see what happens. It will also be interesting to see how Musk and Trump's political relationship evolve. As Both of these men have ego's and are accustomed to giving orders to everyone around them.

[Stephen Morrissey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engrossing if depressing tale of the fall of Twitter (now X) into the hands of Elon Musk. Musk very well may be a genius when it comes to electric cars and space travel, but his penchant for demagoguery and disgusting innuendo has reduced the online public square of Twitter into a cesspool of far-right politics.

"Character Limit" charts the unseemly downfall of Twitter, a business bereft of leadership and staunchly insistent on realizing an asking price from Musk far above its market potential. There very well be a conspiracy in "Big Tech," but it is not one to promote liberalism and "woke-ness"; rather, it is a disturbing turn away from civility and decency and a chasing of confrontation as the generator of ever more clicks.

As the authors' poignantly conclude their book, Musk didn't buy Twitter to remake it as a bastion of free speech; he made it to mirror his whims and desires, many of which are quite dark. That has unfolded in real time, and there is perhaps no better testament to the corruption of society by tech as the simultaneous rise of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media with the rallies and reprehensible rhetoric of Trump.

[Joel Mathis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was Twitter ever good?

Surely, it had moments of goodness. When news was breaking — when there were elections, revolutions and natural disasters — Twitter was often the best place to go to get up to speed in a hurry. It was also capable of creating smart conversations, inspiring the best jokes, helping people make connections.

But it was also a place where “cancel culture” originated — the ability to pile on to some poor, unsuspecting schmuck for having the wrong opinion (or even a slightly wrong opinion) was irresistible to a lot of people: A few folks lost their livelihoods because they became Twitter’s main character. And to no small extent, Twitter gave us Donald Trump’s political career, which may well mean the end of American democracy as we know it. (The jury is still out on that one.)

Like pretty much all social media, Twitter was built for our lizard brains — to make dopamine-addicted monkeys like me mash “refresh” over and over again, part of a generational mindwipe that leaves most of us staring at our phones when we ought to be reading books or spending time with friends.

In that sense, Twitter contained the seeds of its own destruction.

Because one of those dopamine-addicted monkeys was Elon Musk, now and again the richest man in the world. He became infatuated with the platform, bought it, turned it into X — and, quickly, into a cesspool of grift, disinformation and racism that has caused many of its users to flee.

“Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” by New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, is an excellently reported account of how we got to this point — a depiction of how capitalism can go awry in the Internet age.

How so? A few examples:

When “shareholder value” is the highest value: Musk has called Twitter the world’s town square, and there was a time when that wasn’t far from being true. That arguably means that it had a value beyond pure profit. But when Musk made his offer to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share — a wildly inflated price, as everybody knew at the time, but an opportunity for Elon to make a pot joke — Twitter’s board had no choice but to take it. Twitter’s shareholders would never see such a great offer again. They knew that Musk was erratic, that it was likely he would wreak havoc. The cash was too good.

The problem with debt: Oddly enough, the world’s richest man didn’t buy Twitter out of his own pocket: He took big loans from big banks. Having saddled his purchase with debt — and again, having overpaid massively for it — Musk had little choice but to start slashing jobs and other expenses (like data centers!) turning a resilient platform rickety. This is actually an old story, especially in the newspaper industry. Private equity firms regularly buy up companies, load them up with debt, and then more or less strip them for parts. The results can be devastating.

The cult of the billionaire: Elon thinks he’s a genius. He might be where engineering is concerned. Where Twitter — which is less an engineering problem than a human one — he isn’t. But he doesn’t know that. He fires people for refusing to flatter him, or talking shit behind his back. He believes in his own infallibility, and others pay the price.

Job-linked healthcare: I’m not sure there are any heroes in this book. There are victims. The people I feel sorry for the most are the Twitter workers desperate to leave after Musk takes over but can’t because they have ill loved-ones and they can’t go without the health insurance the company provides.

What is X today? Well, it still has its uses. I get story ideas from it regularly. And I guess I prefer to ideologically homogeneous alternatives like Bluesky.

But also there’s this:

"Elon Musk is using his social media network to spread election conspiracy theories about U.S. disasters — just as online falsehoods are complicating the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Musk has helped spread accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “actively blocked” donations to victims of Helene and is “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own” — allegations that FEMA officials call false and which run afoul of state and local Republican leaders’ praise for the assistance from Washington."

And this:

"A study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that in the first seven months of 2024, Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US election generated 1.2 billion views. “Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as owner of a small, but politically influential, social media platform to sow disinformation that generates discord and distrust,” said Imran Ahmed, the center’s CEO."

And, well, you get the idea.

Was Twitter ever good? I wouldn’t make that claim. What’s now clear, though, is that it could become something worse. Thanks to Elon Musk, it did.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

The enormous and avoidable devastation of the Death of Twitter told brilliantly by two longtime reporters on matters of Musk and Twitter itself, Ryan Mac and Kate Conger. So much of what is missing or poorly told by Ben Mezrich’s hastily rushed out book is laid bare in excruciating and well-laid-out details here, so coherent that more than once I could guess the title of the next chapter ahead of time.

With one self-inflicted punch in the face after another, Musk has accidentally ghostwritten the “how not to do business, like, ever” book for the ages.

All you can do is shake your head as the world’s dumbest genius, a former hero of mine, deliberately wrecks the most impactful social media company of all time based on nothing but his own everyday experiences with the site and poorly informed hunches. And it was so influential. During the Iranian crises and Arab Spring in general, Twitter saved lives and was the de facto internet for much of North Africa and the Middle East. The Trans Rights movement, Weird Twitter, gamers, politicians going back and forth, all of it was on Twitter. And then there was the news. It broke on Twitter.

Then Elon broke Twitter.

With no due diligence, in fact a DELIBERATE lack of due diligence, Musk pratfalls into buying Twitter sight unseen for at least twice its worth, fails to wriggle out of it in court, shitposts his way into everyone’s bad graces and then proceeds to gut the guardrails, moderation, HR, finance and engineering teams as soon as he swans into the building carrying a kitchen sink. You couldn’t make it up. It wouldn’t pass the fiction test.

He dreams up conspiracies about ghost employees, short sellers (Twitter was at that point already a private company) and lives in constant fear that activist engineers would organise a collapse of the side. Predictable results ensue. Those of us who watched it unfold on Twitter will find it strange to relive those era defining posts that were the death knell of the platform woven into the story. It’s an obscure sorrow. I term it “the wrong kind of nostalgia”.

A massively overlooked fact about the Twitter takeover is the absolute insecurity of your personal data in one of these potential buyouts or takeovers - or at all. The authors don’t explicitly go into this on a wider user level, but in the course of the book’s retelling, random journalists are given back door access to Twitter to write their Twitter Files,which was a massive and utterly ignored huge breach of any data and user privacy rules in almost any country. Nobody prevented any of it. Twitter DMs were never encrypted, meaning certain company employees could read these - albeit with hoops to jump through first. Twitter Data servers were moved in rented trucks across state lines (a story you’ll also find in Isaacson’s comparatively laughable book on Elon written during the time covered in this book, with Isaacson himself showing up as a spineless cameo). Lawsuits anticipated by colleagues over proposed changes to the site are laughed off or ignored by Musk and his yes-at-all-costs men. Impersonation accounts cause real world harm. And then there are the Doxxing events in the book. The company is an incorporated crime scene.

You should consider all your data to be in absolute peril in the hands of any social media company. Once it’s in their hands, you can assume it to be stolen, compromised or sold. All it takes is time, or a wealthy idiot, company or government who wants it. “We care about your privacy” is code for “we already regret the fines we will have to pay for data breaches but that’s the cost of doing business.”

The subsequent crash in users in the US, Brazil and U.K. due to well-covered stories I won’t rehearse here have led to a steep drop in an already declining user base. Twitter will go bankrupt. Advertisers fled an increasingly Sieg-Heiling platform that began to more closely resemble the 4chan adjacent Parler, Gab or Truth Social. Saddled with $13,000,000,000 in debt from the Musk buyout, and with an 84% drop in valuation, it’s only a matter of time until Musk either sells even more Tesla stock to prop up his broken plaything or abandons it all together at a catastrophic loss of billions of dollars, tanking the number one outlet for news and promotion of his own remaining companies, Neuralink, SpaceX and of course Tesla. Twitter was the de facto advertising vector for these companies, and it was free advertising at that.

And when he does (and he ultimately will) throw the whole sordid project into the already flaming dumpster, he’ll instead blame advertisers for their flight from a platform that served ads for iPhones and Banking services next to memes glorifying the Third Reich, never quite putting 2 and 2 together that it was his ketamine-addled manic depressive paranoiac “character limit” that self-owned him into the largest business failure of all time. Criticism from all fronts will not register, much as it doesn’t in the stories the authors relay here (some of the stories about Musk’s utterly un-self-aware refusals of responsibility are laugh out loud horrifying.)

Instead Musk’s copious “finfluencer” lackeys who all became rich off Tesla stock and had millions of combined followers on Twitter will defend him - to him - to the end. And when the site finally 404s one day they’ll perhaps realise that he broke the one thing that gave them an outsize voice on the net to begin with, ever propped up by his following their accounts, retweeting or replying to their adulation and undying support.

Or perhaps they won’t realise. Musk certainly hasn’t.