Apple News Today
How Elon Musk transformed Twitter — and what it means for online discourse
20 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Sam Sanders, in for Shumita Basu. Today, what the transformation of Twitter to X reveals about the future of social media. On March 21st, 2006, Jack Dorsey, one of the creators of Twitter, sent the first tweet. Back then, the platform was just a company name and a prototype. an idea about a new way to communicate online.
Over time, it grew into something much, much bigger, with hundreds of millions of users all across the globe. And while it was never perfect, many people saw Twitter as an online public square, a place to share and connect with people you'd never met, In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion.
Chapter 2: What transformation did Elon Musk bring to Twitter?
He then cut the staff by about 80%, dismantled many of the platform's content moderation systems, incorporated the AI chatbot Grok into the platform, and got rid of Twitter's name.
Twitter was such a brand. But that brand died when Elon took over. It completely changed. And it's X now.
That's Ryan Mack. He's a tech reporter for The New York Times. He wrote the book Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, with his colleague at The Times, Kate Conger. Kate says that while X is a fundamentally different place now, it's still an active and important part of the Internet.
It's transformed into a space that really aligns with Elon and his interests. And I think that he views this as a success story. And I think for that one particular user of X, the X experience is greatly improved.
Chapter 3: How did Twitter evolve into a public square over the years?
It's been about 20 years since Twitter was created. So I sat down with Kate and Ryan to talk about the promise of Twitter at the beginning, how it evolved over the years, and what that evolution tells us about social media and its role in society today. Let's talk for a minute about what Twitter was. Take folks back to that peak of Twitter, Twitter. What was this company and this platform like?
Well, I think in the early days, the founders created something that was just sort of a place for public chatter, and nobody really knew how to use it or what to do with it yet. And so, I mean, you look at a lot of the early tweets that even the founders were putting out, and they're kind of insane. It'll be like, I just had a sandwich for lunch.
It's the kind of thing where you think if someone tweeted this now, you'd be like, wellness check, are they okay?
What
What are they doing? And then, you know, over time it found its use, right? And it became a place where political movements were formed and organized. You know, it became a source of all these kind of like viral moments of humor, sort of a place to live react to anything that was going on anywhere in the world for better or for worse. And it just kind of became this space of immediacy, right?
And I think, you know, when you talk about journalists, I mean, the overlap with our business is obvious. It was just such a great place to kind of be on top of whatever was happening in the world, find out about breaking news before your competitors potentially, and sort of find sources, find people who are on the ground in places where news was happening.
And so it had a really strong utility for our industry, certainly. Yeah.
I love that you use the word utility because I remember for years when there were natural disasters occurring across the country or the globe or even mass shootings. The places where survivors, responders, and journalists went for the most up-to-date news about these things, it came from Twitter.
And a lot of the terminology around Twitter and what it used to be, it used the word public, a public good and a public square.
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Chapter 4: What were the significant changes made by Elon Musk after acquiring Twitter?
You know, and those are both visions of a public square. They're just very different ones. And so I think it kind of is an invitation for us as users to think about, you know, what kind of public squares do we want? What does that even mean to us? And...
Yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting thing to be thinking about, especially as we're moving into this big wave of artificial intelligence. And people are essentially talking to a chatbot stranger all the time. I think it's a good time to look at the lessons of Twitter and think about what was good about our conversations with strangers? What was bad about them?
What kinds of harm did we do to the world?
Well, hey, thank you both so much for your reporting.
Thank you.
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Chapter 5: How did Elon Musk's approach to Twitter differ from its founders?
And thanks so much for having us.
Thanks, Dan. Kate and Ryan's book is called Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. We'll share a link to it on our show notes page. And every weekend, you can find new episodes of Apple News in Conversation in the Apple News app. Just tap on the audio tab, those little headphones at the bottom, to find it.