Elon Musk's Reign of Chaos and Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse Madness

The Musk regime is off to a chaotic start at Twitter. In barely a week or two of ownership, Elon has already overseen a collapse in advertising revenue, announced a pivot to subscriptions, attempted to fire about half of the staff, and then attempted to rehire some of the fired staff. It would be one thing if Elon were flailing at Twitter while the rest of social media was on a rocket ship. The opposite is true. At Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has embarked on a truly audacious and possibly suicidal plan to spend somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion building out a metaverse platform. What the hell is happening at these companies and, beyond the lurid details and gossip, what does it say about the larger ecosystem of social media? Today’s guests are the co-hosts of the new New York Times tech podcast 'Hard Fork': Kevin Roose is a reporter at the Times and a frequent guest on this show. And Casey Newton is the author of the Platformer newsletter. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Kevin Roose and Casey Newton Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Om Podcasten

Longtime Atlantic tech, culture and political writer Derek Thompson cuts through all the noise surrounding the big questions and headlines that matter to you in his new podcast Plain English. Hear Derek and guests engage the news with clear viewpoints and memorable takeaways. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday, and if you've got a topic you want discussed, shoot us an email at plainenglish@spotify.com! You can also find us on tiktok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_