The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 164 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 5 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Chamath admits his controversial tweets are just non-serious trolling
“Bro, I'm just trolling the mids. Just don't worry. This is all bullshit. It's all just for shits and giggles. I do it. I do it when I'm either pooing or I haven't jet lagged.”
David Friedberg says user-generated networks gain no structural value from third-party apps
“That works well in some contexts, like an Apple app store context, but in the context where there is a network unto itself, like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, meaning that there is already a user network that is generating value in the form of the content tha…”
Chamath: Elon Musk leads companies with female top executives across Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX
“He has a female chairman at Tesla, a female CEO at Twitter, and a female president at SpaceX.”
Calacanis: Twitter deliberately removes hate speech from 'For You' feed
“They, they've been pretty deliberate of removing hate speech from places like For You”
Calacanis: Americans check social platforms before trusting The New York Times
“Now it's become, I think, where a lot of Americans are by default saying, let me read the tick, let me read the substacks, TikToks, and Twitter before I trust the New York Times.”
Sacks claims YouTube removed the viral Pfizer CEO Davos clip
“YouTube banned that video. We had to watch it on Twitter because Elon Musk's Twitter is still free.”
Sacks: Mastodon does not have nearly the distribution of Twitter
“And anybody who's thinking about going to like some knockoff like Mastodon or something is gonna have to contend with the fact that it doesn't have nearly the distribution.”
Sacks claims his tweets get 10-20x more reach than the NYT
“I didn't know that, but I just went over to the New York Times profile and my tweets are routinely getting 10 to 20 times more reach, more views than theirs.”
Musk personally apologized to Paul Graham for his Twitter suspension
“The Paul Graham suspension was definitely a mistake, and I actually called Paul Graham to apologize personally for that one.”
Calacanis: Twitter management previously held back ready-to-ship features
“What we found over and over again was that there were great features that were ready to be released that were being held back by management. And there were brilliant people with all the ideas that you think should have been released. And they just weren't allo…”
Musk: Twitter maintains roughly 2,000 employees and 5,000 contractors
“We still have 2000 people. It's not nothing. And actually if you, there's actually on the order of like almost 5000 contractors.”
Calacanis predicts shift to Twitter feature focus within 6 to 18 weeks
“I predict in another six to 18 weeks, we will see people talking about all the great features in Twitter, not any of the transitional issues, and people will be shocked.”
Calacanis: Comedians view Twitter as a cancellation risk, not a venue for discourse
“A bigger point right now, and this does tie into our first story, is I think comedians look at Twitter as a place to get canceled, not a place to be part of the discourse”
Sacks: Twitter's plane-tracking ban will prove futile
“I think this policy with regard to planes specifically is going to be futile. It's going to be at best harm reduction because as long as there's many ways to publish this information on Reddit, it's on Facebook.”
Calacanis: Twitter tagged Charlie Kirk with 'Do Not Amplify'
“Charlie Kirk, who is a conservative commentator, he was tagged with do not amplify.”
Calacanis: Twitter placed Dan Bongino on a search blacklist
“He was tagged with being on a search blacklist.”
Sacks denies leaving Craft Ventures for a permanent role at Twitter
“I've gotten all sorts of inbound from people asking me if I'm like leaving craft ventures to do something at Twitter. No, it's not true. We're just, Jason and I are just pitching in and helping out while Elon establishes his permanent team at that company.”
Sacks: Twitter loses a few hundred million dollars a quarter
“I think Twitter's losing, you know, a few hundred million dollars a quarter.”
Chamath: Parag Agrawal deserves a statue for Twitter's $54.20 buyout price
“Quite honestly, though, like on the other side of this, I would say Parag Agrawal does deserve a statue for shareholder value creation. What he, what, 54, 20 a share, which by the way, we said was going to happen and it did happen was ginormous in this market.”
Calacanis: Journalists gain followers and income taking tribal, partisan stances
“And so then what happens is how is follower count on Twitter actually derived? How do you get that follow account by being tribal? And so what's happened is journalists have became tribal, they get big followings, they give spicy takes, they pick a side, and t…”
Calacanis: Twitter should have suspended Trump for one year instead of lifetime
“Like Trump should not have been given a lifetime ban. They should have given him a one year ban.”
Calacanis: Twitter will re-IPO at five times its current valuation
“I think it goes public again at, and it goes to five times evaluation.”
Sacks: Musk running Twitter will reduce harassment by eliminating bots
“There'd be less harassment because he'd get rid of all the bots. He'd, he'd impose an authenticity requirement.”
Calacanis: Twitter had two employees working for Saudi Arabia
“Oh, they had Twitter had it. They had two people from the kingdom working there.”
Sacks: Twitter failed to deliver Dorsey's promised algorithmic transparency to Congress
“I think we need some of the transparency that Jack Dorsey repeatedly promised at all the congressional hearings. Remember when he got hauled up there, he promised that they would give more transparency about the way that their algorithms worked. Where is that?…”
Friedberg: TikTok will capture user-generated event video market if Twitter restricts consent
“Don't you think the biggest winner here is going to be TikTok because if Twitter does go forward with the standing. Yeah, if they say, look, you can't put user generated content on our platform if it has video and images of personal of people without their con…”
Sacks: Twitter censorship will worsen after Jack Dorsey leaves
“Things are only going to get worse once he's gone.”
Sacks: Incoming Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal rejected First Amendment principles
“Parag, who said last year in 2020, there's an article where he basically said that Twitter Does not need to follow the principles of the first amendment and its content moderation policy.”
Friedberg: Heavy platform regulation will drive users to unregulated decentralized alternatives
“If they start putting the regulatory hammer down on these quote unquote, platforms telling them what they can and cannot make available to their users, there will be another platform that will emerge. And that platform may end up being in this kind of decentra…”
Sacks: Rachel Maddow's ivermectin tweets went unfact-checked on Twitter
“For some reason, the Rachel Maddow tweets went unfact checked. As far as I know, they're still unfact checked.”
Sacks says Twitter offered $4B to acquire Clubhouse and was rejected
“Well, they got a, they got an acquisition offer from Twitter for four billion, and they turned, they did this.”
Twitter blocked Sacks from a 2007 secondary share purchase via ROFR
“So back in 2007 I thought Twitter was going to take off. I had like a former employee who wanted to sell secondary. And so, you know, I had a deal worked out to buy, I think a couple 100,000 dollars of shares at, I don't know, a forty million dollar valuation …”
Chamath: Section 230 claims are harder to bring against Reddit
“I think it's very hard to pin a section two 30 claim on Reddit as easy as it is YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.”
Sacks: Company value stems from products, not CEO political platitudes
“The societal value of a company doesn't come from whatever platitudes or political statements its CEO makes, but rather from the quality of its products and the impact of its products.”
Chamath doubts anyone at social platforms fully understands their content algorithms
“And I would be very skeptical that anybody there really understands every single piece of content, how and why it gets weighted the way it does.”
Chamath: Facebook's fake account problem is just as bad as Twitter's
“I think that there's a fake account issue on Facebook that's just as bad as Twitter.”
Chamath: Facebook attracts middle America while Twitter serves rich coasts
“I think basically that Facebook is, is becoming middle America and Twitter is becoming sort of the coasts. And, you know, Facebook is basically a product of middle America plus kind of like countries outside the United States and, you know, Twitter's about, yo…”
Calacanis: Twitter was paying for software subscriptions that were never used
“And, so we sit there and we're like, yeah, cancel the cards. Immediately, I get three back channels from software companies who are like, hey I know you're helping Elon. I saw a story in the New York Times. Our bill stopped getting paid. Can we come in? And I'…”
Calacanis claims Twitter paid for unused SaaS software for two years
“There was a list of SaaS software we went through, and none of it was being used. Some of it had never been installed, and they had been paying for it for two years.”
Gracias: Twitter cut 80% of full-time staff following acquisition
“80% of the people gone. That doesn't include all the contractors that were there.”
Calacanis: Twitter's SF cafeteria cost $800 per meal prior to acquisition
“20 people were having lunch a day, but they had never ratcheted down the amount of food they were making, so each meal was about 800 dollars on average when you did the math for those 20 meals just in the San Francisco office.”
Mark Pincus co-funded Friendster and invested in early Facebook and Twitter rounds
“Yeah, Reed and I put up the first money for Friendster. And then we were lucky enough to invest along with Peter in the first round of Facebook. The first on Twitter, so.”
Calacanis passed on early Twitter investment at single-digit million valuation
“I had the opportunity to invest in Twitter when it was like a single digit millions company. And I just thought, you know what? This thing is only like the headline. And I told that like, it's the headline. It's not like the entire blog post. It's going to be …”
Friedberg: A US TikTok ban will significantly benefit Meta, Instagram, and X
“If TikTok gets banned in the US, it's going to benefit Meta. It's going to benefit Instagram. It's going to benefit a few other, you know, social networks. It's going to benefit Elon at Twitter. There's a few folks that are going to benefit pretty significantl…”
Sacks: Elon Musk fired 85 percent of Twitter's workforce after acquisition
“I saw what Elon did at Twitter. He went in and he fired 85% of the employees.”