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 36 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Sam Lessin: Elon Musk priced SpaceX to bail out xAI and Twitter investors
“He bailed out his XAI people. He bailed out his Twitter people. He bailed everyone out, right? So Elon gets to be the guy who makes everyone money, and if you're a SpaceX shareholder, you're like, whatever, you kind of got robbed on a few things, but number bi…”
Dave Morin: LP Data Shows Top-Tweeting VCs Lack Top Returns
“We were meeting with a very large LP today who summarily said to this we have a lot of data on this and we can definitively say that the venture capitalists that are tweeting the most are not the ones producing the DPI.”
Sam Lessin: Elon Musk broke Twitter by trying to 'founder mode' it
“Where you had a thing that was kind of a shitty public company, and like had been under executing in manager mode, and then you had Elon come in and founder mode it, Right. In a lot of ways. And I would argue he's kind of broken it.”
Lessin: Twitter is a shockingly unsuccessful company given its early lead
“Twitter is a shockingly unsuccessful company in the big picture. Like, shockingly, right, given the head to where it was.”
Lessin: A verified national internet would be far more moderate than Twitter
“That if you truly had the American internet or, like, the French internet, this can be global in various ways, it is so much more moderate than what you get on Twitter, right? Like, it would, like, it would be so much more moderate”
Lessin: LLMs will break platform lock-in by reconstructing messy export files
“The funny thing about LLMs is, like, LLMs are excellent at this. Like, if you just, like, download your Twitter data right now, and you're like, hey, can you just, like, give this me in, like, one flat file? Like, they'll never give it to you that way. They'll…”
Morin: Musk grew Twitter's EBITDA margins from 13% to 46%
“Today it's a 2.7 billion dollar company. Yes. It's worth half as much, But they're doing 1.25 billion and he grew EBITDA margins from 13% to 46%.”
Lessin: Investors back Musk's weaker ventures solely to access SpaceX
“It's this weird dynamic that's developed because he's the kind of key person in all these companies where people fund these things or his dalliances, even Twitter, right? For access to the actually good stuff. And so you end up in this weird zone where like, I…”
Sam Lessin: Twitter's Unmoderated Hands-Off Content Strategy Is Intellectually Correct
“There's a Twitter strategy, which intellectually, don't shoot the messenger. Intellectually, I actually agree with, right, which is like, it's not our job to moderate this stuff. Go nuts. Like, I actually think that is the intellectually correct position.”
Jessica Lessin: Musk killed Twitter's misinformation tool to cut Google Cloud costs
“The information reported this week that Elon had killed a tool that had been involved, that Exit or Twitter had been using to spot fakes and misinformation, and he killed it because it was hosted on Google Cloud, and in his big cost-cutting efforts, he had wan…”
Lessin: Threads Will Not Kill Twitter, Platforms Will Coexist via Cross-Posting
“I just don't think we're going to get to a place where it's like they kill Twitter. What you're going to get to is a place where it's also a text-based social network-y interesting thing with a lot of cross-posting.”
Lessin: Twitter's Debt Load Will Probably Crush the Company
“That actually will ultimately probably be one of the things that crushes the company.”
Lessin: Elon Musk building Western 'everything app' via X is nearly impossible
“I think any thinking person who, especially who's worked on the internet, would take the massive under on that, right, in terms of that being the outcome. Like, I think that's extremely, nearly impossible from the position he's currently in”
Morin: Twitter ruined itself before selling to Elon Musk
“Twitter ruined Twitter and then sold it to Elon. And now Elon can do whatever he wants.”
Dave Morin: Twitter was originally built to update Facebook statuses
“Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams And BizStone were launch partners of the Facebook platform, and they built Twitter to update Facebook statuses.”
Lessin: Nobody Likes Twitter, So Copying It Has No Backlash
“The nice part about ripping off Twitter, if that's what this is, which it is is no one likes Twitter. So no one's like, oh, you ripped off Twitter.”
Sam Lessin: Threads will succeed as a platform but won't kill Twitter
“I actually am pretty optimistic. I think this will work. Now, whether it kills Twitter or just becomes yet another place you post things, I think is TBD. Like, I don't, it's hard to see it killing Twitter”
Morin: Mainstream audience will be on Threads within three years
“I think that the mainstream audience is going to be on threads and it's going to be powerful. And so I think to Sam's point, that distribution, Advantage can't be ignored and it will be very powerful three years from now, no question.”
Sam Lessin: Crises and competition will prevent Twitter from ever reaching $100B
“I mean, I just don't think it's I don't think it's existential for Twitter. But I do think it's existential for Twitter ever being a hundred billion dollar company, right?”
Sam Lessin: VCs with too many Twitter followers cannot effectively use the platform
“Venture capitalists who have, like, too many Twitter followers can't really use Twitter. Right. Like you need like the right scale Twitter following of like intense loyalty and people who like are into what you're doing. If you get too broad, it just kind of s…”
Coles: X successfully operates on far less spending and fewer staff
“And the truth is that they have been able to run Twitter at much less than they were spending on it with far fewer employees. It's still up and running and it's become You know, the water cooler place again.”
Jessica Lessin: Musk's 70% Twitter cuts spurred broader tech industry layoffs
“The kind of aggressive layoffs post COVID, which by the way, we're also spurred by Elon when Elon fired. 70%, right? Firing 20 or 30 or 10 didn't look so bad.”
Sam Lessin: Reddit will probably not build a large-scale advertising business
“And my sense is honestly that the fact that Twitter hasn't been able to means the answer is probably no.”
Dave Morin: Meta Controls Misinformation Much Better Than Twitter Currently Does
“They clearly don't have it under control, or at least Twitter, whatever Twitter calls itself, doesn't. Meta seems to be in a much better position.”
Brit Morin: Linda Yaccarino should not be CEO of X
“No, I don't know if I agree with that. There's no way she should have this job.”
Dave Morin: Linda Yaccarino will stick it out as X CEO
“I think she sticks it out, right? I think she was hired to do this job exactly as it's playing out, and I think she knew what she was getting into”
Lessin: Musk's Twitter Cuts Gave Tech Permission to Cut Burn
“He did it in a big way and gave everyone else permission to cut burn.”
Morin: Rebranding Twitter to X destroys significant brand value
“This is a big one, and it does destroy a lot of brand value.”
Dave Morin: Meta needs 18% of Instagram to match Twitter's size
“All they need to do is convert, I guess, about 18% of Instagram to threads, and they'll have an app the size of Twitter.”
Sam Lessin: Twitter Once Relied on Single Mac Mini to Stay Online
“Twitter was at one point reliant on a single Mac mini to stay on the internet.”
Sam Lessin: Facebook Forced Me to Sign Non-Compete Over Venmo
“When I went and worked at Facebook on the way in, one senior executive reviewed all my investments and told me which ones I had to divest from. Interestingly, path was fine at the time, but Venmo was a big problem. And then, yeah, believe it or not, I had to s…”
Morin: VCs gravitate to Twitter, crypto, and podcasts for quick feedback loops
“I think this is why VCs like Twitter. And why VCs like crypto, and why VCs like podcasting. You know, it's like you see numbers go up every day, and you can get a feedback loop, right?”