#SYDWAC - Let's Talk About Twitter

Sa. Sam. Foreign. Hey, good morning, everyone. Welcome to start your day. Great. Start your day with the coach. I am your certified high performance coach, Sean Butner. And today we're going to do a little bit of just talking about what's going on in the news. So before we do that, please do the social media thing, like subscribe, hit the notification bell wherever you're watching this. It helps me spread the good word. So Twitter, right? Everyone's talking about it. I thought I'd offer a little bit of my perspective. Having worked in technology for a while, having, you know, followed social media and misinformation and trying to suss out something about all this kind of stuff, it all kind of converges on a lot of the social media platforms like Facebook, like YouTube, where you're probably watching this on Instagram or on Twitter. So how can we, how should we be thinking about this? And I'll give, give full disclosure. This is me just kind of working through it right now. So I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer, but I do have a couple of things I think that are important that we should be asking, we should be talking about and thinking through as a group, as a society, as a world, because it has, I think, some pretty interesting, huge implications. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. You know, we'll see. But so, you know, if you haven't heard the news, then we'll start there, right? So last week, Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for like $43 billion or something like that. And this past Monday, the Twitter board accepted the deal that Elon offered. Right. So first off, the deal's not done. Right. There's still three, was it six to nine months of getting all the details figured out, all the financing, like, funded and stuff? So it's greenlit now. It's not in effect yet. There are still, there's still a contract where either Twitter or Elon Musk could screw up, pay the other party a billion dollars, I guess, from what I was reading this morning. So the deal's not done. Right. Elon does not own Twitter quite yet, but there are some interesting implications because there was a incident where he, Elon alluded to one of the heads of, I think Twitter law or. Yeah, one of the lawyers of the group and had indirectly accused her of doing fraud. And so. And she got the Twitter mob after her. And this is kind of what I think a lot of people were afraid of with Elon taking over if this continues, that we can expect, you Know Twitter as a space to be a lot more hostile to ideas, right, where you just get a bunch of people piling on. It's a problem that all the social medias have at some degree, at some point, and I'll handle a bit differently. But, you know, the idea that free speech must be protected at all costs is great. But it's also, I think what people are afraid of and what I get caught up is the freedom from any type of, any type of accountability, any type of social responsibility, social civility to each other. That, that really is at risk here, I think. And not to say that Twitter had that great before, but there was, you know, after the, the January 6th stuff, when, you know, Donald Trump got kicked off, a lot of the vitriol and hostility left the platform. A lot of people were very happy about that, where there wasn't a lot of people just screaming at you because they could scream at you to try to make you feel bad. So there's that kind of thought there, the whole free speech thing. Also, you know, there's other platforms like Trump's Truth Media, there's Getter, there's a bunch of other type of free speech above everything else platforms that have run into the same moderation problems as the other kind of main platforms, but they haven't gotten the traction they wanted. So if you're thinking is the idea tested out that we need a nobody, no moderated or non moderated social media platform, it's not working right? In my opinion. People don't want that wild, wild west, you know, place where you go and get piling. They just don't, especially if there's an alternative. So I think that's something to keep in mind as we watch this too. So then there's all this talk about people leaving Twitter and is that a good thing? Is that enough is not a good thing? I think if you believe in free speech and First Amendment rights, it's everyone's right to go and play where they want to play. So if you are not happy with management or where the company might be going or what it might particularly mean, it's part of your speech to not engage, right? Just because you have, you can say something doesn't mean you should say something or that everyone else has to listen to you. So free speech is not free reach is a phrase that I've heard that I've really liked and thought about before, but it's very true. Like you can be an adult if the platform is hostile towards you pointing out or having any opinion, any particular opinion, that's your prerogative to leave. Right. You don't have to take it. And I think that's why a lot of people are leaving or have made that decision to leave the platform. So. So it's kind of like first Amendment right stuff. Twitter going private, I think is pretty interesting. You know, there have been a couple of folks that I've been following that have pointed out that maybe the board of Twitter has not been as effective or as great stewards of social media platform as they could have been, which I think is interesting, I guess, other than the 12 members, only Jack, who's leaving soon, had shares for the company. So how are they protecting shareholder value or advocating for that when they don't have any skin in the game is kind of the argument. I think that kind of makes sense. So it'll be interesting as if this deal goes through, actually. Right. You know, it's. It's very likely, I think, but as it gets closer to that, you know how that's going to. To change what Twitter does, how it impacts everything. So, yeah. So ultimately it's. Is this going to be harmful for public discourse? Is it going to be harmful for just people liking each other in our country, in the world? I don't think so. I think if my gut reaction to having Elon run Twitter is accurate, I think it's gonna become more of the cesspool of the Internet that sometimes people will call it, you know, So I think it's gonna be harder for dialogue and it's just gonna be people piling on a lot more, and we're already kind of seeing the impacts of that. So that's kind of the. The first thing or point of data. Right. But who knows what will happen? I'm not here to say one way or the other, but just kind of how I'm thinking through it. So I don't think it's going to be really good for public discourse or civility or bipartisanship or recognizing that we're all human beings and, you know, help have certain social agreements when we're face to face that we should hold up to if you're living in a civilized society. But I don't think Twitter is the space for civility. So there's that. I think a lot of people being afraid of what this could mean for the platform going forward. I think there are a lot of valid points to that. Will they be heard by Elon? Who knows? I think that's also kind of the problem. The guy is kind of volatile, so you don't know what he's thinking or what he'll do. He's not really predictable, which maybe is good, maybe it's not. I think when you're going to, you know, put opinions and your reputation out on the Internet, having some, someone that is not going like the biggest problem with a lot of social media is they haven't applied rules consistently or in a clear way. That's transparent. Right. I think that's a fair assessment. And I don't know if that like having someone that's volatile is going to help that process. So yeah, that's kind of where my head's at right now with all this Twitter Twitter stuff. So if you guys have any thoughts, post them below. Keep it civil, please. You know, we're in a discussion here. I'm just kind of trying to think through this myself. So there's other points of view, there's other things and I'm sure there's a ton that I've missed because this is one fresh. Two, there's a lot of people talking about it. Three. You don't know what you don't know. So I fully admit that, you know, going into this. But it'll be interesting to see what happens. So yeah, let me know what you guys think below, wherever you're watching this. I think if we're gonna end on a high performance habit, since I am a high performance coach, the one habit I would encourage you to do is to limit social media to a very specific time of day. So if you have like your half hour in the morning, half hour before or after dinner, you know, it'll be better for your mental health so you don't have to be constantly checking it. You can, you know, I think there are a couple apps there that'll lock you out of other apps. You can turn on the parental controls, hand it to your spouse or a friend, say lock me out of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube during the workday or whatever and just give yourself that space to, to live your life outside of the digital world because you will still hear things, it will still get to you if it's huge and super big. And disciplining yourself to have certain times to do social media help you prevent the doom scrolling will help you just be more productive in other areas of your life so that maybe you hang out with friends more or your spouse or you know, there's other things other than social media that can really help you. Same goes for email. That's, you know, as a high performance coach, we talk a lot about trying to not let email dictate your day. Don't let social media dictate your day. You set some boundaries about it, be disciplined about it. I promise you, you'll be happier, you'll probably be healthier, and you'll be more productive during the day. So that's the habit I wanted to share with you guys. So, yeah, hope you enjoyed this. We'll see you guys on Friday for Friday reflection. Hope you guys go out there and, you know, manage your social media responsibly. Go out there, just be kind, and we'll talk to you guys on Friday.