[the notes from the book were retrieved with kobogarden, with the purpose of aiding to create a map of the ideas the book left me. The full list of book highlights can be found here.]

I came across the book by chance — it is very recent (released early 2024) and it describes, in rapid-fire, short chapters (72 in total), each pertaining to one specific moment in Twitter's recent history.

With Musk taking so prominent a role in the current US government, this felt timely. It's quite an interesting book. It details some landmarks of the takeover process, from the bizarre bidding-to-withdrawl (Musk probably felt he overpayed, and wanted to back-off), to the radical trimmings of staff (which led to problems in service reliability and, most importantly, content moderation).

It is an important document, even to understand the reach of social media platforms in this day and age. It's hard to deny that Twitter took a big dive, and even today it is far from the platform it once was.

Many sources — mostly laid-off or dissident quitters from the company — paint a portrait of what working under Musk is like, and Schiffer tries to contextualize his motivations. I suppose that is quite a difficult endeavour, though:

Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine also wondered why Musk paid $44 billion to acquire the company if he did not want “its employees (whom he fired) or its code (which he trashes regularly) or its brand (which he abandoned) or its most dedicated users (whom he is working to drive away)“.

from Forbes