797: What I Was Thinking As We Were Sinking
01:02:59 Share

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaten ed in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website.

this american life at org, i've had a bunch of bike accidents lately. Then the moment that things go wrong is always the same. This accident is happened during my morning commute, and they always happen when IT rains.

I have this very light bicycle I got. And when IT rains, something about this bike on the city streets, a metal great, a slippy patch of any sort at all, can make the bike slip up from one of me. I broken a critical, I banked at my wrist. I've given myself some kind of booze on my right ARM that still wake me up at night months later.

And in each of these three accidents, you know like when you're following, is that second or two when you realize you're going down and you're on your way down, but you haven't actually hit the ground that wherever IT is enough time for a bunch of thought to go through your head and all three times, like I say, it's been the same somehow I get very calm and I think this isn't going be so bad. Not going very fast. The ground isn't that far as a car coming.

Okay, no car is coming. I figured out how fall. It's going to be fine this time. And I think everybody knows how a person reacts under the rest can tell you something about them. And I think what the set of thought says about me is I am optimistic even when there is no factual basis for IT at all.

like at the exact moment when i'm .

going to collide with the wet surface of the street, a moment when things are definitely not going to be fine, i'm thinking things will be fine. I think this optimism is can be in faltering relationships. When I mentioned all this at our radio show story meeting, one of my coworkers, somebody who have worked with closely for years, told me he has never said this.

He thinks my optimism is the single most important quality I have. He said, i'll tell me there are seventeen things that can go wrong with some plan that we have. And I just go like, let's go for IT.

Now after day after three accidents, I have learned not to ride particular bike in the rain. Thank you very much. Today on our program, we have stories where things go very, very badly for people.

They're on the way down. And in that moment of crisis, what you're thinking revealed so much about who they are. Some people that leads to new insight, some of needs no insights at all, and some are hit with a gating boat of inspiration and figure out how to save themselves from W. B. S, chicago, american life, amErica goals, stay with us.

Like pirates of the carbon town. Oh, before you're gone to further, I should say today shows a rerun when summer a while back, group of friends got in trouble, getting over their heads almost literally in the middle of boston harbor. I producer export contra tells the tale, though, for the purposes of today's story.

colonial mile, i've been friends with you this whole time, and I didn't know that this is your most told story.

Well, I wouldn't tell you you, you were there.

I was there. I was over ten years ago, and I was a new resident in the boston area. My good friend, sophie and tory introduced me to some people.

SHE knew well we'd like the same kinds of jokes and could only afford the same kind of rent. So we moved into a big house together. And soon we got to the stage in any relationship where someone suggest taking things to the next level.

So I don't know exactly how I came up, but maybe eight friends are. So decided to go in collectively and buy a used boat. And to my understanding, none of them do a single thing about boats.

true. But did you know the word cateran comes from tao cuti? Marum would tide together.

Those are my guys. So that's one thing I know about boats. And maybe more ancestral knowledge with just waiting the surface if I own the boat.

Here's how IT happened. Our friend max brought us the opportunity. He knew a person who knew a person who needed to get rid of their boat for four hundred dollars each.

Max could make us massachusets its boat people. Having double that in my bank account, I signed a check site on scene. And when I finally got to meet our boat down at the harbor, IT felt like we had gotten away with larsen Y.

I wish you could have seen that, a nineteen fifties highlighter, a glamorous little wooden motorboat with an engine hanging off the bag, polished wood, two rows of White final seats, chrome finishes, think italian vacation like the talented mr. ripley. But right here on the boston riviera, also like boston's own mat diamond in the talented mr. Ripply, a new high society, life was waiting for us.

The first time I got on the boat, IT really felt like magic. We hunt just the right number of times in a bridge, opened up for us like a bouncer unclip a red valvo rope to the VIP section. We entered the Charles s.

River and stop to admire the sale boats swing around us. A small motor boat pulled up to us. The man asked if we were stranded.

No, sir, just enjoying this beautiful day. Thanks for asking. But you know, you're parked in the middle of a regt a oh, he looked as over, do you guys work for google? The plan to cause play our way to high society was already work.

Max knew the next step we had to announce our old boat as the newest member of boston, on's watery glitterati, which meant a Christian party max had been practicing for this moment his whole life. The man loves extravagant gestures. He invited friends from near and far to the child's river s planned and asked everyone to wear White. He showed up in black, a rented black tuxedo. Max stood on the front of the boat named IT margry after his own mother, and smashed a purple bottle of undred Sparkling wine on the nose.

Now I don't know if you believe in curses, and we didn't know IT right away, but max, invoke roughly three courses in that moment, wearing a black tuxedo to a White party of your own design. That's more of a 4 pop， not a curse. But number one, we naming a boat that occurs.

Number two, jews like max don't name children after living relatives. Now the prohibition doesn't specify boats, so it's call that a half course. Number three, smashing champagne on a used boat. I heard that's a curse, but only if you consider on ray Sparkling wine to be champagne. Now it's impossible to say which curse attached itself to the margin, but moments later, the sky darkened and we all scattered as shets of rain fell on us.

The next day the clouds cleared, our friends were still in town, so we tried to take them out again. Now this is where the story really begins.

IT was a beautiful day, I think, was early summer and really Sunny and gorgeous. And there maybe twelve, twelve of us on the boat does that down, right?

Nine in a boat that was maybe made for six. But our captain, max, had just completed a boat safety course, and he told us the only limit for boat capacity is having enough life jackets for everyone, which isn't true. But we didn't know that.

And max denies ever saying IT squish together. Two in the front seat, four in the back, three others perched on the side. We headed out.

People are taking turns driving, which is really fun. I gotto take the wheel for a little bit, and I was like cutting across the waves in a way where we'd, like, catch little bit iron down and catch the iron slam down, which I thought was very fun. And then at one point, somebody mean over sophie. This is like a wooden lake boat.

The markey wasn't built for high octave thrills. Someone says we should get back soon, but so fee overrules them. And then just like the american munitions that rebel british PS in these very waters can be.

I jump off the boat because it's a beautiful day and I like to swim and i'm kind of messing around and looking at the boat from the water. And when I climb ed back into the boat, I was like, I climbed in on the back and I just like, you know, twist ted myself up over the edge of the boat. And at the point where the most force was being pushed down on the boat, a whole group of water, just. Wow, okay.

The back of the boat dip below the water line, and boston harbor began to enter.

And then almost instantaneously, the boat was like a fy deep and water.

This is ben U. N. Campaign, a moral pillar of our group, the kind of friend your mom might ask is been going to be at the party we live together and co. On this boat.

My memory is that IT was really, really fast, just that went from like regular life, you're having fun to all of a sudden, like emergency mode.

It's still a lovely summer day. We're still on our beautiful boat, but suddenly i'm tearing an aluminum can in half to bail us out. Turns out half a soda cn only scoops as much water as your own cupped hands. I look over at sophie, the most magic of us, to see if he has a Better idea. I saw a .

empty gallon like plastic water gallon. And I was like, oh, if I can tear the top off of this, then I can scoop water really fast. But i'm wondering, like, okay, I don't have like anything to cut IT with.

That's fine. I'll cut IT with my teeth. I'll just crack little hole.

And once I get a little hole going, we'll be purchased. I can hear the whole thing. And I tried to bite IT with my teeth.

And my teeth are just so weak and my hands are so weak. And I like, I can't do anything. I don't think i'm feeling experiencing anxiety but suddenly it's like one of those nightmares were like, none of your limbs work.

Maybe the weight of nine passengers was too much, or maybe sophi full throat areas had split the themes, or maybe IT was a curse. Here's what we know. We're alone.

We're in a small boat. We're far from shore. The nearest land to us is logan airport. And that's when he begins to dawn on me. If we have to jump off this port and swim to the closest land, we would be army crawling up the banks of a government controlled air space.

Look, it's so close, we can just swim to low again and, uh, very quickly and like quietly. But quite definitively, you said, i'm not gonna do that.

I'm picturing my White friends being wrapped in tinfoil blankets in fat coco, and me being perp walked off the tarmac by homeland security, not today, government black site. Our options are shrinking. Our bails aren't bAiling.

The engines not turning. There's water, water everywhere. I think we're going to sink.

We were thinking we were in a sinking boat.

Toby David is visiting from philly, a gifted speechmaker. He helped Christ the markey just the day before. Now he reminds us he is not a good swimmer, asthmatic and does not like cold water.

The boat is going down and it's still thing. And and we're in the middle water. We have no idea what to do. And i'm freaking out. I'm really fully freaking out.

I'm not hearing much, but through the either ben's voice comes through and says, is anybody else noticing that occasionally one of us will ask a question and nobody will respond?

A silent panic falls over us. IT is a moment that demands leadership size of action. We turn our heads to our captain, max. He found this boat named IT after his mother sold us on the dream. Now, like a mono al, a heb in a red socks cap, max denied there's any problem at all.

Should we call for help? And max saying, no. Max said, this really strong instinct. Don't call for help. Don't call.

I know what i'm doing. I think max was trying to cover up for this massive fuck up. And so he was sort of in denial that there was a problem.

even up to the point where the entire back into the boat was fully underwater, the entire motor was underwater. Max was still saying, it's fine, there's no problem.

But there are two. One were stranded in the water, and to our captain has gone mad. We only know how to deal with the last one.

Everyone shouts at max, admit IT, we are in trouble. You need to call for help. But max is sitting in the captain seat, one hand clenched around the steering wheel and the other turning the key in the commission. Like the engine wasn't underwater. The expression hope floats, not true and very dangerous.

On one end of the spectrum of willingness to acknowledge this situation, there was max, who is just like face forward, pretending he was still driving a boat. And then at the other end of the spectrum, the other extreme was there is there's this one wild card.

Oh my god, I don't know anything about her .

SHE just like sort of appeared in a beam of clarity .

cats spangler went to college with max SHE is the ninth passenger and the one outsider. When max invited her on a ride, he had not mention there would be so many of us for most of the trip, he was shy and off to the side. But now the strangers surrounding her are screaming at the one person he knows, and he has lost control. I remember .

just really clearly like looking over at max, sitting there in the captain seat, with his eyes kind of downcast, frozen, and something there was like a switch that flett me if the boat sinks and all of us in the harbour were no longer visible to anyone, were just little heads. Snowing can see us. We can tread water for a while.

What if we get a crap, get tired, swallow water? How long can we do that for? What if the current takes us out further? I didn't wanna let myself go there, but I remember thinking that people were gonna a die. If we don't do something, people are onna die today.

And in that moment, cap and cap is born.

My mind went really blank and calm and was like a calculator filled my brain. And I was just very logical, and I started focusing on actions. Where are the live fest? How many do you have? I took on this voice that was very bossy and direct.

Like boston zone, mt. Diamond in goodwill, ill hunting SHE began solving the unsolved problem, namely, if nine passengers get in a boat, which turns out to only have a life jackets, not one per person is. We have been LED to believe max. And now some of those life checkered are unreachable in the underwater part of the boat. How many passengers are totally screwed?

I remember looking over and there was a guy who looked really pale. He just didn't look like he was doing very well. And I asked him, I said, can you swim well and he said, no, I can. And I just gave him the lifetime. I took IT off my neck, put IT on his and said, what I can.

Cat hands out the remaining life jackets based on need. The water is rising. We are coming apart and preparing to abandoned ship.

And that's when I got on top of of the bowl of the boat.

He climbs to the front of the boat and starts waving her arms to the pilots in airplanes, over our heads, to nearby boats in the water. Anyone who might be able to come to our rescue.

SHE was the one person who is sort of like, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Of course.

we did help you. And SHE, like, stood up on the boat and started waving her arms and trying to get the attention of a boat that I didn't realized was also quite close. That was like the rescue boat.

an actual rescue boat just within waving distance. IT was so much .

taller than us off the waterline, and there was guys on deck kind of looking down and almost chocolate at us, like making light of the situation. And I remember feeling like they have no idea what we've been through.

They must have radioed for a little boat because one arrived within minutes, the captain calls down, do I have permission to perform a life rescue? Who says, noted that I have to .

confess one thing really fast.

Toby is adorably honest about what happened next.

I had just have to say, i'm sure that when the rescue boat arrived that I I may have been the first personal of the sinking shape. I fucked in levitated to that latter to get off that boat. So that's not great for me.

We climbed off the boat to safety. And just like mad demon in saving private ryan, we were going home.

Cat says he looks back at this moment a lot, that it's become pivotal to her understanding of herself. She's proud that he jumped in and saved us.

IT was a tragic ending for our captain from the safety of our top T. I can still pick them down there alone on the markey, refusing to abandon ship. And that was the last time I ever saw him.

He died that day. Yeah, the only honner's thing I could have done, I went down with the ship. Captain max died.

My friend max survived. Little Bruce is eagle and his reputation for big schemes with little consequences. And while the boat became the story, sofie likes to tell more than any other, not max.

This is a story I have told the least. I can't overstate to you how big of failure this words. One of the most embarrassing failures of my entire life is a thing I look back at and shutter.

Max spent more than a decade feeling terrible. The rest of us spent that same amount of time wondering why our friend max was trying to gas like us and think us. But we'd never talked about IT.

None of us have. And when magazine I catch up for this story, IT becomes clear that he has a completely different memory of how IT all went down. He says he actually did the one thing we were begging him to do.

I remember a lot of things. I remember calling c to and telling them where we were. I remember that, like, I can I just back up and go? Did you just say you called seto seto is boat triple the boat that perform the life rescue?

Max says he called them on his phone way back when the engine first stall out. That's the reason we got saved that day. Yeah, I don't think I made a big deal about calling seto.

No, I didn't believe him. I just interviewed five of our friends who had no memory of this at all. So I followed up with seto.

Turns out they keep my ticula records. And then IT was a call for a toe, july seventeen th, twenty ten, charged to our membership under maxes name. IT cost fifty dollars.

Help was on the way. I guess in the chaos, max just forgot to tell everybody on the boat. Look, I I mean, clearly I owe them an explanation, but a lot of our passive aggressive as friends have never brought up this day with me.

Our story had hardened over a decade, but was built on a max had kind of done the right thing, and cat wasn't the one who saved us. The statistic editors at this american life made me invite cash back to share our findings. Max called for help, and apparently he was the one who got help to arrive. Now you waving.

That just feels impossible.

but I think it's true. And i'm so sorry that's the way that IT happened.

I'm just completely confused. So this whole time he has been the hero of the story, but no one has known IT. It's so perfect that this is the findee. It's so unlike max two did not kind of claim that claim the credit of .

IT yes .

and say no, I did that the .

final occurs on the margry had the longest views and a devastating payload IT added an asteroid k to a heroic deed and turned a failed captain into a guy who kind of did the right thing, but was really confusing about IT. Please heed this precautionary tale. Beware of courses. Don't try to be a massachuset at person for just four hundred dollars. And if you already called seto, tell your friends.

We get around and here is tail something.

magi.

Accounts but my life.

You like was a cat that with them down, i'll never find out. Now, secrets never travel marjory margery down. So that story was by ike.

Swiss contrasted the sea. Santi was written, forced by sam geller, who was there. That faithful day is captain max's brother. He performs as sams and the tourist, other riders in the song arial east chances with wolves and glaser.

Gordon monnet played the coming up ship, gets a new captain who immediately throws half the crew overboard, he says, to save the ship from sinking. We hear in an insiders true real life account that in a minute jago a radio when our program continues. This american life for my our glass today's program, what I was thinking as we were thinking today is today, but what was through your head in the ddd of calamities is big and small.

And others thoughts tell us. We have arrived at two of our program, act two, going down with the censorship. So the S. S.

Margery costa producer eke and his friends, about four hundred box edge the ship were going to talk about next is significantly more expensive by forty four billion dollars. That's what on musk paid for twitter back in october twenty, twenty two few months before we force red today's episode. That was back when we still called the twitter.

Now of course it's called x the companies een foundering in the water ever since must bought IT of famously just this past week of news and covered documents that show that the company's revenues were down forty percent in the first half of the twenty twenty three and one year after mosque purchase twitter, the overall value of the company I drop by half. It's Better. The thread is now passing IT in daily U.

S. Users, and some of them was revealing details about what IT has been like on the inside of the company. Among the people who work there, i've come to a reporter, casey newton, and his colleagues. So I shiffer they make the newswire er platformer. Theyve had so many scopes. Casey also caused a podcast called hard fork that the york times puts out about the tech industry that can I say I really love, especially they are deep enough, very funny reporting on the latest day I news, higher recommendations.

But to get back your story, there's been one person in particular at twitter the case has been trying to talk to a very senior employee at the company who, while just doing his job and did not having to take on two of the most powerful people on the internet and in the world, the three people is on mask and the form of president in the united states downal trump case. He wanted to hear about that, and also what he was like for the guy, what he was thinking, what he was doing once elon took over and the police started taking on water. Here's casey noton.

Well, rose did a lot of jobs to twitter over the years, but IT was always the same kind of job. He was in the content moderation business. One of those people who decides which of your posts can stay up on the internet and which ones need to come down? And he got his first glimpse at what life is a content moderator would be like while he was college on a date, he's gay. So my I went .

out for drinks with somebody without knowing where he worked. And he volunteered that he actually worked for the parent company of the website, manhunt um which was one of the kind of early gay websites that was very specifically sexually focused.

And even in these early days of the web, there was already a team of people who were deciding what you could and couldn't post there.

They had a set of kind of convoluted rules about what types of nudity you are allowed to show in which places. So nudity fine, but not all nudities. So there were there were specifics.

And he described to me a system of color coating images of red, yellow, Green um and then a team of people who are responsible for making those designations. And i'll ever forget he said the people doing these reviews are almost entirely straight women. And I was just floor in that moment of thinking that there's a team of heterosexual women who have to look at the deprived things, the game, and are posting on the internet. And so sorry .

and right, the senior topic specialist manhunt was a poor woman.

That's not .

an exaggeration. Yeah, we are like.

i'm so sorry.

Sorry for what you saw. After the date, you'll have one thought I was like.

oh, ha, that's my dissertation topic.

you. I was in grad school. He got P. H. D.

And soon after a job at twitter, they gave a small desk. This was twenty and fifteen. The officers most striking feature was .

probably a giant lifesize cardboard cut out of Justin bieber SAT directly behind my desk. Justin bieber, obviously being a major figure in early twitter.

may be maybe the most popular user of, at least for some period time.

Yes, there were, you know, rumor that twitter had entire servers just dedicated to serving Justin biber related traffic.

Besides bieber, what twitter was really known for back then was its trolls. The site was plagued by users harassing other users, particularly women. That year, I co reported a story about how the sites then o dick castle road memo saying, quote, we suck at dealing with abuse controls on the platform, and we sucked in IT for years.

That was the backyard for U. L. S. New job as an intern.

twitter. The previous year, he spent part of his time moderating content. He'd seen a video of a dog getting abused. He removed IT from the site. But for years at honour him.

IT was never even like the specific image. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you what the dog look like or what the video was. I just remember its existence, and I remember that feeling of seeing IT and then clicking, like I think the button said no .

more than anyone ever talks about. It's this mostly invisible job of content moderation that makes twitter usable for the average person is what makes every forum on the internet usable at all. And your well was going to the job. He got promotion after promotion in his department, which witter and a lot of other tech companies now call trust and safety. It's a hard job, and I just kept getting more complicated.

The way you will tells that there was a wild case to examine almost every day, foreign governments and personating their enemies, real people organizing harassment campaigns, impossible debates over watch accounted hate speech and regular meetings over whether to put label s on tweet that didn't quite finally ate the company's rules. Who would benefit for more context like about covered in two and two of the biggest case yet landed on your ell's desk. IT was a case about a user who kept causing problems.

And this guy's fans were even more rabbit than just in beepers. IT was the president of the united states to all this is a couple months into the pandemic, trump, a tweet that male in baLance, in that year's election, we're gonna lead a widespread fraud. And just to lay my own cards on the table, I thought that was really bad because they won't need the widespread fraud anyway. Twitter policies prohibited misleading people about the voting process the way trump is doing, but the company had never taken action against the president's tweet before. You all had to decide what to do.

I didn't see a basis for changing the policy, modifying a winking at IT, squinting and finding a while there was no way around IT IT was clearly a violation of our policy. Truthfully, there is a lot of nervousness about crossing this line. For the first time, taking action on a tweet from the president of the united states.

the company decided that instead of removing the president's post, open a label into IT, a label that just said, get the facts about million ballots with a link to a page that pushed back on trump .

clubs at a certain point when IT became clear that, yes, this was going to happen, um IT became a question of who could push the button.

At some level, we probably understand that in a moment like this, someone has to take a physical action to type the words, get the facts about million ballots and click the button to attach the label to the post. I talked to dozens of content moderators over the years, but i've never talk to someone who would moderate to the president of the united states.

When IT came time to take action, only a handful of people at twitter had the power to do IT. The company had locked down access after an incident where a former contractor on his last day working there briefly deactivated trumps account, shouted to body, are doing, said, who says I was an accident? Also, twitter adjust, introduce this idea of putting labels on misinformation a couple weeks before.

And so IT was this perfect storm where I IT required elevated access and knowledge of this incredibly convoluted system for applying these labels. And I was the only one who knew how to do IT. And so I got to an instruction from my boss that said, all right, we're going to do this .

also because this is how life goes. U elen is husband were moving houses the day all this happened.

I excused myself from wrangling the dog and the movers and the relocation of stuff and SAT in the front seat of the car with my cell phone tethered to my work laptop. I was on a video call with some of the other leaders of the company who were making this decision, and I remember a countdown where I was going to pushed the button that would apply the label to this tweet.

At that same moment, twitter er's communication staff was going to announce the decision.

and IT felt very important in that moment for the timing to be exactly joined up. For some reason, we counted down, I clicked the button, and then I refreshed to the public view of the tweet and saw the label. And the communications team said, we've got IT from here. And I said, okay, I have to go back and deal with the move vers now. And I hung up the call and I closed my laptop and I crossed the street back into my apartment.

If they made a movie about trump on twitter, you can imagine how they shoot this scene when the twitter employees hundreds over a console in a control room high five ving. But in reality, of course, is the opposite. Most contact moderators try really hard not to bring their own political beliefs into the job.

In a way, the legitimacy of the whole company they work for depends on IT. Shortly before that trump tweet, twitter had explained its reasoning for adding labels to misleading information with a blog post. Importantly, the post was signed with U.

L, S. Name is soon after that first label showed up on truth tweet. His name was everywhere .

I wake up one morning, the third day that my husband iron in our new home to my phone exploding because Kelly an convey, has just talked about me on fox news and is said that i'm responsible for the censorship of the president's account and and responsible for censorship at twitter more generally. And in that moment, everything exploded.

Thank you very much. We're here today to defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers.

The president held up a copy of the new york post with me on IT in the oval office as he announced an executive order restricting censorship by silicon valley companies.

His name is U. L. Roth, and he's the one that said that male balloon. You look, malin, no fraud. No fraud.

really. And for weeks, discussion of me and my political opinions and my beliefs became a symbol of everything that was allegedly wrong with. So icon valley, with the decisions that companies have made.

twitter had a higher security to protect the ellis IT had all taken in by surprise. He'd expected the criticism, but not that he would be the target. In cases like this, people would usually come up to the CEO or the company itself.

But soon you will realized that what as harasses were doing was much more effective. If you make companies believe that their employees can be hurt for enforcing the rules, they might be more reluctant to enforce them. Twitter didn't stop though.

They kept putting labels on his tweet. And trump, of course, lost the election. That's probably not how he would describe what happened. And after the january six attacks of the capital, he lost his twitter account too well, did not press the button on that one. But here's a detail about that day that I love.

Yeah, there was a technical question about whether that would work or whether twitter would crash.

Can you actually be done to .

standing somebody with that many followers is actually technically very complicated really when you suspend somebody, uh, twitter systems have to figure out what to do with all of the people who followed them.

And in other words, if you follow trump, twitter has to remove them from your list of follows.

which sounds very straight forward. But you have to do that tens of millions of times. Immediately we had to think about, like if we pushed this button is the site.

and to go down, as IT turned out, the site state up and trouble's banned for a while. Anyway, IT was such a strange moment with the click of a mouse. Twitter had managed to do something that congress attempted twice and failed to punish Donald trump in a way that had a real and immediate consequences for him.

Trump headed off tomorrow, lago. You will got promoted. He was running the whole department, and that's one.

Another mouthy y rich guy started to complain about all the rules on twitter. The guy was elland mask. In April twenty twenty two, must announced he acquired of stake in the company.

A few days after that, he announces intention to buy IT out right? As soon as the news broke, the will employees started asking what I mean for them. Elan had been tween a lot about free speech and is feeling that twitter didn't have enough of IT.

He posted a photo of six people in dark robes with the caption shadow ban council reviewing tweet and truth social exists because twitter censored free speech. Also, stuff like next i'm gna buy coca cola and put the cocaine back in and let's make twitter maximum. Some employees, working interest in safety, worried that maximum fund might mean elan would dismantle the whole Operation. You always really to give my chance.

though what I told them and what I sincerely believed was it's too soon to tell you. People are frequently charactered and vilified in the media. Certainly I was, and that's not a reflection of who they actually are. And so don't prejudge.

At the same time, you well knew that is more concerned employees might be right that he was abort a ship that might be about to sink. He knew he needed to be alert for the signs. His solution was to make a list to write down the red lines that he would not cross no matter what. Most of his job was to enforce other people's rules. But with elon coming in, he wanted to write down some rules for himself.

You have to have written policies and procedures so that when the moment comes to make that decision, you just follow the procedure that you had laid out before.

Your whole job was about trying to not make decisions out of impulse and emotion, but sort of by following a playbook. And that meant that before elan took over, you actually had to give yourself a playbook that's right. And so want to know pad.

By his desk at his house, he wrote down his red lines, I will not break the law. I will not lie for him. I will not undermine the integrity of an election. By the way, if you ever find yourself making a list like this, your job is insane. Then you will roll .

down one more rule. This was like a big one. I will not take arbitrary unitary al content, moderation action.

So elon came up. You just had bad, this person.

you were going to do that. That was a limit.

Do people in your team show you the listen that they are making to or talk to you about them?

We did.

U. S. List of rules got its first test pretty quickly on the day elon officially to go over twitter.

IT was the end of october. Lawyers were finalizing paperwork and twitter staff was attempting to enjoy the annual company halloween party. The scene was surreal.

Were you there for the halloween party? I was. Were you dressed up? I was not. Lots of people did dress up though employees by their kids. There were balloons and base painting.

I've talked us so many people who went in this party, in every one of them has added some bizarre new detail. Some people saw a guy dressed as a sacred crow walking around with what appear to be a handler. They wondered if I was musk. IT turned out to be a higher performer.

As the halloween party had started, I was sitting in a conference room doing some work, and we start hearing rumors that not only has the deal closed, but also the company's executives have been fired. And at first it's unconfirmed. I get texts from a couple of reporters who asked me, is IT true that vigia has been fired? I said, no, I just saw her. She's still online in the companies like slack and gmail like she's, of course, not like your sources are lying to you and then IT was true. Such an .

important lesson. Always trust the reporters. Pretty soon afterward, you'll get summed over to the part of hy quarters where elon in his team and set up shop, he was nervous and I thought.

OK, i'm about to be fired. So I walk past a number of my employees and I don't let on that any of this is happening because I don't want to panic them because they're there with their kids. And so I smile and make jokes about halloween costumes and walk over to the other part of the office where somebody who I gather works for elon musk in some capacity. But they don't introduce themselves.

They just say, how do I get access to twitter? Internal content, moderation systems? And I kind of poison and bullying can say, you don't.

That's not going to happen. I explain that twitter is Operating under an ftc concentric. That access to internal systems is regarded as highly sensitive and that there are both legal and policy reasons why we simply grant access .

to somebody else. Aide explains that they are worried about an insider threat, someone who might try to sabotage to the site on their way out. You will tells them, sure, I can help with that. He explains some steps they can take to protect the company. And to you all surprise, the aide says, okay, you're gona tell that to elon and any leaves and comes back with elon mask who at this .

point i've like seen on the internet, but I I have not met in person so elon sits down and asks, well, let me see our tools, our tools. He owns the company at this point. And so I show him his own account in twitters set of enforcement tools. And I explained to him what the basic capabilities are, and then I make a recommendation to him of what I think twitter should do to prevent insider misuse of tools during the corporate transition.

You will also have recommendations about the mid terms in the upcoming presidential election in brazil.

And as I started to explain some of the rational related to the brazilian election, elan interrupts me and says, yes, brazil bolon arrow. And lula, very dangerous. We need to protect that. And I was flared. I came into that conversation, expecting him to fire me. And instead he jumps ahead of me to say that he is sensitive to the risks of offline violence in the context of the brazilian election and wants to make sure that we don't interpret twitter's content moderation capabilities. IT was like a dream come true.

You're thinking maybe i'm actually aligned with this person.

yes.

And so you stayed. He was surprised in a good way. On twitter, you will talk about the company as if I should barely have any rules at all. But in that moment, one on one, you all thought he might turn out to be more reasonable.

Maybe spending some time inside the company would show elon the real value of those rules, which is that without them, you lose your users and you lose your advertisers. And you all felt like elan could be sensible. One of his first request was to restore the account of the bible on B.

A. Righting satterday. But you will explain how I had broken twitter rules in. Elon backed off.

I found him to be funny. I found him to be reasonable. I found that he responded well to having evidence backed recommendations be put in front of him. And I, for a moment, felt that IT might be possible .

for twitters .

trust and safety work to not just continue, but also to get Better.

After that, things began to move really quickly. About a week later, in, on, let off half the staff. Suddenly, you l was one of the highest ranking employees from the old twitter who is still working at the new one.

And IT seems like elon liked him after some troll when after U. L, for some of his old tweet, elland tweet, that he supported him. The U.

S. Minister elections took place mostly without incident. Same for the election in brazil. Elan keep pushing his teams to move faster, even as he was lung them off at first.

You also said that twitter still had enough content moderators to keep the site safe, but the cuts kept coming and the work out harder and harder. Soon, elon unveils his first big idea for making lots of money in recouping the forty four billion dollars he had spent to buy the company. Ya wellness teamed that IT was insane.

The plan to let anyone get a blue verified badge for their profile for eight dollars a month, the company called IT twitter blue. The risk seemed obvious. People would just make new accounts to impersonally brands and politicians and other celebrities.

Yowell in his team were a seven page document outlining the risks, but the bad is one on sell anyway. And almost immediately, and personator started buying them, and we can havoc. IT may be the most famous case.

Someone impersonated the drug maker eli lilly. Instead, that incident would now be free. The real eli ely stock Price drop more than five percent IT was a vivid illustration of why companies like twitter make rules in the first place. And personators were suddenly all over the site.

And so okay, we have to ban them, but somebody has to review them. We can't just like ban everyone. And so you do that with content moderators. And we had instructions to fire more of our contract content moderation staff to cut costs.

All this seems really self evident to me, and I think that would have seemed self evident even before you logged this. What what was elland to take on this? Like how do you respond to you raising these concerns?

Do IT anyway, and that was a breaking point for me.

We reached .

out to twitter for comment, but didn't here back. Reporters have sometimes gotten automated pupa oj s but I didn't even get that. You well spent a long time gaming out scenario for what might make him leave twitter.

He made that whole list. He wouldn't break the law for elan. He wlink undermine an election.

But ultimately, what got to him was something he didn't for. See, IT wasn't on the list. IT was something more personal. He knew this bizarre plan would just make people whose trust in twitter, they would lose trust in him.

Behind the elon musk, I was the most prominent representative of the company period. And I became aware that when twitter blue turned into the predictable hot mess that I was, that people would ask, why didn't the trust and safety team see this coming? You l wire you so bad at your job.

The day after the launch, e elan, elan got on the phone. Elan thought the problem could be fixed if apple would just hand over all the credit card information of the people doing the Operation. Ona tions, you well had to explain that apple would never do that. He also asked elan to slow down the rolled out of blues so that they would have time to hire and train more content moderators to look for impersonators. Elan didn't understand why that would take a longer than a day.

I got off that phone call and thought, I can't solve this problem. I will spend the rest of my time at this company trying to bail out a ship that might think more slowly because i'm there bAiling IT out, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life bAiling out a sinking ship.

You, well had made up his mind to leave. He called a couple of his employees to let them know.

I knew that that day I did not want to be walked out of twitter. After almost eight years by corporate security, I wanted to leave on my own terms. And there was an all hands going on at the time elon's, first time addressing the company in person. And during that all hands meeting, I hit send on my resignation email, put my laptop in my bag and walked out of the building for the last time.

Did you purpose bly send IT when you knew who was on stage?

Yes, absolutely. I knew that I would take some time for the hr team to see IT and process IT, for that to get to him, for him to react to IT. And in that time, I knew I wanted to be back at home and not be in the office. Email this one sentence. I am no longer able to perform the responsibility t ie s of my job and resign IT as of today at five pm.

I remember feeling two things. On one hand, I felt relieved, and then I also just felt deeply sad. I just wanted to get home. So I left twitters garage and was driving. And I was about halfway across the bay bridge when I think zi broke the news that I left twitter and my phone exploded.

And I get what you didn't even get across the bridge before. So he broke the news. God, I love her, though, is my coworker.

I'm immensely proud of her, even if he did kind of mess up, your else plans. The car you l was driving that day was a tesla, by the way, he was leasing IT. He'd been trying to return IT but couldn't get anyone to respond him. Maybe they've been drafted .

to work at twitter.

You only look for a few days. He spent some time writing and publishing open in the new york times. IT explained the very dry and principled way wide left.

That's when some random account we shared something you l had tweet from twenty ten about relationships between adults and minors. Around that time he'd been working on his dissertation, which called tech companies to do more to protect miners, a gay hookup sites like grinder. But elan replied with a tweet, quote, this explains a lot.

Then he linked to U, L, S. dissertation. Quote, looks like you well is arguing in favour of children being able to access adult internet services in its PHD thesis.

Not true, but u. Els phone exploded with abusive messages. He made the backlash to labelling a trump tweet look minor by comparison.

hundreds of messages per hour homophily c anti semi c and also violent, just deeply, endlessly violent. And he only had to tweet once. He didn't even have to say directly you well, as a pedophile, he just had to wink and not in that direction. And people took his lead.

When you will converses the internet, IT build a small self contained space separate from what we used to call real life. But by the time you will quit twitter, the distinction between online and off and collapsed and IT, he collapsed in large part because of the company he worked at twitter. The site bound together so many of the world's most influential people and then pitted them against each other. And these all consuming daily battles, and the anger coming out of that can drive people to do things, violent things. Pretty soon you, Ellen's husb, were overwhelmed with death threats.

My husband turned to me one day and said, i've seen you through a lot of being targeted and being harassed. I've never seen you look scared before. And that was the moment that we decided to leave our home.

And so once again, they moved. I met with U. L. At the temporary house that he had.

His husband are staying at, what they look for a new place. After all of this, I thought you, well might want a different kind of job. I would have wanted a different kind of job. The internet had almost killed them, a friend to anyway. But still, somehow he's optimistic about what the internet could be in a way you almost never hear anymore.

I love the internet. I really do. I think, is the internet power to bring people together and help folks all over the world find connections that matter to them is magical and is one of humanity s greatest achievements. I also think the internet can be incredibly dangerous and scary, and the work of trust and safety is trying to push that back a little bit and to make the internet more of what I can be and less of the dangers of what I could turn into you .

was idealism about the internet feels radical, given how to stabilizing its ban. How to stabilizing twitter has banned, but I know what he means. Back when he was a teenager, the internet gave U.

L. A place to discover other gay people, the chance to talk to everyone in the world instantaneously. He gave a career. IT gave me all those things too. I remember, like before the internet, IT was the last frantic time, and I was also a near one.

Here's how twitters doing. Since you are left, hate speech is on the rise. Advertisers have fled. Banks that funded mosques takeover have marked their investments down by more than half. Must himself has warned repeatedly that the site microban rubbed.

I kind of hope he does, because what's happening a twitter right now is teaching us a lesson. It's taking us way too longer to learn the people like you. Well, they are not the enemies of free speech online.

They're the ones who make IT possible. If you get any value out of social media at all, it's in part because of them. They clean the place up, make you feel good to be there.

They pull us back when we go too far, and they do answer us. And like, of course, we hate them for IT. We convince ce ourselves we do a much Better job if IT for us. That's what you I thought, look what happened. Nobody likes the guy enforcing the rules, but watching twitter sinking in to the ocean, you can help but notice how much you miss that guy when he's gone.

Because noon is the coast of the podcast hard fork from the new york times, who were our collaborators on this. He also read the news or performer. History was produced, David and Davis sand, since this story for zero last year, you always taken on a new job. He is now the head of trust and safety with the parent company of the dating apps tender and henge.

Listen up children and give your respect to this tale of captain in another course. And rec. elon.

Was his name common during his game? It's the ship seeking only for his rockets in cars. He had tons of a claim, but he wanted and didn't ship. He SHE dragged all the watch from and force them to walk down the to their, leaving no one to look out, no one who knew best. the.

The people party get today show include Michael comedy, a drill loop as crude conferred by the hot day value staff Nelson can may mondo and sure what sleeping big friends is wants and Christopher rota a toni july wilker and diane u. Manager serb dern or senior or David or executive editor is a manual berry help on today's we run from him regarding in safia ridal.

So thanks today that can understand we have a batch lic and well as her show we germy butmi irian ommen and the sea to captain who rescued the margery and spoke with ike, who would like to remain unnamed. Our second c shanty in today's was also written by Samson, the tourist sam gala stringing and engineering by Jessica tski, our website, this american lives that orgues. You can stream our archive, however, eight hundred shoes for absolutely free also.

So there's list of favorite shows if you are looking king for something to listen to all kinds of other stuff there. Again, this american life, without org, this american life is to go to public radio stations by P. R.

X, the public radio exchange. That is always to a program profound. And mirai mote, he and kindle and roman and ship in the deep end of the pool.

They were struggling. They were near a drowning. The toy looked up and realized, look.

it's so close, we can just swim to low again.

I'm here a glass back next week with more stories of this american life.

Put back on the seeking show. 为了 国王 的 新 英雄。