Character Limit
Credit: Special Arrangement
In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost? This is the story of the showdown between Elon Musk and Twitter and how the richest man on earth suddenly came to control one of the most powerful media platforms in the world. In Character Limit, award-winning reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac draw on exclusive interviews, unreported documents and internal Twitter recordings to provide a revelatory, three-dimensional, and definitive account of what really happened when Musk showed up to take over Twitter, spoiling for a brawl and intent on revolution, with his merciless, sycophantic cadre of lawyers, investors, and bankers.
In part, this is the story of Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey, who idealistically dreamed of building a ‘digital town square’ but detested Wall Street and never built a profitable business, and Musk, one of the site’s most influential users with over 70 million followers. To Musk, Twitter―once known for its almost absolute commitment to free speech―had utterly lost its way. Blaming it for the proliferation of what he called the “woke mind virus”, he claimed that the survival of humanity itself depended on the future of the site. Drawing on unparalleled sources, this is the defining story of our time told in vivid, cinematic detail.
Kate Conger and Ryan Mac are technology reporters for the New York Times.