Character Limit Review by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac: Musk's Takeover of Twitter | Biography Books

IThere was a time, just three or four years ago, when you could follow the news closely and not hear from Elon Musk for days, or even weeks. He was on his way to becoming the richest man in the world and was already a polarizing figure, but he was a character that was missed. Those days are gone.

Musk is now locked in a fierce public battle with Brazil’s government and judiciary in the name of free speech after he refused a court order to block several accounts that were accused of spreading hate speech and disinformation. He is a key figure in the US election race, having run for a job seeking savings in government spending if Donald Trump, whom he has backed, wins the presidency. Thanks to his Starlink satellites, he is a critical figure in the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine.

Musk is a powerful man because of his wealth and his control of strategic industries, including space launches and satellites, but he is inescapable because of the social network that took over him and then transformed him: Twitter.

Even people who have never used Twitter know more or less its history over the past few years: Musk bought it, gave it a new, youthful name, X, and the whole thing seems to have been a complete disaster that has left everyone miserable, including Musk himself.

That makes the task of New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac in chronicling the inauguration and its aftermath a difficult one: Almost anyone reading this book is pretty familiar with how things unfolded. How can you make a story compelling when every step of the process has already been covered so extensively?

Conger and Mac’s response to this is their uncanny ability to take the reader into almost every room that mattered during the controversial $44 billion acquisition. The book opens with a Twitter data scientist preparing to meet with Musk, ostensibly in an attempt to keep his job. The employee, however, has already decided he’s going to quit and is instead using the opportunity to level with the new boss. The meeting goes predictably badly, leading him to accuse Musk of being one of the most gullible men on the planet. The book records Musk’s response in two words: “Fuck you.”

At other times, the narrative seems to know Musk’s exact movements when he was at home with his then-girlfriend Claire Elise Boucher (better known as the musician Grimes), or the conversations taking place on his plane. Such is the apparent omniscience that the stunning accounts of what happens in boardrooms and executive offices during the acquisition seem ordinary.

Musk himself did not grant an interview to the authors. Some of his opinions are taken from court documents and other reports, but there is no doubt that Conger and Mac enjoyed unparalleled access to a variety of characters from all sides. One could not have hoped for a better front-row seat to the drama that was unfolding.

This close-up view is rarely flattering. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey first appears frivolous and disengaged, then downright grumpy when he is let go as Twitter CEO, before joining Musk on the radical right. When we leave him, “his online posts were the kind of things I would have had tagged or deleted while he was CEO of Twitter.” Musk’s authorized biographer Walter Isaacson appears to move from observer to participant. Not only is it reported that advise Elon Musk about the price of his ill-fated plan to sell Twitter verification – the fabled “blue check mark” – but apparently tells Musk to remove the labels “for all media.”

The heroism, when possible, is centered on efforts to keep data centers online or to keep a moderation team on their posts for an extra day or two to cover the elections in the United States and Brazil. Some characters are more sympathetic than others, but there are few good ones here: Character Limit is the story of a dysfunctional company descending into chaos.

All of this makes for an interesting read, perhaps enough to keep people accustomed to the 280 characters of X’s posts interested for the duration of a 430-page book, which is certainly no small feat. Those who have followed the story obsessively will find plenty to keep them interested if they manage to get past the somewhat dull first third of the book. Casual observers, who have probably already had their fill of endless newspaper reports about Musk’s antics, may find it a more difficult read.

One of the challenges for Conger and Mac is that they are telling a story with no ending. X could go bust next year, or prove decisive in the 2024 presidential race. It could easily do both. Indeed, the majestic speed of book publishing means that Character Limit’s narrative has already been overtaken by events. As an account of exactly what happened and what it felt like to be there, it is a triumph. Anyone hoping for insight into what it all means, or what might happen next, will have to look elsewhere.

Musk’s companies have launched more rockets into space this year than all the governments on the planet combined. He has companies developing artificial intelligence, human-machine interfaces, autonomous vehicles and more. A book with unprecedented access to his inner circle portrays him as a man with no impulse control, no plans, a desperate need for flattery and no ability to separate truth from fiction. If he leaves open the question of why he does what he does and what he will do next, that may be because no one — least of all Musk — really knows.