Extremely Hardcore : Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, many were optimistic about the visionary behind Tesla and SpaceX taking the helm. They saw him as a strong leader who could reclaim control from Twitter’s privileged workforce, drive them to become “extremely hardcore,” and unlock Twitter’s profit and potential. Musk’s actions were seen as motivated by a genuine belief in the importance of promoting free speech on the platform. “I didn’t do it to make more money,” Musk stated. “I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love.”

However, once Musk took charge at Twitter headquarters, the command-and-control strategies he perfected at Tesla and SpaceX quickly went awry. Drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews with over sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, presentations, court filings, and congressional testimony, Extremely Hardcore unveils the true story of how Musk transformed the world’s online public square into his personal megaphone.

You’ll hear from employees who watched their workplace crumble in real-time, witnessing years of progress in combating disinformation and hate speech unravel in mere months. The book features accounts from a machine-learning expert who fully embraced Twitter 2.0 only to be betrayed by Musk, a father driven by his need for healthcare into Musk’s inner circle, a trust and safety expert targeted by a harassment campaign incited by his former boss, and many other employees who fought to save the company from Musk’s worst impulses.