A social media company is a very different beast from a tech company, and very easy to quickly run into the ground. We've seen other platforms die very quickly because they institute things that chase off a bulk of users.

Not so different, perhaps, from his previous company PayPal however. There, detecting fraud with a hybrid AI/human examiner model was solution they found for that central difficult task. Unearthing bots and nation-state actors may not be too different, and Tesla AI is world-leading.

I understand that's not all that goes into managing a social network, but if he mostly gets out of the way other than bot-blocking, as seems to be his intent, he might be okay.

'Paypal' was literally falling apart and Musk had to be ousted and replaced because he was destroying the company. It was Peter Thiel that took over, renamed it Paypal and it became the success as we know it today. So if your barometer of success is Paypal, then Twitter is doomed.

I think PayPal survived. Without any course correction so far as I know. Whose idea the hybrid solution was I don't know - it's not impossible it was Thiel since Palantir is a suspiciously similar hybrid solution (or a series of them), in part. But more likely a third party. Witnessing the success of the hybrid solution up close would be enough to impress both of them with the lesson.

This man is building the infrastructure to colonize Mars. Tell me more about how much harder it is to run a social media company.

He's building nothing of the sort.

Marissa Mayer tried to murder Tumblr but it is still alive. Everyone hates Facebook but it lives.