What Elon SaidAn archive of questions answered

Subjects / X

X

87 answers

Fact

How does X decide what shows up in my feed?

“Two important changes to timeline recommendations: - New AI/SI ranking model that predicts probable time spent much better - Retrieval model trained to surface posts people read all the way through User active seconds is growing exponentially and hitting all-time highs almost every day”

— Elon Musk, 20 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why did you buy Twitter / X?

“It’s fundamentally important to have a global town square, where everyone can communicate within the bounds of the laws of countries. Done right, this is the collective mind of humanity.”

— Elon Musk, 13 August 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

Why did Twitter change its name to X?

“Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing. The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video. In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.”

— Elon Musk, 25 July 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is first-principles thinking?

“…well I've got this like first principles algorithm that I find to be very helpful in and any in the design and manufacturing of anything and people here may find it helpful the first thing you should do is make the requirements that you've been given a less dumb whatever constraints and requirements were given there were some degree down and you want to make them less dumb…”

— Elon Musk, 4 November 2022 · Watch: Elon Musk at the 2022 Baron Investment Conference · 11:01 ↗ · In the archive

Fact

Will Optimus have a physical kill switch? (asked on X)

“I think one of the things that's going to be important is to have a localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air. Where if you, for example, were to say, “Stop, stop, stop,” if anyone said that, then the robot would stop, you know, type of thing. And that's not updatable remotely. I think it's going to be important to have safety features like that.”

— Elon Musk, 14 April 2022 · Watch: Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works -- live at TED2022 · 7:09 ↗ · In the archive