Elon Musk: Managing Twitter was pretty painful
His BBC interview
Elon Musk gave an interview to the BBC via Twitter Spaces, talking about the company and himself. The interview was watched live by over 3 million listeners. Musk said that managing Twitter was painful enough and that he would sell the company if the right candidate came along.
The pain level was pretty high, it wasn’t some kind of party. It certainly wasn’t boring. It was like a roller coaster ride. It has been an extremely stressful situation in the last few months, but I feel that buying the company was the right thing to do. Things are going well within reason, site usage is up and the site is working. The workload sometimes forces me to sleep in the office. I have a couch in a library that no one goes there.
Regarding the decision to label the BBC’s main Twitter account as a ” state-sponsored media “, Musk noted:
I know the BBC was not thrilled with the characterization. We strive for maximum transparency and accuracy. Linking ownership and funding sources makes sense. I believe that media organizations should be self-aware and not falsely claim the complete absence of bias. All organizations are biased, some more so than others. I should note that I follow the BBC on Twitter because I find them to be among the least biased.
As for Twitter’s finances, Musk said the company is ” almost breaking even ” now that most advertisers have returned to Twitter. He also noted that the layoffs that brought the workforce from 7,000 employees to 1,500 were not easy. The layoff of many engineers raised questions about the stability of the platform, there are still a few glitches, but overall the site is working normally.
An interesting point of the interview was the reporter’s reference to the supposed increase in hate speech. But when asked by Elon Musk to provide an example, the journalist was unable to cite one and his discomfort with Musk’s pressure was evident.
