Twitter (Twitter) owner and chief executive officer (CEO) Elon Musk (Elon Musk) suddenly accepted a BBC live interview in a short period of time. During the one-hour conversation, he shared false information, US President Biden, And the broader issues of that tortuous takeover.
He told the BBC that running Twitter has been a “quite painful” and “roller coaster” process.
Musk is currently the world’s second-richest man, and he also runs car company Tesla and aerospace rocket company SpaceX. He bought Twitter for $44bn (£35.4bn) in October last year.
In an interview at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, he spoke to the BBC’s James Clayton about the social media company’s mass layoffs, disinformation and his personal work habits.
In the rare interview, he defended his way of running Twitter.
But he admitted that he ended up buying Twitter because a judge was about to order him to honor the deal.
He also confirmed in the interview that the certification label on the BBC’s Twitter account will be changed-not long ago, the BBC’s official Twitter account was marked as “government-funded”, and will now be changed to “public-funded”.
Here are six key takeaways from the interview.
1. Musk denies surge in hate speech on Twitter
image source,Getty Images
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion.
Musk has denied claims that hate speech and content on Twitter have increased since he took over.
Earlier this year, Twitter insiders told the BBC that the company, which has undergone massive layoffs and transformations since Musk became an owner, can no longer protect users from cyberbullying, government-regulated disinformation and child sexual exploitation. infringement.
In March, Twitter said it had removed 400,000 accounts in one month to help “make Twitter safer.”
To fully assess Musk’s claims, you need two things we don’t currently have — access to Twitter data before and after Musk took over, and crucially, a clear understanding of how he defines disinformation and hate speech.
There is no one-and-done definition of hate speech under U.S. law. Due to the existence of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the laws of the United States are generally much more relaxed than those of other countries.
2. He voted for Biden
Musk said that in the previous US general election, nearly half of the people in the United States voted for Trump, but he said: “I am not one of them. I voted for Biden.”
At another point in the interview, he defended Twitter’s lifting of the ban on Trump, who was banned in 2021 by the platform on charges of inciting violence.
3. He claims Twitter is winning the battle against fake news
Musk claimed that he worked to remove automatically generated machine accounts (bots), and that false information on Twitter decreased after he took over.
“My experience is that disinformation has decreased, not increased,” he told a BBC reporter.
Some outside experts disagree.Newsguard, a start-up that tracks disinformation onlineResearch——There are many similar surveys and studies—it is found that after Musk took over, the interactive participation of popular false information dissemination accounts has increased.
According to the survey, engagement in the form of likes, retweets, and the like rose nearly 60 percent on the most popular but least trusted accounts in the week after he bought Twitter.
The BBC also independently analyzed more than 1,000 accounts that had been banned in the past but were unbanned after Musk took over, and found that more than one-third of the restored accounts had spread infringement or false information.
This includes false anti-vaccine claims, misogynistic and anti-LGBT propaganda, and denial of the 2020 US election results.
4. He opposes banning TikTok
Musk said he does not use the most-downloaded app in the United States, but opposes any move to shut it down.
The United States is considering banning TikTok due to security concerns over its ownership by a Chinese company. Some other countries have banned government employees from using it on their phones.
“I’m generally against blocking anything,” Musk said, though he said a ban would be good for Twitter because it could mean more people using his platform.
5. Twitter won’t be sold for $44 billion
Musk once said in the interview that if someone offered to buy Twitter at his previous price, he would refuse.
He said that if he was going to sell, it was more important to find a buyer who valued the “truth” rather than the bid because, as he himself said, “I don’t care about the money.”
But is it true? Don’t forget, he once tried desperately to get out of the takeover.
Five key quotes from Musk’s BBC interview
- On acquiring Twitter:“It wasn’t smooth sailing at all, it was a rollercoaster ride … it was a really stressful situation.”
- Talk about layoffs:“I wouldn’t say it’s indifference… If the whole ship sinks, then everybody’s out of work.”
- Talk about profit:“We could be profitable in the quarter, or more accurately, flow positive, if things continue to be good. I think almost all advertisers are back, or say they will be.”
- On controversial tweets:“Did I shoot myself in the foot multiple times on Twitter? Yes.”
- On labeling the BBC as “government-funded media”:“We’re adapting the label to … public funding … if we use the same vocabulary as the BBC to describe it, that’s fine.”
Musk said that when he took over, Twitter could only live for a few months at most, and it was run as a non-profit organization.
Twitter’s operating costs at the time were higher than its revenue. In its last full-year statement before Musk took over, it had total sales of $5 billion in 2021 and expenses of $55 billion. In fact, since 2012, Twitter has only been profitable in two years.
Musk believes that Twitter is now close to breaking even. That’s no surprise – laying off 6,500 employees would indeed reduce costs.
But he’s also proactively looking for ways to bolster sales, such as by changing Twitter’s “blue hook” credentials.
So, yes, Twitter may be approaching breakeven right now, thanks to massive layoffs. But the question is whether it can maintain the profitability trend that would make the company worth its $44 billion price tag.
6. Concede on the BBC’s accreditation label
Musk confirmed he would change the BBC’s Twitter account authentication label from “government funded” to “publicly funded” after last week’s debate, and hours after the interview ended, Labels have been modified.
The BBC had previously objected to the original label, emphasizing the independence of the BBC. It is largely funded by the British public through television license fees.
In an interview on Wednesday, Musk said: “If we use the same vocabulary as the BBC to describe it, it must be okay.”
License fees account for 71% of the BBC’s total revenue of £5.3bn in 2022 – with the remainder coming from commercial and other activities such as grants, royalties and rental income.
The BBC also receives more than £90 million a year from the government to fund the BBC World Service, which mainly serves non-UK audiences.
