Elon Musk discussed the recent labelling controversy surrounding BBC and said he shot “himself on the foot” with some of his tweets (Image: Reuters)
Elon Musk discussed the recent labelling controversy surrounding BBC and said he shot “himself on the foot” with some of his tweets.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk in an interview with the BBC said running Twitter has been “quite painful” and “a rollercoaster”. The interview was described by the UK-based media outlet as “last minute” and was broadcast live on platform Twitter Spaces.
I said BBC could come Twitter, then, to my surprise, a reporter shows up— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 12, 2023
Elon Musk also told the BBC that he remains open to the idea of selling the company to the right person, if and when the right person came along. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO bought Twitter for $44bn in October 2022.
The interview was shot and recorded in Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco and over three million listeners tuned in.
The BBC report said that Musk preferred to do some interviewing himself and also defended how he was running the company.
“(The) pain level has been extremely high, this hasn’t been some kind of party,” Musk was quoted as saying by the BBC.
“It’s not been boring. It’s been quite a rollercoaster. (It has been) really quite a stressful situation over the last several months,” Musk told the BBC but said he felt buying Twitter was the right thing to do.
‘Shot Myself on the Foot’
Musk, world’s second richest person, according to the Forbes billionaires list, also said that he “should not tweet after 3am” and said he sometimes “shot himself on the foot” through his controversial tweets.
“Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes. I think I should not tweet after 3am,” Musk said.
Musk also said that he sleeps in the office sometimes and has a spot in the library which many don’t frequent.
Speaking of how Twitter is doing, he said that things are running “reasonably well” and the usage of the site is up. He also said that he was happy to see advertisers returning to the site.
Musk pointed out that Twitter is “roughly breaking even”.
He also pointed out that cutting the workforce was not an easy decision and acknowledged that there are some glitches on the site but highlighted that site was working fine.
BBC Label
During the interview, the issue of labelling BBC’s Twitter account as ‘Government-funded Media’ was also raised. “I know the BBC is generally not thrilled about being labelled state media,” Musk said.
Musk further told the BBC that Twitter was adjusting the label for the BBC to “publicly-funded”. The BBC spoke to Twitter earlier on this issue and said: “The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee.”
“I actually do have a lot of respect for the BBC,” Musk told the BBC interviewer.
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