Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, has said the social media platform will change the BBC’s label from “government-funded media” after the broadcaster objected.
The Tesla chief executive made the announcement during a wide-ranging interview with the corporation in which he said his pain level running the site had been “extremely high” but that the business was now “more or less breaking even.” “.
The BBC contacted the company last week after the description was added to its main Twitter account. Musk said he had the “greatest respect” for the organization, adding: “We want [the tag] as true and accurate as possible. We are setting the label to [the BBC being] financed with public funds. We will try to be precise.”
The South African-born entrepreneur, who bought Twitter for $44bn (£35.4bn) last October, also claimed in the interview that advertisers were returning to the site after many abandoned it following its takeover, leading to a downturn. of the incomes.
Musk said: “It’s been quite a stressful situation in the last few months. Is not easy.
He admitted that mistakes had been made during his ownership, but added: “All’s well that ends well… I feel like we’re headed to a good place. We are more or less at the breakeven point. I think we will have a trend towards positive cash flow very soon, literally in a matter of months. Advertisers are coming back.”
Asked if he had any regrets about buying the company, Musk said “the pain level has been extremely high, this hasn’t been some kind of party.”
He admitted he wanted to pay less for Twitter after he said he found more automated bots on the network than he expected. He initially said he would not sell the site now if he was offered the $44 billion he paid, but later clarified that he would if he could be sure the buyer would “rigorously seek the truth.”
Musk has been criticized for cutting nearly half of Twitter’s staff last fall. He said reducing the workforce had not been easy, adding that he had subsequently reduced the number of Twitter employees by just over 80% from “just under 8,000” when he took over the business to “1,500.”
The site’s owner described laying off a large number of people as “no fun” and a process that could be “painful” at times.
Musk defended large-scale job cuts, saying Twitter had “four months to live” when he bought it. He said the company urgently needed to cut costs to survive, and that Twitter had been “spending money like it was out of fashion” before its acquisition.
Legacy blue checkmarks on Twitter will be removed from all users in the coming days, after missing a previously proposed deadline to do so by April 1, as part of its efforts to persuade people and organizations to that they pay a monthly subscription fee for their Twitter. blue service.
He criticized media groups that had said they would not pay for this service: “It’s a small amount of money, so I don’t know what their problem is.”
Musk also explained why he had tweeted in February that he would not wish the pain of running the social media site on anyone. He described himself as “under constant attack” including from the media, saying it hurt him because he didn’t have “a stone cold heart”. He added: “If you’re under constant criticism and attacks, and it comes at you non-stop, even via Twitter, it’s hard.”
He said he received “a lot of negative comments” but added that he did not disable replies and did not block anyone on Twitter.
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The interview took a strange turn when Musk said he was no longer CEO of Twitter and insisted that his dog, a shiba inu named flokihe now held the position.
The Tesla boss previously claimed that Floki was promoted after his Twitter poll last December, in which he asked users if he should step down from the company’s top job. More than 10 million users voted that he should resign.
Musk also revealed that he sometimes sleeps in the company office, adding that he uses a sofa in a library “where nobody goes.”
The billionaire has previously described the BBC as “one of the least biased news organisations”.
The broadcaster issued a statement after being designated a “government-funded outlet”, saying: “The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the license fee.”
The interview came the day after a number of former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, sued the company for legal fees they say they incurred during recent legal battles.
Agrawal, along with former Twitter chief financial officer Ned Segal and former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, allege they have spent more than $1 million of their own money on legal fees related to shareholder lawsuits and government investigations, which are calling Twitter to pay.
All three executives were fired when Musk took over the company.
