London | Billionaire Elon Musk has told the BBC that running Twitter has been “quite painful” but that the social media company is now roughly breaking even after he acquired it late last year.
In an interview also streamed live late Tuesday on Twitter Spaces, Musk discussed his ownership of the online platform, including layoffs, misinformation and his work style.
“It's not been boring. It's quite a rollercoaster,” he told the U.K. broadcaster at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters.
It was a rare chance for a mainstream news outlet to interview Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX. After buying Twitter for $44 billion last year, Musk's changes included eliminating the company's communiciations department.
Reporters who email the company to seek comment now receive an auto-reply with a poop emoji.
The interview was sometimes tense, with Musk challenging the reporter to back up assertions about rising levels of hate speech on the platform. At other times, Musk laughed at his own jokes, mentioning more than once that he wasn't the CEO but his dog Floki was.
He also revealed that he sometimes sleeps on a couch at Twitter's San Francisco office.
Advertisers who had shunned the platform in the wake of Musk's tumultuous acquisition have mostly returned, the billionaire said, without providing details.
Musk predicted that Twitter could become “cash flow positive” in the current quarter “if current trends continue.” Because Twitter is a private company, information about its finances can't be verified.
After acquiring the platform, Musk carried out mass layoffs as part of cost-cutting efforts. He said Twitter's workforce has been slashed to about 1,500 employees from about 8,000 previously, describing it as something that had to be done.
“It's not fun at all," Musk said. “The company's going to go bankrupt if we don't cut costs immediately. This is not a caring-uncaring situation. It's like if the whole ship sinks, then nobody's got a job.” Asked if he regretted buying the company, he said it was something that “needed to be done.” “The pain level of Twitter has been extremely high. This hasn't been some sort of party," Musk said.
Washington | National Public Radio is quitting Twitter over the social media company's recent actions under owner Elon Musk to stamp it with labels the news organisation says are meant to undermine its credibility.
“NPR's organisational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent,” the news organisation said in a statement Wednesday.
Last week, Twitter labelled NPR's main account as “state-affiliated media” on the social media site, a label also used to identify media outlets that are controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments.
Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media” and gave it to at least one other public news organisation, the BBC.
“We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence,” NPR's statement said.
NPR's chief communications officer, Isabel Lara, said in an email that “NPR journalists and employees will decide on their own if they wish to remain on the platform, same for NPR member stations as they're independently owned and operated.” NPR does receive US government funding through grants from federal agencies and departments, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The company said it accounts for less than 1 per cent of NPR's annual operating budget.
