Elon Musk recently painted over the “w” in the “Twitter” sign at the company headquarters in San Francisco, turning it into “Titter.(Opens in a new tab)” But if you need more proof that things are falling apart at the social media site, we present to you the Musk’s latest interview with the BBC’s James Clayton(Opens in a new tab), in which he claims Twitter is now being run by his dog.
First, it’s worth addressing the awkwardness of the interview (you can watch parts of it in the video below), which was broadcast on Twitter Spaces on Wednesday. Musk does his typical dance between attempting to be funny and eliciting sympathy by saying how hard it has been to lay off a massive number of Twitter employees. But when asked whether the sacked employees should’ve been given prior notice, the Twitter CEO avoids answering, instead passing the ball back to Clayton. And when questioned on the rise of misinformation and fake news on Twitter since Musk took over, he seemingly gets irritated, asking the interviewer to name one example from personal use (for the record, there are studies that point to the increase of “misinformation superspreaders” on Musk’s Twitter(Opens in a new tab)).
Key points from the interview, which mostly revolves around Twitter, include the social media company being down to just 1,500 employees (down from more than 7,000), Musk’s admission that shutting down a Twitter data center(Opens in a new tab) in December 2022 was “quite catastrophic,” and that Twitter is currently bleeding money(Opens in a new tab) but it’s on the path of being cashflow positive “within months. ” On the topic of frequent Twitter outages as of late, Musk says there have been “a few,” but “not for very long.”
Perhaps the biggest admission from Musk is that he ultimately went through with the Twitter acquisition deal because he felt the court would make him do it. “Yes, that is the reason,” Musk told the BBC.
As far as who’s running things at Twitter right now (Musk previously said he would abide by the results of a Twitter poll, in which users decided he should step down as CEO), he told Clayton it was his dog, Floki.
“I’m not the CEO of Twitter. My dog is the CEO of Twitter. It’s a great dog.” Musk said. “He’s got a black turtleneck, what more would you need?”
Musk also admitted that he shot himself in the foot with his tweets “multiple times,” and that he should probably stop tweeting after 3 a.m. “I need bulletproof shoes at this point,” he said.
