Elon Musk, Twitter staff cut from 8,000 to 1,500

Since taking command, Elon Musk has reduced Twitter’s staff from 8,000 to 1,500: an operation that the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has defined as “painful”, which “didn’t amuse me at all” in a interview granted to the BBC. Answering questions from correspondent James Clayton from Twitter headquarters, Musk confessed that taking over the social network was “necessary”, but that managing it is “pretty painful” and is like being on a “roller coaster”. Musk stressed that he aspires to make Twitter a “transparent and honest” medium, but that he still has to work on it.

Musk, in the interview granted “surprise” and with only 20 minutes’ notice to the BBC journalist at the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, said he was working to contain the disinformation but denied that under his management on social media, the hate messages. The new patron said he wants to pay less for Twitter after discovering that there are many automated social bots at work on the net. He stated that several of the councilors who had left with his arrival have since returned. And he also said that right now, he wouldn’t give Twitter to someone willing to offer him an amount equal to the $44 billion he paid to buy it a year ago. The South African-born businessman, currently the richest man on the planet, said that advertising on Twitter has increased under him and added that the company’s budget is “more or less even”: a statement that the BBC said it unable to independently verify. Musk, writes the BBC, threw some jokes here and there in the interview, also saying that now the new CEO of Twitter is his dog, Floki. Musk said he often sleeps in the office and, speaking of his controversial tweets, he admitted “I don’t think I should tweet after 3 in the morning anymore”. Finally, pressed by the interviewer, Musk promised that the BBC tag on Twitter, which now appears as “government funded medium”, will become “publicly funded”.

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