Elon Musk recently painted over the “w” in the “Twitter” sign at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, transforming it into “Glancing.(Opens in a new tab)But if you need more proof that things are falling apart on the social media site, we bring you Musk’s latest interview with the BBC’s James Clayton(Opens in a new tab)in which he claims that Twitter is now 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 aired on Twitter Spaces on Wednesday. Musk does his typical dance between trying to be funny and drumming up sympathy by saying how hard it was to lay off a large number of Twitter employees. But when asked if the terminated employees should have been notified, the Twitter CEO avoids answering, instead passing the buck to Clayton. And when asked about the rise of misinformation and fake news on Twitter since Musk took over, he seems to get irritated, asking the interviewer to cite an example of personal use (for the record, there are studies that point to the rise of ‘disinformation superspreaders’ on Musk’s Twitter(Opens in a new tab)).
Key points from the interview, which mostly revolve around Twitter, include the social media company now down to just 1,500 employees (down from over 7,000), Musk’s admission that shut down a Twitter data center(Opens in a new tab) in December 2022 was “pretty catastrophic”, and that Twitter is currently bleeding money(Opens in a new tab) but it is on track to have a positive cash flow “in a few months”. About the frequent Twitter Interruptions Lately, Musk says there have been “a few,” but “not for very long.”
Perhaps Musk’s biggest admission is that he finally crossed the Twitter acquisition agreement because he felt the court would force him to do so. “Yeah, that’s the reason,” Musk told the BBC.
As for who’s running things on Twitter right now (Musk has previously said he’ll respect 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 am not the CEO of Twitter. My dog is the CEO of Twitter. He’s a great dog. Musk said. “He’s got a black turtleneck, what more could you ask for?”
Musk also admitted that he shot himself in the foot with his tweets “several times” and that he should probably stop tweeting after 3 a.m. “I need bulletproof shoes at this point “, did he declare.