2023/4/12 Elon Musk interviewed by BBS Reporter James Clayton

 

James Clayton:

​Why did you agree to do this, this interview with the BBC?

Elon Musk:

I don't know. I like spontaneity. There's a lot going on.

I actually do have a lot of respect for the BBC, although sometimes forget what the BBC stands for, you know. 

But, what does it stand for? Just kidding, hahahaha

James Clayton:

You know what it stands for

Elon Musk:

Yes I do,

so there's a lot going on. so I thought this might be a good opportunity to answer some questions

and you know, I guess, maybe get some feedback too.

what should we be doing different?

I know the BBC for example is not thrilled about being labeled state-affiliated media

James Clayton:

Not exactly.

I was going to get that later, but let's go it for now

It's officially objected to that term, do you want to respond to it?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, I mean our goal is simply to be as truthful and accurate as possible.

So I think we're adjusting the label to be publicly funded

which I think is perhaps not too objectionable.

We're trying to be accurate

James Clayton:

I'm not the BBC, but publicly funded is how the BBC describes itself

Elon Musk:

Okay. Okay, so that would be accurate.

If we use the same words that the BBC uses to describe itself, that presumably would be okay.

I'm not asking you for a yes or no, since you're not running BBC per se.

But it probably seems to pass a reasonable test.

James Clayton:

So you're going to change those labels on the BBC twitter feed, and also NPR's as well?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, publicly funded

Basically we're trying to be as accurate as possible.

James Clayton:

Okay, all right, fine

First of all, I just want to clear something up.

Are you sleeping in the office here?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, I sometimes sleep in the office, in the library

James Clayton:

Like five days a week? three days a week?

Elon Musk:

No, no, I'm not here five days a week.

But, there's a library that nobody goes to, on the seventh floor

and there's a couch there, and I sleep there sometimes

James Clayton:

Okay. Okay.

In terms of the general overview, the reason why I think you've agreed to do this,

is because your want to talk about the first six months as chief executive owner of twitter

Elon Musk:

yeah, it's kind of like whatever you want to talk about, you know

James Clayton:

Right, so how do you think it's gone?

Elon Musk:

Well, it's not been boring

It's been quite a roller coaster,

I mean, things are going I think you know reasonably well.

I mean we've seen some all-time highs in terms of total user time

so we passed 8 million user minutes per day, which is a lot of user minutes

Yeah, so usage is up, growth is good,

The site works, mostly

You know a few glitches here and there, but the site is working fairly well

And we're doing it with a small fraction of the original you know head accounts

James Clayton:

I mean you mentioned outages that have been several

and we've actually spoken to an engineer, who worked at twitter

and they said that the plumbing is broken here, and it's on fire

and there could be problems at any minute.

Do you accept that?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, I mean there have been a few outages, but not for very long

and it's currently working fine.

James Clayton:

So it doesn't keep you up at night, that twitter might go offline again?

Elon Musk:

at this point, I think we've got a pretty good handle on what makes twitter work

And we're also doing it with two data centers, instead of three

so we used to have three data centers

we shut down one of them.

So we're actually roughly two-thirds of the prior compute capability

but we've made so many improvements to the core algorithm,

in some cases we improved the core algorithm by 80 percent.

So the actual CPU usage, computer usage is dramatically less

But they all speak of themselves

The system despite being at all time highs of usage, is fast.

It's more responsive than it was before the takeover

and we've also added long-form tweets,

you can now post videos up to two hours, and tune video of any length

we're rolling out our subscriber programs,

so content creators can actually make a living on twitter by having some of their content behind a paywall

and we open source the algorithm,

so there's transparency about what content gets shown versus not

I think if you say like, what are you really going to trust?

are you going to trust some sort of black box algorithm from some other site,

or you're going to trust something that you can actually see and understand?

James Clayton:

but do you accept that there are lots of engineers that are looking at the way that twitter is built

and then the lack of engineers, because so many have left

and now worried about the health of twitter?

Elon Musk:

Well, I mean many of these people have predicted that twitter will cease to function

the predictions have not turned out to be true, you know

And so Mark Twain saying, you know, rumors about our death was an exaggeration

James Clayton:

let's go back six months.

Elon Musk:

I mean we're literally on twitter right now, so it must work.

James Clayton:

let's go back six months, and even further back than that

When you put that initial bid in, you then had a wobble

you kind of said, I actually don't want to buy twitter anymore

Elon Musk:

I mean it really is quite entertaining, I mean, it's like soap opera,

because when I first made the offer, the response was the Board adopted a poison pill,

so they were like, hell no, you can't buy twitter, we'd rather die.

We'd like chew on cyanide before being bored.

That was their initial response

James Clayton:

And then you said, actually I don't want to buy it

Elon Musk:

Yes, and then they said, no, you must buy us,

gun to the head, you have to buy us

I'm like, are you the same people who said you'd rather die than be bored?

Doesn't that seem odd?

James Clayton:

so I guess my question to you is in terms of you said that the reason was because of bots

because twitter was filled with bots

looking back at it now,

was there a little bit of you that thought actually, maybe I've overpaid

actually maybe I don't want to do this. I want to get out of this?

Be honest,

Elon Musk:

yeah, no, no, the problem was that the publicly stated user numbers were in excess of the real user numbers

James Clayton:

I've heard you talk about that, and you can talk about that of course,

but basically looking back at it now, was that the only reason that you wanted to pull out?

Elon Musk:

Yes, that's literally the issue.

It's like let's say you buy a warehouse full of goods,

and you're told that less than 5 percent of the goods in the warehouse are broken, you know

but then you actually get the warehouse, you look into the warehouse,

and turns out actually 25 percent of the things broken

You're like, huh? it's not what you said

James Clayton:

So then you changed your mind again, and decided to buy it.

Did you do that? Did you do that?

Elon Musk:

I had to

James Clayton:

Right. Did you do that because you thought that a court would make you do that?

Elon Musk:

Yes, Yes, that is the reason

James Clayton:

right, so you were still trying to get out of it,

and then you just were advised by lawyers, look, you're gonna have to buy this.

Elon Musk:

Yes

James Clayton:

Interesting

so you didn't actually want to purchase it, even when you said you were going

Elon Musk:

Well, not of that price

No, I mean like, let's say I think the analogy is pretty close

So let's say, you know, it's like there's a warehouse full of goods

they say the warehouse, less than 5 percent of what's in the warehouse is broken

then you walk into the warehouse to say actually it's 25 percent.

So you know, you might still want to buy what's in that warehouse, but probably at a lower price

Not buying the stuff that's broken

James Clayton:

So you didn't have an epiphany,

you just thought I'm gonna have to buy this, I might also bite the bullet

Elon Musk:

Yeah, it's not super complicated

James Clayton:

right, I'm not sure you've said that before

Elon Musk:

oh fair enough

James Clayton:

So then you...

Elon Musk:

Cue a whole bunch of cases

You said this in the BBC, have you...?

James Clayton:

So you then came into twitter with a sink, what were your first impressions?

Elon Musk:

Well, I thought wow, this is a really nice office building, and...

James Clayton:

expensive

Elon Musk:

yes, very expensive office building

great decor, it's lovely place

and definitely is spending money like it's going out of fashion

Which is it isn't quite going out of fashion yet

so the gravity of the situation is perhaps, it's not well understood of

At the point at which the company the transaction closed,

twitter was tracking to lose over three billion dollars a year

And had one billion in the bank, so that's four months to death

So this is your starting position

How would you feel?

pretty tense, you know,

James Clayton:

you also had to borrow quite a lot of money and pay interest on that too

Elon Musk:

Well, that's part of why it was the three billion dollar run rate,

In rough numbers, in normal year twitter would do let's say four and a half billion in revenue

four and half billion dollars in cost

I mean it was really kind of like a non-profit.

they'd run it at roughly break even

James Clayton:

That's not a bankruptcy,

you're not saving that company from bankruptcy, it's breaking even

Elon Musk:

but then the issue is that, if you then add a billion and a half dollars in debt servicing

and have a massive drop in revenue, which we did

which is partly cyclic, and partly you know political concerns or whatever

So revenue, you know quote dropped by over a third.

and this is not just twitter, you know Facebook and Google also sees significant advertising revenue declines

it's been a little higher for twitter, but most of the advertisers are coming back

So I think be back where there's a cyclic demand drop, which is still pretty significant

But in rough numbers, revenue dropped from four and a half billion to three

and expenses went from four and a half to six,

creating a three billion dollar negative cash flow situation

And twitter having a billion dollars in the bank

That's four months to live

So unless drastic action was taken immediately, this company's gonna die

James Clayton:

let's talk about that drastic action,

because almost immediately you sacked a lot of twitter workers

and I spoke to them, it's very easy to speak to them when it happened

and the way they said, pretty much everyone said is that it felt quite haphazard.

Elon Musk:

It was

James Clayton:

and it felt a little bit uncaring

Elon Musk:

I wouldn't say uncaring,

you know the issue is like, the company is gonna go bankrupt, if we do not cut costs immediately

This is not a caring uncaring situation.

It's like if whole ship sinks, then nobody's got a job

James Clayton:

Right, but a lot of people just lost their jobs like that

and they didn't even know they lost their jobs often. They were just frozen out of their accounts.

Elon Musk:

Let me ask you, what would you do?

James Clayton:

Well, you might want to give someone some notice

by the way, I'm not running twitter, but this is the criticism

this is actual what staff members say, a little bit of notice, you know

Elon Musk:

No, I understand, you have four months to live, 120 days

in 120 days, you're dead, so what do you want to do?

James Clayton:

How much are you worth?

Elon Musk:

I don't know

James Clayton:

But we're talking about around the 200 billion dollar mark

I mean, you're framing it in in a way that you know, that it had a few months to live.

You're quite a rich man

Elon Musk:

I sold a lot of Tesla stock to close this deal.

I did not want to sell the Tesla stock

James Clayton:

Okay, do you have any regrets on the way that some of the staff would let go?

Elon Musk:

I mean people were given, you know, three months for observance, some cases more

But you know, we're like said, the companies need to run on their own cognizance,

and it's not so easy for me to sell stock as you might think

I have to sell stock during certain periods

I can't sell stock during other periods

so there are only brief windows where I can sell Tesla stock

and then this is often taken as some lack of faith in Tesla

and in fact the Tesla stock sales cause the Tesla stock to plummet, which is not good.

James Clayton:

Do you think those two were connected?

Elon Musk:

Well, people couldn't parse the difference between I'm selling Tesla stock

because I've lost faith in Tesla, which I haven't, or that it's desperately needed for twitter

James Clayton:

Okay, and then after that, after you let go of a lot of stuff

obviously twitter came slim down a lot

And then started making some more policy decisions.

One of those policy decisions was to bring Donald Trump back

He hasn't actually tweeted yet, right?

Do you expect him to come back at any point? Like have you spoken to him?

Elon Musk:

I haven't spoken to him

I don't know, he may or may not come back

but the point is that twitter should be a town square that gives equal voice to the whole country and ideally the whole world.

It should not be a partisan politics

and the more of partisan politics that are very far left of the spectrum

San Francisco, Berkeley politics normally is quite niche

but twitter effectively acted as a megaphone for a very niche regional politics

and megaphone that to the world

in order for something to serve as a digital town square,

it must serve people from all political persuasions, provided it's legal.

close to half the country voted for Trump. 

I wasn't one of them. I voted for Biden

But nonetheless, free speech is meaningless

unless you allow people you don't like to say things you don't like

otherwise it's relevant

And at the point of which you lose free speech, it doesn't come back

James Clayton:

I think the issue some people have is that a lot of people were brought back.

I mean some people were brought back who were previously banned for spreading things like humanoid conspiracies.

You have people like Andrew Tate, you brought back who were previously banned for things like hate speech.

Do you think you prioritize freedom of speech over misinformation and hate speech?

Elon Musk:

Well, you know who's to say that something of misinformation?

who is the artiter of that? is it the BBC?

James Clayton:

Yeah, you're literally literally asking me?

well, no, you are the arbiter on twitter, because you own twitter

Elon Musk:

Yes, I'm saying who is to say that one person's misinformation is another person's information?

who is going to decide that?

James Clayton:

But you accept that this information can be dangerous,

that it can cause real world harms, that it can potentially cause them

Elon Musk:

Yes, the point I'm trying to make is the BBC itself has at times published things that are false

Do you agree that has occurred?

James Clayton:

I'm quite sure the BBC have said things before that turn out to not be true

in its whatever 100 year history, I'm quite sure

Elon Musk:

Yes, even if you aspire to be accurate, there are times where you will not be

but I think in the grand scheme of things, BBC does aspire to be accurate

James Clayton:

But you accept there has to be a line in terms of hate speech.

I mean you're not looking at total 100% unrestricted speech

Elon Musk:

well, I mean I generally I have an opinion that if the people of a given country are against a certain type of speech

They should talk to their elected representatives, and pass a law to prevent it.

So for example, you cannot advocate murdering someone,

that's illegal in the united states, in everywhere really I suspect

so there are limits to speech.

James Clayton:

I mean, I guess taking your argument to a logical conclusion then,

do you accept that there's more misinformation on the platform, if it's not being policed in the same way?

Elon Musk:

I actually think there's less these days,

because we've eliminated so many of the bots, which were pushing scams and spam

and previous management turned a blind eye to the bots, because their bonuses were tied to user growth

And if your compensation is tied to user growth

well, you're not going to look too closely at some of the users, that's part of the problem.

So I think we've got less misinformation, because we don't have the bot problem that we used to

and we also have given a lot of attention to community notes,

which corrects, with community itself, corrects misinformation, it's been very effective

James Clayton:

I mean, I would only just add that you know,

we have spoken to people who have been sacked, that used to be in content moderation

and we've spoken to people very recently who were involved in moderation

and they just say, there's not enough people to police this stuff, particularly around hate speech in the company

Elon Musk:

what hate speech are you talking about?

I mean you use twitter?

James Clayton:

right

Elon Musk:

Do you see a rise in hate speech?

just a personal anecdote, like do you do? I don't

James Clayton:

personally for you, I would say I get more of that kind of content, personally,

but I'm not going to talk for the rest of twitter

Elon Musk:

You see more hate speech personally,

I would say I would see more hateful content in that way

Content you don't like or hateful.

to describe a hateful thing

James Clayton:

Yeah, I mean, you know just content that will solicit and reaction something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist

those kinds of things

Elon Musk:

So you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned.

Is that what you were saying?

James Clayton:

I'm not saying anything. I'm saying...

Elon Musk:

Well, I was just curious. I'm trying to understand what you mean by hateful content.

I'm asking for specific examples

And you just said that if something is slightly sexist

That's hateful content.

Does that mean that it should be banned?

James Clayton:

Well, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more.

I'd say it's got slightly more.

Elon Musk:

That's what I'm asking for examples

Can you name one example?

James Clayton:

I honestly don't

Elon Musk:

You can't name a single example

James Clayton:

I'll tell you why, because I don't actually use that feed anymore, because I just don't particularly like it

Actually a lot of people are quite similar.

Elon Musk:

Hang on a second, you said you've seen more hateful content,

but you can't name a single example, not even one

James Clayton:

I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks

Elon Musk:

But then how did you see that hateful content content?

James Clayton:

Because I've been using Twister since you've taken over for the last six months

Elon Musk:

Okay, so then you must have at some point seen that you've for you hateful content.

I'm asking for one example, you can't give a single one

Then I say so that you don't know what you're talking about

James Clayton:

Really?

Elon Musk:

Yes, because you can't give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet

And yet you claimed that the hateful content was high.

That's a false, you just lied

James Clayton:

No, what I claim was, there are many organizations that say that kind of information is on the rise

Elon Musk:

Give me one example, you literally can't name one

James Clayton:

There's someone in the strategic dialogue institute in the UK, they will say that

Elon Musk:

Look, people will say all sorts of nonsense

I'm literally asking for a single example and you can't name one

James Clayton:

Right, and as I've already said, I don't use that feed

Elon Musk:

But then how would you know then

You literally said you experienced more hateful content

And then couldn't name a single example, that's absurd

James Clayton:

I haven't actually looked at that feed

Elon Musk:

But how would you know if it's hateful content?

James Clayton:

Because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago

I can't give you an exact example.

Let's move on. We only have a certain amount of time

COVID misinformation,

you change the COVID misinformation.

Elon Musk:

Has BBC changed the COVID misinformation?

James Clayton:

The BBC does not set the rules on Twitter, so I'm asking you.

Elon Musk:

No, I'm talking about the BBC's misinformation about COVID.

James Clayton:

I'm just asking you about you change the labels, the COVID misinformation labels,

they used to be a policy and then disappeared.

Why do that?

Elon Musk:

Well, COVID is no longer an issue.

Does the BBC hold itself at all responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccinations

and not reporting on that at all?

And what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change its editorial policy?

Are you aware of that?

James Clayton:

This is not an interview about the BBC.

Elon Musk:

Oh, you thought it wasn't?

James Clayton:

I see now why you're doing Twitter Spaces.

I am not a representative of the BBC's editorial policy, I want to make that clear.

Let's talk about something else.

Elon Musk:

I'm interviewing you too.

James Clayton:

All right, let's talk about something else.

Elon Musk:

You weren't expecting that.

James Clayton:

let's talk about something else, Narendra Moody

The BBC did a documentary about Narendra Moody and his leadership during the riots in Gujarat.

We then believe that some of that content was taken off twitter.

Was that at the behest of the indian government?

Elon Musk:

I'm not aware of that particular situation

James Clayton:

So you're not sure

Elon Musk:

I don't know about that, you know, what exactly happened with some content situation in India,

the rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict

And we can't go beyond the laws of the country

James Clayton:

But do you get that if you do that, you've incentivized countries around the world to simply pass more draconian laws?

Elon Musk:

No, look, if we have a choice of either our people go to prison, or we comply with the laws

we will comply with the laws, the same goes for the BBC

James Clayton:

Okay, okay, since you became CEO, there's been another story in town.

Elon Musk:

You know what, I'm not CEO anymore

James Clayton:

Okay, you're chief twit, or what are you?

Elon Musk:

No, my dog floki is the CEO, he's taken over.

James Clayton:

I saw that.

Elon Musk:

okay, so Tiktok has also been in the news

James Clayton:

There's talk of perhaps Biden administration wanting to potentially ban it or force a sale.

What's your view of the situation?

Elon Musk:

I don't really use Tiktok

I mean one of the reasons that I emphasize that our goal here at twitter is to maximize unregretted user minutes, or unregretted user time

is that I hear many people tell me they spent a lot of time on Tiktok

But they regret the time spent,

and that seems like okay, well, we don't want to have regretted time.

We want the time to be unregretted, where you learned things, you were entertained, amused

I mean frankly, I get more laughters out of twitter than anything else

and many people tell me the same thing.

So that's a good sign

for Tiktok itself, like said, I just don't know enough about what's going on there.

I can't say I have a strong opinion on Tiktok.

James Clayton:

So you don't have an opinion on whether it should be banned or not

Elon Musk:

You know, I'm generally against banning things,

So I'll probably not to be in favor...

I mean it would help twitter I suppose if Tiktok was banned,

because then people would spend more time on twitter, and less on Tiktok

But even if it would help twitter, I would be generally against banning of of things

James Clayton:

Okay, do you feel sometimes that your many business interests might get in the way of you having opinion?

I mean, for example Tesla has major connections in China.

you wouldn't have a certain opinion on something or feel uncomfortable about saying something

because of your other business interests as well?

Elon Musk:

Do I look uncomfortable?

Actually I do yes, I look like uncomfortable

yeah, I mean look, Tesla has got activities around the world, and so does SpaceX

You know once in a while those things do come into conflict

But it's not like twitter, you know operates in China, doesn't, it was banned in China

And certainly I've perceived no communication whatsoever from the Chinese government with regard to twitter

James Clayton:

Okay, in terms of advertising, obviously twitter's now a private company anymore

So we don't really know how it's all going,

Have all the advertisers come back?

Elon Musk:

Uh, not all, but most

But you can see it for yourself on twitter, even in the "For You" feed

I mean sorry, in the Following, not "For You", because it sucks, rightly

why don't you use For You? What's wrong with it?

James Clayton:

How is it going? is twittering in profit now?

Elon Musk:

No, twitter is... I'll say we're roughly breakeven at this point

James Clayton:

And I think you've said before, you see a world where you could be in profit

Is there a time line on that, do you think?

Elon Musk:

I mean, depending on how things go if current trends continue, I think we could be profitable

or to be more precise, we could be cash flow positive this quarter, if things keep going well

James Clayton:

this quarter, as soon as that?

Elon Musk:

possibly, yeah

James Clayton:

and do you have a message for the advertisement? Can you say which advertisers haven't come back?

Elon Musk:

I think almost all of them have either come back or said they're going to come back

There are very few exceptions.

James Clayton:

Can you say any of the exceptions?

Elon Musk:

I actually don't know if anyone who said definitively they're not coming back

they're all sort of trending towards coming back

I mean jump in when the water is warm, it's great

James Clayton:

that's your message to the advertisers that haven't come back?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, I mean look, if Disney feels comfortable advertising children's movies and Apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones

Those are good indicators that twitter is a good place to advertise

James Clayton:

I want to talk about if you have any regrets,

and you know, I think you were booed at a Dave Chapelle concert

Elon Musk:

A little

James Clayton:

A little, well, some said a little, some said a bit more

I think your own lawyer said you couldn't get a fair trial in San Francisco

because there are lots of people that don't necessarily like you here.

Elon Musk:

Yeah, but you know, I have to say I was wrong, he was wrong

because I was acquitted by the San Francisco jury unanimously

James Clayton:

but I guess, do you have any regrets buying twitter?

Elon Musk:

I think it was something that needed to be done, except it's quite difficult

I'd say the pain level of twitter has been extremely high

this hasn't been some sort of party,

It's been really quite a stressful situation, you know from the last several months, not an easy one.

it's been quite painful, but I think at the end of day, it should have been done.

were there many mistakes made along the way? of course, you know

but all's well that ends well, and so I feel like we're headed to a good place.

we're roughly break even,

I think we're trending towards being cash-flow positive very soon, literally in a matter of months

the advertisers are returning

I think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly.

we've taken a lot of feedback from people that have looked at the open-source recommendation algorithm

and we've made a lot of improvements even since that was made open source

We're going to keep doing that

so overall, I think the trend is very good.

James Clayton:

I mean it was actually something I was going to ask, you mentioned the pain,

but you actually tweeted I think in February,

you said the last three months have been extremely tough. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone

Are you talking emotionally that I mean, can you explain?

Elon Musk:

.... 

James Clayton:

but can you just talk me through the emotional strain of this?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, I mean look, I've been under constant attack.

I mean it's not like I have a stone cold heart or something like that, you know

If you're under constant criticism attack, and then that gets fed to you non-stop, including through twitter

it's rough, you know

Now at the end of the day, I kind of think that if you do lose your feedback loop, that's actually not good

so I think it is actually important to get negative feedback

I don't turn replies off,

and I actually removed my entire block list. It's not blocking one either

so I get like a lot of negative feedback.

but I think it's actually good to get negative feedback

James Clayton:

right, when you talk about the emotional strain, you've gone back to feedback?

Is that the thing that's been most difficult to take, the sort of negative feedback?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, I mean if the media is writing non-stop stories about why you're a horrible person,

I mean, you know it's hurtful obviously

James Clayton:

I'm interested. I've written down a lot of these questions, but I haven't written this one down

But it's interesting. It feels like you have quite a kind of interesting relationship with the media

because in some ways, you're quite skeptical, quite critical certainly of established media,

but also you kind of get hurt by what the media writes

and you do get news still from the BBC, as you've already said

Elon Musk:

I literally follow the BBC on twitter

James Clayton:

So do you feel you have a kind of odd relationship with the media?

Elon Musk:

Yes

James Clayton:

Go on, explain

Elon Musk:

No, it is somewhat of a love-hate relationship.

Although I mean it might be towards more to the hate

I think this is a sort of part and parcel of having a free media situation,

which is that I do take heart in that the media is actually able to trash me on a regular basis in the United States, the UK and whatnot

whereas you know, in a lot of other places, media cannot say mean things to powerful people

but I think it's better that we have a situation where the media can say mean things to powerful people

James Clayton:

If we're talking about the media, let's talk about verification labels

You obviously want to create another revenue stream. That's subscription-based.

Is verification the way to do that?

because if we have a kind of a situation at the moment where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge

Whereas anyone else who can pay whatever few bucks a month can

Can that be right? Is that what you envisaged when you bought twitter?

Elon Musk:

I must confess to some delight in removing the verified badge from the New York Times

That was great

Anyway, they're still alive and well, they're doing fine,

James Clayton:

but honestly, it could flame disinformation again if you have verified accounts that are from anyone who can pay money.

They simply they go up to potentially the top of feeds, they get more action on twitter

and traditional media that may not pay for verification doesn't

do you see how that could potentially be a driver of misinformation?

Elon Musk:

Well, I mean, I think the media is a driver of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are

James Clayton:

I mean, that's a different question

Elon Musk:

Yeah, but you're obviously sort of saying like who knows best,

the average citizen or you know someone who is a journalist?

And I think in a lot cases, it is the average citizen that knows more than the journalist

In fact, I mean very often when I see an article about something that I know a lot about,

and I read the article, it's like that they get a lot wrong

so the best interpretation is there is someone who doesn't really understand what's going on in the industry,

has only a few facts to play with, has to come up with an article

it's not gonna hit the bullseye

generally this is what how it's made to the stuff

If you read an article that's something you know about

how accurate is that article?

Now imagine that is how essentially all articles are

they're an approximation of what's going on, but not in an exact situation

so if somebody is actually let's say in the fray, or like an expert in the field

and was actually there, and writes about their experience of being actually there

I think actually that's, in a lot of cases, going to be better than a journalist

because the journalist wasn't there

James Clayton:

I think you said the legacy verified blue checks are going to go next week?

Elon Musk:

there have been a few deadlines on this

4/20

James Clayton:

Yeah, I see the joke.

Elon Musk:

That number will never leave me

James Clayton:

Clearly, it cost you a lot of money

Elon Musk:

Well, fortunately, it didn't in the trial.

James Clayton:

Well, yeah, right, but for the SEC, right?

Elon Musk:

yes, we're gonna ask for a refund.

James Clayton:

Yeah. Okay. Good luck.

Let's move on from that

But blue checks, in theory, all legacy blue checks gone next week

and at that point, you'll kind of work out whether this is going to sink or swim?

Elon Musk:

Yes

James Clayton:

what's your hunch?

Elon Musk:

I think it'll go swim

James Clayton:

Okay, what are you looking for in terms of a revenue stream on that? What are your goals?

Elon Musk:

Well, I don't know if it's like necessarily a giant revenue stream.

You know, even if you have sort of a million people that are subscribed for let's say a hundred dollars a year ish.

That's a hundred million dollars

And, that's a fairly small revenue stream relative to advertising

what all we're really trying to do here with verification is to massively raise the cost of misinformation and bots in general

So my prediction is that any social media company that does not insist on paid verification 

will simply be overwhelme by advanced AI bots

I mean a zillion instances of ChatGPT, how would you know?

James Clayton:

what do you really want on the platform?

Do you want big news organizations being overwhelmed by bots, so they have to pay some money?

Elon Musk:

no, the point is that you won't be

James Clayton:

If you pay, but a lot of organizations have already said they're not going to pay like the New York Times

Elon Musk:

Well, then you know, that's up to them, can't make them pay

it's a small amount of money. So I don't know what their problem is

But we're going to treat everyone equally.

So what we're not going to do is say that,

there's some anointed class of journalists who are the special ones who get to tell everyone what they should think

That it should be up to the people what they think

and even if an article is completely accurate and comprehensive and everything

in writing that article, the media is choosing the narrative

They're deciding what to write an article about

So I'm hopeful that this can be more a case of the public choosing the narrative, as opposed to the media choosing narrative

at least a combination of the media and the public choosing the narrative

and the public getting to weigh in on stories if they think that they should add something to it

or we've got something wrong

And over time, I think if twitter is the best source of truth, it will succeed

And if we are not the best source of truth, we will fail

James Clayton:

Someone comes in and offers you 44 billion dollars for twitter right now

Would you take it?

Elon Musk:

No

James Clayton:

Would you consider it?

Elon Musk:

No

James Clayton:

Why?

Elon Musk:

well, I take it back. It depends on who

I suppose if I was confident that they would rigorously pursue the truth

then I guess I would be glad to hand it over to someone else

I don't care about the money really,

but I do want to have some source of truth that I can count on

and I hope that's our aspiration with twitter is to have the source of truth that you can count on

But it's also real time

It's an immediate source of truth that you can count on

and that gets more accurate with time, as people comment on particular things

James Clayton:

Well, if you don't care about the money, you could just give it to someone that you think is a good person to run twitter

Elon Musk:

Who do you think that might be?

James Clayton:

I'm not the boss of twitter,

Elon Musk:

nobody choose, well, you might still have an idea

James Clayton:

Of who could run twitter?

Elon Musk:

Yeah

James Clayton:

Honestly, I have no idea who could run twitter.

Elon Musk:

Yeah, it's a hard job

James Clayton:

Okay, let's move on sir. You said that you were going to stand down as chief executive, right?

Elon Musk:

I already have

James Clayton:

Okay

Elon Musk:

I can tell you I'm not the CEO of twitter. My dog is the CEO of twitter.

it's a great dog, very alert and it's hard to get anything by him

James Clayton:

Okay, that's good to know,

other than the dog, have you got any successors in mind?

Elon Musk:

He's got a black eternal turtleneck, what more do you need?

James Clayton:

Okay, all right, we're going down that route

Steve Jobs over Elizabeth Holmes, are you making reference to?

Elon Musk:

I guess more Elizabeth, huh?

James Clayton:

Okay, I've forgotten the question now.

Elon Musk:

It's got a husky voice and a black turtleneck

James Clayton:

what were we talking about there?

yeah, who would you want? Have you got a successor in mind?

Elon Musk:

Oh, not yet. Hopefully at some point

James Clayton:

Right, because you did say you were going to stand down

Elon Musk:

I did stand down

James Clayton:

Okay, all right, let's move on from that then.

What about this office? I'm intrigued about this office, you said it was expensive

Elon Musk:

Why do we even need a CEO? We don't really need a CEO

why can't we be Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune?

James Clayton:

I think Jack Dorsey kind of recommended this, doing this,

Elon Musk:

Yeah, it was kind of that actually

James Clayton:

this office, are you thinking about moving out of San Francisco?

Elon Musk:

Not yet

James Clayton:

Not yet

Elon Musk:

Not yet, I mean this place is nice, and you know, I kind of like this office building actually

James Clayton:

Yeah. Okay. So you're not, because I know you've talked about there's been high levels of crime here

Elon Musk:

Yes, we should do something about the crime

People are dying, we should take action

James Clayton:

You've also talked about how potentially, I think you might have been joking, but you could turn this into a homeless shelter

So then I guess the reason I'm asking is you know...

Elon Musk:

We're trying to turn it to a homeless shelter, and the building owner rejected it

yeah, they won't let us

James Clayton:

Which bits have you tried to turn into a shelter?

Elon Musk:

we're only using one of the buildings, and so the other building can ne a homeless shelter

James Clayton:

and you've tried to...

Elon Musk:

yeah, we would like to do it right now

James Clayton:

Really?

Elon Musk:

Yes

James Clayton:

and you're being stopped by who?

Elon Musk:

by the building owner. 

James Clayton:

They won't let you

Elon Musk:

No, in fact, they wouldn't even let us take the w off the sign

James Clayton:

So how are you going to do that? what was your plan for the shelter?

Elon Musk:

I don't know. We just let people stay there. It's nice

James Clayton:

Right, Okay, I didn't know that

Elon Musk:

they can bring their stuff, bring the tent and whatever

James Clayton:

Right, and it's a roof over their head.

Elon Musk:

Yeah, if the building owner lets us, we'll do it

James Clayton:

Yeah, so if the building owner lets you, you would happily do that.

Elon Musk:

Yes

James Clayton:

Okay. All right. There we go.

What's the most difficult thing you've had to do? what's the hardest thing you've had to do?

Elon Musk:

In my whole life?

James Clayton:

in the last six months, we're talking about the last six months,

as you as twitter boss here, twitter owner

Elon Musk:

well shutting down one of our server centers was quite difficult

because it turns out there were...

I thought the server centers were redundant,

but, there were in fact a lot of things that were hard coded to this one server center

and so when we shut it down, actually it was quite catastrophic.

We lost a lot of functionality, which sort of really rushed to put it back

James Clayton:

When was that?

Elon Musk:

That was around late December early January

James Clayton:

So that was the biggest sort of I'm worried here

Elon Musk:

biggest crisis. Yeah.

James Clayton:

Yeah, and what about hard in terms of emotional?

I mean what were the levels of stuff, and what are they now?

Elon Musk:

I think we're around 1,500 people at this point

and there was I think 7,800

I think it was around just under 8,000, and we're about 1,500 right now.

James Clayton:

Okay, and has it been hard letting that many people go?

Elon Musk:

Yeah, 

not fun at all, painful

James Clayton:

I mean, I guess in what way?

do you feel like you need to speak to people when they leave or?

Elon Musk:

I mean, it's not physically possible to speak to that many people

James Clayton:

I mean you talked about that been the most technical bit,

has that been sort of the hardest thing emotionally

Elon Musk:

it's one of the hardest things certainly.

James Clayton:

the Nancy Pelosi tweet,

Elon Musk:

Oh leave it alone, Jesus

James Clayton:

But there have been a nice example of a few there have been others.

do you feel like you're an impulsive person?

Elon Musk:

I mean have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes.

I need bullet-proof shoes at this point.

James Clayton:

I mean, you've definitely done that.

The issue is that you're now twitter owner

do you feel like you should be, look at your tweets more?

you have more a higher responsibility when you tweet something out, for it to be accurate?

Elon Musk:

I think I should not tweet after 3am

That's the rule.

Yeah, maybe 2am.

James Clayton:

that's the new rule

Elon Musk:

Yeah, something like that.

James Clayton:

Okay, so there's a blanket ban.

What are your twitter rules?

I mean I've heard some people say never tweet when you've been drinking, or never tweet when angry.

What are your twitter rules?

Elon Musk:

Well, I think those are two great rules

Yeah, don't tweet if you're wasted, or you know really upset about something

yeah probably, I mean a good friend of mine actually had a good suggestion and it has helped,

which is that, if you're going to tweet something that maybe is controversial,

save it as a draft, and look at it the next day, and see if you still want to tweet it

That has been a good rule of thumb

I have a bunch of things in my draft folder. I'm glad I didn't send.

James Clayton:

I can't remember whether I've asked you this. This is my sort of wrapping up at this point

But yeah, do you have any regrets?

Elon Musk:

I mean hindsight's 2020 so, you know, a bunch of decisions that can be made better for sure

but as I said, all's well that ends well

I think it's going pretty well. So in the grand scheme of things, I can't complain

James Clayton:

Okay, I'm gonna just check my list of things, to make sure I've actually

Elon Musk:

Maybe some of the people on the twitter want to say

ask you, we could ask them.

James Clayton:

That's on you. That's on you.

Elon Musk:

Wow, there's 680 000 people listening. That's a lot.

James Clayton:

That is a lot

Elon Musk:

let's see. How do we see? Okay

I'll just look at my tweet, and see what people are saying, or what questions they have

Do you like the BBC? do you like BBC?

James Clayton:

Okay. Yeah, we're not gonna...

Elon Musk:

I can't interview?

Do you like BBC?

James Clayton:

I see what you're doing. I'm not going to respond to that

I think we can finish the interview,

if you want to continue, thank you very much. I really appreciate that

Elon Musk:

Sure you like BBC, come on,

James Clayton:

I'm not engaging

Already, Elon, honestly it's been a pleasure talking to you, it really has

If you want to carry on answering the questions, then go for it, I'm not going to 

Elon Musk:

Okay, well I'm just trying to see if there's like any you know, there's a lot of comments here

James Clayton:

I can imagine

Elon Musk:

Anyway, it's nice to be interviewed by the BBC. I have a lot of respect for the British Broadcasting Corporation

James Clayton:

did you say when the actual label is going to go public?

Elon Musk:

do we still say state media or whatever?

Oh, it's just government-funded media currently, as opposed to publicly funded media,

I guess probably we can make that change tomorrow if you'd like

James Clayton:

It's up to you, so we'll expect that tomorrow

Elon Musk:

I mean, do you have any requests on a personal level or you can't speak on a personal level?

James Clayton:

No, I don't.

Elon Musk:

Okay. Okay.

James Clayton:

I think we've established that

what questions are people asking you? go on

Elon Musk:

I mean, there's like a lot of comments. let's see.

I was literally looking at replies to the fact, the spaces

James Clayton:

Are there any good questions that I've missed out in the last six months? I'm sure there are many

Elon Musk:

I mean people generally seem to like this interview from what I can tell.

very few negative comments, generally positive

James Clayton:

that's probably bad for me

Elon Musk:

I'm scrolling as fast as I can to sort of see,

I guess there's some complaints about twitter spaces needing some improvement.

Let's fix twitter spaces is one of the comments

People like the fact that my dog floki is the CEO

and I'm really just scrolling as fast as I can here.

James Clayton:

I guess my reflection on this, on this interview,

Elon Musk:

I'd like to say, I like BBC

I do find it funny.

James Clayton:

I think I mean honestly, if you're looking, listening to the interview

the answer about misinformation and saying oh we don't police misinformation in the same way,

but because we try and get bots, because we try and take down bots, we'll be effective at bots

there's actually less misinformation on the platform

Elon Musk:

I think that's a big factor

James Clayton:

I'd like to ask you one more question on that, because I know a lot of people will be listening to this really

you're arguing you can police content moderation far less, and end up with less misinformation

Elon Musk:

first of all, we do have you know people working on content moderation.

It's not like we don't

James Clayton:

I've spoken to lots of people who've been fired. So lots of people have been let go

I mean you've gone from 8000 to 1500

Elon Musk:

Yeah, the censorship bureau all was let go

I don't think the sort of putting a thumb on the political scales on the far left has been let go

Because that's not right. That's not what you want for a public square

you know, you've got to have equal treatment for people from across the political spectrum

You know someone is going to be upset about that

but like I said, my experience is that there's less misinformation these days, not more

And that the community notes feature is extremely powerful for addressing so-called misinformation

James Clayton:

I mean, you've had community notes placed on your own tweets?

Elon Musk:

Yes,

James Clayton:

one of them involving an alleged diamond mine?

Elon Musk:

diamond mine? what diamond mine?

James Clayton:

a mine that your father part owned

Elon Musk:

Yeah, my father never owned a... so you're thinking of an emerald mine.

Yeah, I'd like to see a picture of this alleged emerald mine

James Clayton:

because you've been community noted on that tweet, did you know that?

Elon Musk:

No, but he never owned a emerald mine, this is total bullshit

James Clayton:

Not even a 50% stake?

Elon Musk:

No

first of all, do you think something like an emerald mine would have like, you know, some sort of property register?

there'd be like a picture of it. It's not like you can say oh, that's my mine

You know, these things are hotly debated,

if you've got something valuable, you have to have some property record, like a house

but much more important than a house

And yet there is no property record whatsoever.

There is no picture of this mine whatsoever.

It doesn't exist, it's fake

so it's a really good example then, because there is a community note on that tweet that says

James Clayton:

You said this thing on the x-day blah blah blah.

So in that instance the community notes didn't work

So you're saying that's a way of solving misinformation,

but you're literally saying one of those community notes is wrong

Elon Musk:

the community note maybe referring to a thing where, I went on a trip with my father to Zambia

but I never saw any mine or anything.

So there's no mine

James Clayton:

right, but at this point I'm just saying the community note says it is

so you're saying it's this big great panacea

But yeah, it's literally on your own tweet, the community notes, according to you, are wrong

Elon Musk:

if they're referencing an article, then the article may not be wrong,

anyway, community notes is not going to be perfect.

But the batting average of community notes I found to be extremely high

James Clayton:

so community notes plus getting rid of millions and millions of bots every day, I guess that's what we're talking about

that's what you think is tackling misinformation over content moderation.

because I think that's the bit that a lot of people will go really?

Elon Musk:

Really? Yes, really

Look, the acid test is people use the system and find it to be a good source of truth, or they don't

And no system is going to be perfect in its pursuit of the truth

but I think we can be the best, the least inaccurate

That's our goal, the least inaccurate

I think we might be there already, if we're not there, we'll be there soon

James Clayton:

I've spoken to people who don't think so,

do you have a kind of message for people who think that twitter has been ruined?

Elon Musk:

Well, we have all time high usage. So I don't think it has been

James Clayton:

Some people think it has been, I'll tell you that

Elon Musk:

Yes, well, they're probably the same people who predicted that twitter would cease to exist

and their predictions have turned out to be false

James Clayton:

Okay, I'm not gonna ask you whether you think it's been ruined because obviously you're not gonna say yes

Elon Musk:

no, I think it's great. That's way better

Better by a lot