Elon Musk, Twitter’s billionaire owner, has said the social media platform will change the BBC’s label of “government-funded media” after the broadcaster objected.
The Tesla chief executive made the announcement during a wide-ranging interview with the corporation in which he said that his pain level from running the site had been “extremely high” but that the business was now “roughly breaking even”.
The BBC contacted the company last week after the description was added to its main Twitter account. Musk said he had the “utmost respect” for the organisation, adding: “We want [the tag] as truthful and accurate as possible. We’re adjusting the label to [the BBC being] publicly funded. We’ll try to be accurate.”
The South African-born businessman, who bought Twitter for $44bn (£35.4bn) last October, also claimed in the interview that advertisers were returning to the site after many quit following his takeover, causing revenue to slump.
Musk said: “It’s been really quite a stressful situation, over the last several months. Not an easy one.”
He conceded that mistakes had been made during his ownership but added: “All’s well that ends well … I feel like we’re headed to a good place. We’re roughly break-even. I think we’re trending towards being cashflow positive very soon, literally in a matter of months. The advertisers are returning.”
Asked if he had any regrets about his purchase of the company, Musk said the “pain level has been extremely high, this hasn’t been some kind of party”.
He conceded that he had wanted to pay less for Twitter after he said he found more automated bots on the network than he expected. He initially said he would not sell the site now if he was offered the $44bn he paid but subsequently clarified that he would do so if could be sure that the buyer “would rigorously pursue the truth”.
Musk has come in for criticism for cutting almost half of Twitter’s staff last autumn. He said reducing the workforce had not been easy, adding that he had subsequently cut Twitter staff numbers by just over 80% from “just under 8,000”, when he took over the business, to “1,500”.
The site owner described sacking such large numbers of people as “not fun at all” and a process that, at times, could be “painful”.
Musk defended the large-scale job cuts, saying Twitter had “four months to live” when he bought it. He said that the company had urgently needed to cut costs to survive, and that Twitter had been “spending money like it’s out of fashion” before his takeover.
Legacy blue verification ticks on Twitter will be removed from all users in the coming days – after a previous proposed deadline to do so by 1 April was missed – as part of his efforts to persuade individuals and organisations to pay a monthly subscription fee for his Twitter Blue service.
He criticised media groups that had said they would not pay for this service: “It’s a small amount of money so I don’t know what their problem is.”
Musk also explained why he had tweeted in February that he would not wish the pain of running the social media site on anyone. He described himself as having been “under constant attack”, including from the media, and said this hurt as he did not have “a stone-cold heart”. He added: “If you’re under constant criticism and attack, and that gets fed to you nonstop, including through Twitter, it’s rough.”
He said he got “a lot of negative feedback” but added that he did not turn off replies and did not block anyone on Twitter.
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The interview took a bizarre turn when Musk said he was no longer Twitter’s chief executive and insisted that his dog, a shiba inu called Floki, now held the post.
The Tesla chief has previously claimed that Floki was promoted after his Twitter poll last December, in which he asked users if he should step down from the company’s top job. More than 10 million users voted that he should quit.
Musk has also revealed that he sometimes sleeps at the company office, adding he uses a couch in a library “that no one goes to”.
The billionaire has previously described the BBC as “among the least biased” news organisations.
The broadcaster released a statement after being designated as “government-funded media”, saying: “The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee.”
The interview came the day after a string of former Twitter executives, including the ex-chief executive Parag Agrawal, sued the company over legal fees they say they have incurred during recent legal battles.
Agrawal, along with Twitter’s former chief financial officer, Ned Segal, and the former chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, allege that they have spent more than $1m of their own money on legal fees related to shareholder lawsuits and government investigations, which they are calling on Twitter to pay.
All three executives were fired when Musk took over the company.
