Twitter owner Elon Musk accused a BBC journalist of lying during an interview discussing whether incidents of hate speech are increasing on the social network. US tech journalist James Clayton asked Musk how he would respond to claims that Twitter is understaffed to monitor the rise in hateful content. But Musk challenged Clayton to give him examples of such content, and when Clayton refused, Musk accused him of spreading a “false” claim. During the wide-ranging discussion, Musk also said that Twitter was “four months old” when he bought the company. He insisted on the need to cut costs to avoid bankruptcy and confirmed that 80% of the workforce has been laid off since he took office in October. Musk described the interview as “deep and hard.”
Clayton stated that he no longer uses Twitter, as he does not particularly like it. On the other hand, Musk also claimed that there is less misinformation on Twitter since he took over, contrary to other reports that hate speech has increased on the platform in recent months.
Musk also addressed other topics during the interview, such as the BBC’s Twitter account hashtag, TikTok, Twitter’s workforce, and the platform’s profitability. When asked about the BBC Twitter account label, Musk said it would be changed from “government funded” to “publicly funded.” He claimed that Twitter usage is going up and that the platform is more or less breaking even and could be profitable this quarter. Musk also admitted that it had not been easy to reduce Twitter’s workforce from 8,000 to about 1,500 employees.