Elon Musk talks to the BBC (full interview)
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:02BBC InterviewerWhy did you agree to do this, this interview with the BBC?
0:06Elon MuskI don't know. I like spontaneity and I don't know, there's a lot going on and it seems like I actually do have a lot of respect for the BBC, although sometimes I forget what the BBC stands for.
0:18Elon MuskYou know, what is it?
0:20BBC InterviewerJust kidding. You know what it stands for?
0:25Elon MuskYes, I do. So, yeah. So there's a lot going on. So I thought this might be a good opportunity to answer some questions and I guess maybe get some feedback too.
0:43Elon MuskWhat should we be doing different? I know the BBC, for example, is not thrilled about being labeled state affiliated media.
0:51BBC InterviewerNot exactly. I mean, I was going to get to that later, but let's go for it now. It's officially objected to that term. Do you want to respond to it?
0:58Elon MuskYeah, yeah. So we're, I mean, our goal is simply to have, you know, to be as truthful and accurate as possible. So I think there's, I think we're adjusting the label to be publicly funded, which I think is perhaps not too objectionable.
1:16Elon MuskWe're trying to be accurate.
1:19BBC InterviewerI'm not the BBC bet. Publicly funded is how the BBC describes it.
1:24Elon MuskOkay, 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.
1:34Elon MuskSince you're not running BBC per se. You're. It's probably, it seems to pass a reasonable, reasonable.
1:42BBC InterviewerSo you're going to change those labels on the BBC Twitter feed?
1:46Elon MuskYes.
1:47BBC InterviewerAnd also NPR's as well.
1:48Elon MuskYeah, yeah. Publicly funded, basically. We're trying to be as accurate as possible.
1:54BBC InterviewerOkay, yeah. All right, fine. First of all, I just want to clear something up. Are you sleeping in the office here?
2:04Elon MuskI sometimes sleep in the office. Like in the library.
2:07BBC InterviewerFive days a week?
2:08Elon MuskNo, no, three days a week. I'm not here five days a week. But there's a library that nobody goes to on many years. Seventh floor. And there's a couch there and I sleep there sometimes.
2:21Elon MuskOkay.
2:22BBC InterviewerOkay. In terms of the general overview, the reason why I think you've agreed to do this is because you wanted to talk about the first six months as chief executive owner of Twitter.
2:35Elon MuskYes. Kind of like whatever you want to talk about.
2:38BBC InterviewerRight. So how do you think it's gone?
2:41Elon MuskWell, it's not been boring, it's been quite a roller coaster. So, I mean, things are going, I think reasonably well. I mean, we've seen some all time highs in terms of total user time.
3:00Elon MuskSo we passed 8 billion user minutes per day, which is lot of user minutes. So usage is up, growth is good. The site works mostly 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 headcount.
3:32Elon MuskSo.
3:33BBC InterviewerSo I mean, you mentioned outages that there have been several. And we've actually spoken to an engineer who works at Twitter and they said that the plumbing is broken here and it's on fire and there could be problems at any minute.
3:46BBC InterviewerDo you, do you accept that?
3:49Elon MuskI mean, there have been a few outages, but not for very long and it's currently working fine.
3:55BBC InterviewerSo you don't, you don't, it doesn't keep you up at night that Twitter might go offline again?
4:00Elon MuskAt 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.
4:14Elon MuskWe shut down one of them. So we're actually two thirds of the roughly 2/3 of the prior compute capability. But we've made so many improvements to the core algorithm.
4:25Elon MuskIn some cases we improved the core algorithm by 80%. So the actual CPU usage or computer usage is dramatically less so. But the results speak for themselves. The system, despite being at all time highs of usage, is fast, it's responsive, it's more responsive than it was before the takeover.
4:46Elon MuskAnd we've also added long form tweets. We've added you can now post videos up to two hours and videos of any length. We're rolling out our subscriber program so people can.
5:02Elon MuskContent 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 tweets get shown, what content gets shown versus not.
5:22Elon MuskI think you said, like what are you really going to trust? Are you going to trust some sort of black box algorithm from some other site or are you going to trust the thing that you can actually see and understand?
5:33BBC InterviewerDo you accept that there are lots of engineers that are looking at the way that Twitter is built and the lack of engineers because so many have left and are worried about the health of Twitter?
5:47Elon MuskWell, I mean there have been many of these people have predicted that Twitter will cease to function. Their predictions have not turned out to be true. You know, insert Mark Twain saying rumors about death are greatly exaggerated.
6:08BBC InterviewerLet's go back six months.
6:09Elon MuskI mean we're literally on Twitter right now, right? So it must work.
6:16BBC InterviewerLet's go back six months and even further, 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.
6:26Elon MuskI mean. 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.
6:37Elon MuskSo they were like, hell, no, you can't buy Twitter. We'd rather die. We'd, like, chew on cyanide before being bought, was their initial response.
6:49BBC InterviewerAnd then you said, actually, I don't want to buy it. Yes.
6:54Elon MuskAnd then they said, no, you must buy us. Guns of the head. You have to buy us. I'm like, are you the same people who said you'd rather die than be bored?
7:04Elon MuskDoesn't that seem odd?
7:06BBC InterviewerSo 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?
7:22BBC InterviewerActually, maybe I don't want to do this. I want to get out of this. Be honest.
7:26Elon MuskYeah. No, no. The problem was that the publicly stated user numbers were in excess of the real user numbers. So
7:38BBC InterviewerI've heard you talk about that.
7:39Elon MuskYes, yes.
7:41BBC InterviewerBasically, looking back at it now, was that the only reason that you wanted to pull out?
7:46Elon MuskYes, that was literally the issue. It's like, let's say you buy a warehouse full of goods and you're told that less than 5% of the goods in the warehouse are broken.
8:03Elon MuskYou know, but then you actually get the warehouse. You look into the warehouse, and turns out, actually 25% of the things broken, you'd be like, huh, that's so what you said.
8:14BBC InterviewerSo then you change your mind again and decided to buy it. Did you do that? Did you do that?
8:18Elon MuskI kind of had to.
8:20BBC InterviewerRight. Did you do that because you thought that a court would make you do that?
8:24Elon MuskYes. Right. Yes, that is the reason. Right.
8:28BBC InterviewerSo you were still trying to get out of it, and then you just were advised by lawyers, look, we're gonna buy this.
8:34Elon MuskYes.
8:36BBC InterviewerInteresting. So you.
8:38Elon MuskYeah.
8:39BBC InterviewerSo you. So you didn't. You didn't actually want to purchase it even when you said you were going,
8:42Elon Muskwell, not at that price? No, I mean, like. Like, let's say, like, I think the analogy is pretty. Pretty close. Like, let's say, you know, it's like you. There's a warehouse full of goods.
8:51Elon MuskThey say the warehouse less than 5% of what's in the warehouse is broken. And then you look at, you walk into warehouse, say, actually it's 25%. 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.
9:07BBC InterviewerSo you didn't have an epiphany. You just thought, I'm going to, I'm going to have to buy this. I might as well buy the bullet.
9:14Elon MuskYeah. So then you walk super complicated. Right, Right.
9:21BBC InterviewerI'm not sure you've said that before.
9:22Elon MuskOh, fair enough.
9:24BBC InterviewerSo then you, you came into queue,
9:27Elon Muska whole bunch of court cases. You said this in the BBC, AVO, etc.
9:34BBC InterviewerSo you then came into Twitter with a sink. What were your first impressions?
9:41Elon MuskWell, I thought, wow, this is a really nice office building. And expensive. Yes, very expensive office building. Great decor. It's a lovely place. And I mean, and definitely is spending money like it's going out of fashion, which it isn't quite going out of fashion yet.
10:12Elon MuskSo the gravity of the situation is perhaps not well understood. Of at the point which the company, the transaction closed, Twitter was tracking to lose over $3 billion a year and had 1 billion in the bank.
10:37Elon MuskSo that's four months to death. So this is your starting position. How would you feel? Pretty intense.
10:45BBC InterviewerYou know, you also had to borrow quite a lot of money and pay interest on that too.
10:48Elon MuskWell, that's why. Part of why it was a $3 billion run rate. So in rough numbers, a normal year, Twitter would do, say, let's say four and a half billion in revenue, four and a half billion dollars in cost.
11:02Elon MuskI mean, it was really kind of like a nonprofit. They'd run it at roughly, roughly break even.
11:07BBC InterviewerThat's not a bank. That's not bankruptcy. You're not saving that company from bankruptcy. It's breaking even.
11:12Elon MuskBut 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 was partly cyclic and partly political concerns and whatever.
11:27Elon MuskSo revenue call it dropped by over a third. Not just Twitter, you know, Facebook and Google have also seen some significant advertising revenue declines. It was a little, it's been a little higher Twitter, but most of the advertisers are coming back.
11:43Elon MuskSo I think we'll just, we'll be back where there's a cyclic 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 $3 billion negative cash flow situation.
12:06Elon MuskAnd Twitter having a billion dollars in the bank, that's four months to live. So unless drastic action was taken immediately, this company is going to die.
12:15BBC InterviewerLet'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.
12:25BBC InterviewerAnd the way they said, pretty much everyone said is that it felt quite. Quite haphazard.
12:30Elon MuskIt was.
12:31BBC InterviewerIt felt a little bit uncaring.
12:33Elon MuskI wouldn't say uncaring. You know, the issue is like the company's either going to go bankrupt or if we do not cut costs immediately. This is not a caring, uncaring situation.
12:47Elon MuskIt's like if all ship sinks, then nobody's going to drop.
12:51BBC InterviewerRight? But a lot of people just lost their jobs like that. And they weren't. They didn't even know they would. They'd lost their jobs. Often they just. They were just ask, what would you do?
13:03BBC InterviewerWell, you might want to give someone some notice. I mean, you might. It's. By the way, I'm not running Twitter, but I know this is the criticism and this is what actual.
13:10BBC InterviewerThis is what, a little bit of notice, you know, Now I understand if
13:15Elon Muskyou have four months to live, 120 days. In 120 days, you're dead. So how. So what do you want to do?
13:22BBC InterviewerHow much she was.
13:25Elon MuskI don't know.
13:26BBC InterviewerBut I mean, we're talking about around the $200 billion mark. I mean, it's not quite. You're framing it in. In a way that, you know, that it had had a few months to live.
13:36BBC InterviewerQuite a rich man.
13:38Elon MuskI sold a lot of Tesla stock to close this deal. I did not want to sell a Tesla stock.
13:47BBC InterviewerOkay. Do you have any regrets on the way that some of the staff were let go?
13:56Elon MuskI mean, people were given, you know, three months of severance, some cases more so. But, you know, like I said, the companies need to be run on their own cognizance.
14:10Elon MuskAnd it's not so easy for me to sell stock as people might think. I have to sell stock during certain periods. I can't sell stock during other periods. There's only.
14:21Elon MuskThere 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 caused the Tesla stock to plummet, which was not good.
14:33BBC InterviewerDo you think those two were connected?
14:37Elon MuskWell, people couldn't. Partial 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.
14:51BBC InterviewerOkay. And then after that, after you let go of a lot of stuff, obviously Twitter came slimmed down a lot, and then he started making some more policy decisions.
15:00BBC InterviewerOne of those policy decisions was to bring Donald Trump back. He hasn't actually tweeted yet.
15:04Elon MuskRight.
15:05BBC InterviewerDo you expect him to come back at any point? Like, have you. Have you spoken to him?
15:08Elon MuskI 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.
15:26Elon MuskIt should not be a partisan politics and more of a partisan politics that are on the very far left of the spectrum. San Francisco, both Berkeley politics normally is quite niche, but Twitter effectively acted as a megaphone for very niche regional politics and megaphoned out to the world.
15:47Elon MuskSo in order for something to serve as digital town square, it must, you know, serve all people from all political persuasions. Providence. It's legal. So close to half the country voted for Trump.
16:05Elon MuskI 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 irrelevant.
16:19Elon MuskAnd if at the point at which you lose free speech, it doesn't come back.
16:24BBC InterviewerI think the issue some people have is that a lot of people were brought back, I mean, some people were bought back who were previously banned for spreading things like QAnon conspiracies.
16:33BBC InterviewerYou have people like Andrew Tate who were brought back, who were previously banned for things like hate speech. Do you think you prioritize freedom of speech over misinformation and hate speech?
16:48Elon MuskWell, you know, who's to say that something is misinformation? Who is the arbiter of that? Is it the BBC?
17:00BBC InterviewerYou're literally asking me.
17:02Elon MuskYes.
17:02BBC InterviewerWell, no, you are the arbiter on Twitter because you own Twitter.
17:06Elon MuskYes, I'm saying, who is to say that one person's misinformation is another person's information? The point at which you said that there is this is misinformation.
17:17BBC InterviewerLike who is Misinformation can be dangerous, that it can cause real world harms that it can potentially cause.
17:23Elon MuskYes. So the point I'm trying to make is the BBC itself has at times published things that are false. Do you agree that that has occurred?
17:32BBC InterviewerI'm quite sure the BBC have said things before that turn out to not be true.
17:38Elon MuskRight.
17:38BBC InterviewerIt is, whatever it is, 100 year history. I'm quite.
17:40Elon MuskYes. Even if you aspire to be accurate, there are times when you will not be. I think in the grand scheme we've seen does aspire to be accurate.
17:51BBC InterviewerBut you accept there has to be a line in terms of hate speec. I mean, you're not looking at total 100% unrestricted speech.
17:59Elon MuskThere's. Well, I mean, I generally am of the 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.
18:14Elon MuskSo, for example, you cannot advocate murdering someone. That's illegal in the United States. Everywhere really. I suspect so. So there are limits to speech.
18:29BBC InterviewerI 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?
18:37Elon MuskI actually think there's, there's, there's less these days because we, we've eliminated so many of the bots which were pushing scams and spam and previous management turned a blind eye to the bot because their bonuses were tied to user growth.
18:52Elon MuskAnd if you, 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 block problem that we used to do.
19:07Elon MuskAnd we also have given a lot of attention to Community Notes which corrects with Community itself, corrects misinformation. It's been very effective.
19:21BBC InterviewerI mean, I would only just add that, you know, we have spoken to people who, 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 they just.
19:32BBC InterviewerThere's not enough people to police this stuff, particularly around, particularly around hate speech in the company. What hate speech are you talking about?
19:41Elon MuskI mean, you use Twitter, right? Do you see a rise in hate speech? I mean, just a personal anecdote like what do you do?
19:47BBC InterviewerI don't personally, my. For you, I would see, I get, I get more of that kind of content. Yeah. Personally. But I'm not going to talk to the rest of, for the rest of Twitter.
19:58Elon MuskYou see more hate speech?
19:59BBC InterviewerPersonally, I would say I would see more hateful content in that, in that
20:03Elon Muskcontent you don't like or. Hateful. What do you mean? Describe a hateful thing?
20:07BBC InterviewerYeah, I mean you know, just content that will solicit a reaction. Something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist. Those kinds of. Those kinds of things.
20:18Elon MuskSo you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned?
20:22BBC InterviewerNo.
20:22Elon MuskIs that what you're saying?
20:23BBC InterviewerI'm not saying anything. I'm saying.
20:24Elon MuskI'm just curious. I'm trying to understand what you mean by hateful content. And I'm asking for specific examples. And if. And you just said that if something is slightly sexist, that's hateful content, does that mean that it should be bad?
20:39BBC InterviewerWell, you've asked me, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more. I'd say it's got slightly more.
20:45Elon MuskThat's why I'm asking for examples. Can you name one example?
20:48BBC InterviewerI honestly don't. Honestly.
20:51Elon MuskYou can't name a single example.
20:52BBC InterviewerI'll tell you why, because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it. A lot of people, A lot of people are quite similar.
20:58BBC InterviewerI only.
20:59Elon MuskLook, you said you've seen more hateful content, but you can't name a single, single example. Not even one.
21:05BBC InterviewerI'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks and I.
21:09Elon MuskWell, then how did you see the hateful content?
21:11BBC InterviewerBecause I've been, I've been using. I've been using Twitter since you've taken it over for the last six months.
21:14Elon MuskOkay, so then you must have at some point seen that you. For your hateful content. I'm asking for one example.
21:19BBC InterviewerRight?
21:19Elon MuskYou can't give a single one.
21:21BBC InterviewerAnd I'm saying.
21:22Elon MuskThen I say so that you don't know what you're talking about.
21:24BBC InterviewerReally?
21:25Elon MuskYes, because you can't be a single example of hateful content. Not even one tweet. And yet you claimed that the Hippo content was high. Well, that's a false.
21:35BBC InterviewerNo, what I claim.
21:36Elon MuskYou just lied.
21:37BBC InterviewerNo, what I claim was there are many organizations that say that that kind of information is on the rise now, whether it has a Microsoft.
21:45Elon MuskGive me one example.
21:46BBC InterviewerI mean, right, someone like the Strategic Dialogue Institute in the uk, they will say that.
21:53Elon MuskSo look, people will say all sorts of nonsense. I'm literally asking for a single example and you can't name one. Right.
21:59BBC InterviewerAnd as I already said, I don't use that feed.
22:01Elon MuskBut how would you know?
22:02BBC InterviewerI don't think this is getting anywhere.
22:03Elon MuskYou literally said you experienced more hateful content and then couldn't name A single example.
22:08BBC InterviewerRight. And as I said, that's absurd. I haven't. I haven't actually looked at that feed.
22:12Elon MuskThen how would you know this hateful content?
22:14BBC InterviewerBecause 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 have. We only have a certain amount of time.
22:22BBC InterviewerWell, Covid misinformation. You've changed the COVID misinformation.
22:27Elon MuskHas BBC changed this Covid misinformation?
22:31BBC InterviewerThe BBC does not set the rules on Twitter. So I'm asking you.
22:34Elon MuskNo, I'm talking about the BBC's misinformation about COVID
22:40BBC InterviewerI'm asking you about. You change the labels. The COVID misinformation labels. There used to be a policy and then disappeared. Why do that?
22:54Elon MuskCovid 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?
23:13Elon MuskAnd 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?
23:21BBC InterviewerThis is. This is not an interview about the BBC.
23:24Elon MuskOh, you thought it wasn't.
23:26BBC InterviewerAnd I see now why you've done 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.
23:33Elon MuskI'm talking about.
23:34BBC InterviewerAll right, let's. Let's. Let's talk about. Talk about something else.
23:36Elon MuskYou weren't expecting that.
23:37BBC InterviewerLet's talk about something else. Narendra Modi. The BBC did a documentary about Narendra Modi and his leadership during the riots in Gujarat. We then believe that some of those.
23:50BBC InterviewerSome of that content was taken off Twitter. Was that at the behest of the Indian government?
23:55Elon MuskI'm not aware of that particular situation.
23:57BBC InterviewerSo you're just. You're not sure?
24:00Elon MuskI don't know. 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.
24:16Elon MuskAnd we can't go beyond the laws of a country.
24:19BBC InterviewerBut do you get that if you do that, you incentivize countries around the world to simply pass more draconian laws?
24:26Elon MuskNo. 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.
24:41BBC InterviewerOkay. Okay. Since you became CEO, there's been another story in town.
24:49Elon MuskI'm not CEO. Anymore.
24:51BBC InterviewerOkay. You're Chief Twitter, or what are you?
24:53Elon MuskNo, my dog Floki is the CEO.
24:56BBC InterviewerOkay.
24:58Elon MuskHe's taken over.
24:59BBC InterviewerI saw that. Yes. Okay. So TikTok has also been in the news. There's talk of perhaps the Biden administration wanting to potentially ban it or. Or force a sale.
25:09BBC InterviewerWhat's your view of the situation?
25:12Elon MuskI don't really use TikTok. I mean, one of the reasons I emphasize that the. That our goal here at Twitter is to maximize unregretted user minutes or unregarded user time is that I hear many people tell me they spent a lot of time on TikTok, but they regret the time spent.
25:33Elon MuskAnd 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 laughs out of Twitter than anything else, and many people tell me the same thing, so that's a good sign for TikTok itself.
25:57Elon MuskLike I said, I just don't know enough about what's going on there. I can't say I have a strong opinion on TikTok.
26:05BBC InterviewerSo you have an opinion on whether it should be banned or not?
26:11Elon MuskYou know, I'm generally against banning things, so I'd probably not 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 time on TikTok.
26:28Elon MuskBut even though that would be. That, even if it would help Twitter, I would be generally against banning of things.
26:38BBC InterviewerOkay. 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.
26:51BBC InterviewerYou wouldn't have a. You wouldn't have a certain opinion on something or feel uncomfortable about saying something because of your other business.
26:58Elon MuskDo I look uncomfortable? Actually, I do. I look uncomfortable?
27:04BBC InterviewerYeah.
27:05Elon MuskI mean, Tesla's got activities around the world and so does SpaceX. You know, once in a while, those things do come into conflict.
27:19Elon MuskBut it's not like Twitter is like, you know, operates in China, doesn't it Was banned in China, so.
27:29Elon MuskCertainly I perceive no communication whatsoever from the Chinese government with regard to Twitter.
27:36BBC InterviewerOkay. In terms of advertising, obviously Twitter is not a private company anymore, so we don't really know how it's. How it's all going. Have all the advertisers come back?
27:49Elon MuskNot all, but most. You can see it for yourself on Twitter, even in the. For you feed.
27:54BBC InterviewerRight.
27:55Elon MuskI mean, in the.
27:55BBC InterviewerSorry, in the following don't use for
27:57Elon Muskyour because it sucks. Right. Filled with hate speech, I'm told.
28:04BBC InterviewerThat's not what I said. Okay, fine.
28:06Elon MuskWell, why don't you use 4U? What's wrong with it?
28:09BBC InterviewerHow is it going? Is Twitter in profit now?
28:12Elon MuskNo, Twitter is rough. I'd say we're roughly break even at this point.
28:19BBC InterviewerAnd I think you've said before, you see a. You see a world where you could be in profit. Is there a timeline on that, do you think?
28:26Elon MuskI mean, depending on how things go, if current trends continue, I think we could be profitable. Or, I mean, to be more precise, we could be cash flow positive this quarter if things keep going well this quarter.
28:44BBC InterviewerAs soon as that Possibly, yeah.
28:46Elon MuskWow.
28:47BBC InterviewerAnd do you have a message for the advertiser? I mean, can you say which advertisers haven't come back?
28:53Elon MuskI think. I think almost all of them have either come back or said they're going to come back. There are very few exceptions.
28:59BBC InterviewerCan you say any of the exceptions?
29:04Elon MuskI actually don't know of anyone who said definitively they're not coming back. They're all sort of trending towards coming back.
29:10BBC InterviewerBut there are some that just jump
29:11Elon Muskin, the water's warm, it's great.
29:13BBC InterviewerThat's your message to the advertisers who haven't come back?
29:15Elon MuskYeah. I mean, look, you know, 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.
29:35BBC InterviewerI want to talk about if you have any regrets. And, you know, I think you were booed at a Dave Chappelle concert. I think your own lawyers.
29:44Elon MuskA little.
29:44BBC InterviewerA little? Well, some say a little, some say 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.
29:56Elon MuskYeah, but, you know, I was wrong. He was wrong. I guess the. Because I was acquitted by the San Francisco jury unanimously. So.
30:10BBC InterviewerBut I guess. But look, do you have any regrets buying Twitter?
30:15Elon MuskI think it was something that needed to be done. You said it quite difficult. You know, I'd say that like the pain level of Twitter. Twitter has been extremely high.
30:29Elon MuskThis hasn't been some sort of party. So it's been really quite a stressful situation, you know, the last several months. Not an easy one, but apart from the pain, I mean.
30:42Elon MuskSo it's been quite painful, but I think at the end of the day, it should have been done. I think Were there many mistakes made along the way? Of course, you know, and, but you know, all swell.
30:56Elon MuskIt ends well. And so I feel like we're headed to a good place. You know, we're roughly break even. I think we're trending towards being cash flow positive very soon.
31:09Elon MuskLike literally in a matter of months. The advertisers are returning the. I think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly and we've taken a lot of feedback from people that have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm and we've, we've made a lot of improvements even since that was made open source and we're going to keep doing that.
31:32Elon MuskSo overall I think the trend is very good. So, you know, I mean it was
31:37BBC Intervieweractually something I was going to ask you. You mentioned the pain, but you actually tweeted, I think in February. You said the last three months have been extremely tough.
31:44BBC InterviewerI wouldn't wish that pain on anyone. Are you talking emotionally there? I mean, can you explain.
31:49Elon MuskI wasn't stabbed or anything.
31:51BBC InterviewerRight, right.
31:52Elon MuskLike some people around here, which is dangerous, neck of the woods were in.
31:55BBC InterviewerIt is, or can be. But just, can you just talk me through the emotional strain of this?
32:04Elon MuskYeah, I mean look, I'm under, I've been under constant attack. I mean it's not like I, you know, have a stone cold heart or something like that. You know, if you're under constant criticism attack, it's.
32:16Elon MuskAnd then that, that gets fed to you non stop, including through Twitter, that it's rough, you know. Now at the end of the day I kind of think that like if you do lose your feedback loop, that's, that's actually not good.
32:34Elon MuskSo you know, so I think it is actually important to get negative feedback. I don't turn replies off and I actually got rid of, I removed my entire block list.
32:48Elon MuskSo I don't block anyone either. So somebody can, you know. So I get like a lot of negative feedback
32:57BBC Interviewerbut I think it's actually
32:58Elon Muskgood to get negative feedback. Right.
33:01BBC InterviewerWhen you talk about the emotional training, you've gone back to feedback. Is that the thing that been most difficult to take the sort of negative feedback?
33:09Elon MuskYeah. I mean if the media is writing non stop stories about why you're a horrible person, I mean, you know, it's hurtful.
33:20BBC InterviewerObviously 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.
33:39BBC InterviewerAnd you seem to get your news still from the BBC. As you've already said, I literally follow
33:45Elon Muskthe BBC on Twitter.
33:46BBC InterviewerSo do you feel you have a kind of odd relationship with the media?
33:52Elon MuskYes,
33:54BBC Interviewergo on, explain.
33:56Elon MuskNo, it is somewhat of a love hate relationship, although, I mean, it might be tilted a bit more towards the ha.
34:06Elon MuskBut, you know, it's, you know, I think this is sort of part and parcel of having a free media situation, which is that, you know, I do take heart in that the media is actually able to trash me on a regular basis in the United States, in the UK and whatnot.
34:38Elon MuskWhereas, you know, in a lot of other places, media cannot say mean things to powerful people. Okay. So I think it's better that we have a situation where the media can say mean things to powerful people.
34:55BBC InterviewerIf we're talking about the media, let's talk about verification, labels, sales. You obviously want to create another revenue stream that's subscription based. Is verification the way to do that?
35:05BBC InterviewerBecause we have a kind of a situation at the moment where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge where few bucks a month. Yeah, can. Is that, can that be right?
35:16BBC InterviewerIs that what you envisaged when you bought Twitter?
35:19Elon MuskI must confess to some delight in removing the verified batch from the New York Times. That was great. Anyway, they're still alive and well, so they're doing fine.
35:33BBC InterviewerBut on a serious note, 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.
35:51BBC InterviewerDo you see how that could potentially be a driver of misinformation?
35:56Elon MuskWell, I mean, I think the media is a driver of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are.
36:02BBC InterviewerI mean, that's a different question.
36:04Elon MuskYeah, but you are sort of saying like, who knows best, the average citizen or, you know, someone who is a journalist. And I think in a lot of cases it is the average citizen that knows more than the journalist.
36:20Elon MuskIn fact, I mean, very often when I see an article about something that I know a lot about and I read the article and it's like they get a lot wrong.
36:32Elon MuskAnd, you know, sort of the best interpretation is there is someone who doesn't really understand what's going on in industry, has only a few facts to play with, has to come up with an article, it's going to be, you know, it's not going to hit the bull's eye.
36:47Elon MuskSo then, like, generally this is what. How if you read an article about something you know about how much in that, how accurate is that article? Now imagine that that is how essentially all articles are.
37:00Elon MuskThey're an approximation of what's going on, but not 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 then and writes about their experience of being actually there, I think that actually that, that that's in a lot of cases going to be better than a journalist because the journalist wasn't there.
37:26BBC InterviewerI think you said the legacy verified blue ticks are going to go next week. There have been a few deadlines on that.
37:32Elon Musk420.
37:33BBC InterviewerYeah, I see the joke.
37:37Elon MuskThat number will never leave me.
37:38BBC InterviewerClearly it costs you a lot of money.
37:42Elon MuskWell, fortunately it didn't in the trial.
37:45BBC InterviewerWell, yeah, right. But as you say.
37:47Elon MuskRight. Yes. We're going to ask for a refund.
37:50BBC InterviewerYeah. Okay.
37:51Elon MuskYeah, good luck.
37:54BBC InterviewerLet's move on from that. But blue ticks, in theory, all legacy blue ticks gone next week. And this is. And at that point, you'll kind of work out whether this is going to sink or swim.
38:07Elon MuskYes.
38:09BBC InterviewerWhat's your hunch? I mean, you've obviously.
38:10Elon MuskI think it's going to swim.
38:12BBC InterviewerYeah.
38:12Elon MuskYeah, it'll swim just fine.
38:14BBC InterviewerOkay, what are you looking for in terms of. In terms of a revenue stream on that? What are your goals?
38:19Elon MuskWell, I don't know if it's like necessarily a giant revenue stream, you know, because even if you have sort of a million people that are subscribed for, let's say, $100 a year, ish, that's $100 million.
38:37Elon MuskAnd that's a fairly small revenue stream relative to advertising. But what we're really trying to do here with verification is to massively raise the cost of disinformation and bots in general.
38:53Elon MuskSo my prediction is that any social media company that does not insist on paid verification will simply be overwhelmed by advanced AI bots. I mean, ChatGPT is essentially a zillion instances of ChatGPT.
39:08BBC InterviewerHow do you really what you want on the platform? Do you want big news organizations being overwhelmed by bots?
39:15Elon MuskNo, the point is you won't be if you pay.
39:18BBC InterviewerBut a lot of organizations have already said they're not going to pay, like the New York Times.
39:22Elon MuskWell, then, you know, that's up to Them if they, you know, kind of make them pay, it's a small amount of money. So I don't know what their problem is.
39:32Elon MuskSo. 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.
39:50Elon MuskAnd even if an article is completely accurate and comprehensive and everything, if they're still in writing that article, the media is choosing the narrative. They're deciding what to write an article about.
40:05Elon MuskSo I'm hopeful that this can be more a case of the public choosing the narrative as opposed to the media choosing the narrative. The media can choose at least a combination of the media and the public choosing the narrative and the public getting to weigh in on stories if they.
40:20Elon MuskIf they think 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.
40:30Elon MuskAnd if we are not the best source of truth, we will fail.
40:34BBC InterviewerSomeone comes in and offers you $44 billion for Twitter right now, would you take it?
40:45BBC InterviewerWould you consider it?
40:46Elon MuskNo.
40:48BBC InterviewerWhy? Well, I take it back.
40:50Elon MuskIt depends on who. I suppose if I was confident that they would pursue. That they would rigorously pursue the truth, then I guess I would be glad to hand it off to someone else.
41:05Elon MuskI 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 a source of truth that you can count on.
41:21Elon MuskIt'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.
41:28BBC InterviewerWell, 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.
41:38Elon MuskWho do you think that might be?
41:40BBC InterviewerI'm not the boss of Twitter.
41:43Elon MuskNo, but it is. Well, that's. You might still have an idea
41:49BBC Interviewerwho could run Twitter.
41:50Elon MuskYes.
41:52BBC InterviewerHonestly, I have no idea who could run Twitter.
41:54Elon MuskYeah, it's a hard job.
41:56BBC InterviewerOkay, let's move on to. You said that you were going to stand down. I already am chief executive. Right. Okay.
42:06Elon MuskI can tell you I'm not the CEO of Twitter. My dog is the CEO of Twitter.
42:09BBC InterviewerOkay. Have you got any.
42:11Elon MuskHe's a great dog. Other than the dog, very alert, and it's hard to get anything by Him.
42:15BBC InterviewerOkay, that's good to know. Other than the dog, have you got any successes?
42:19Elon MuskHe's got a black turtle turtleneck. What more do you need?
42:25BBC InterviewerOkay. All right. We're going down that route. Steve Jobs or Elizabeth Holmes? Are you making reference to.
42:31Elon MuskI guess more Elizabeth Holmes.
42:33BBC InterviewerOkay, I've forgotten the question now it's
42:36Elon Muskgot a husky voice or Mike. Problem solved.
42:40BBC InterviewerWhat are we talking about there? Yeah, who would you want? Have you got a successor in mind?
42:48Elon MuskI'm not yet. Hopefully at some point.
42:52BBC InterviewerRight. Because you did say you were going to stand out.
42:56Elon MuskI did stand down.
42:57BBC InterviewerOkay, let's move on from that then. All right. What about this office? I'm intrigued about this office. You said it was expensive.
43:05Elon MuskI don't really need CEO.
43:07BBC InterviewerYeah.
43:08Elon MuskYeah. Why can't we be an anarcho syndicalist commune?
43:13BBC InterviewerI think Jack Dorsey kind of recommended doing this and kind of ignored it.
43:17Elon MuskYeah, it was kind of that, actually,
43:20BBC Interviewerthis office. Are you thinking about moving out of San Francisco?
43:23Elon MuskNot yet.
43:27BBC InterviewerNot yet?
43:28Elon MuskNot yet, No. I mean, this place is nice and I kind of like this office building, actually.
43:35BBC InterviewerYeah. Okay, so you're not. Because I know you've talked about. There's been high levels of crime here. You actually said it will.
43:40Elon MuskI think we should do something about the crime.
43:42BBC InterviewerRight.
43:43Elon MuskPeople are dying.
43:43BBC InterviewerRight.
43:44Elon MuskWe should take action.
43:45BBC InterviewerYou've also talked about how potentially, I think you might have been joking, but you could turn this into a homeless shelter. So I guess the reason I'm asking is, you know, you've.
43:53Elon MuskWe tried to turn into a homeless shelter. The bullying management owner rejected it.
43:58BBC InterviewerYou tried?
43:59Elon MuskYeah, they won't let us.
44:01BBC InterviewerWhich bits have you tried to turn into a homeless shelter?
44:03Elon MuskWe're only using one of the buildings and so the other building could be
44:05BBC Interviewera homeless shelter and you've tried to.
44:07Elon MuskYeah, we would like to do it right now.
44:10BBC InterviewerReally? Yes and no. They're being stopped. By who?
44:14Elon MuskBy the building owner.
44:15BBC InterviewerThey won't let you?
44:16Elon MuskNo. In fact, they wouldn't even let us take the W off the sign.
44:20BBC InterviewerSo how were you going to do that?
44:21Elon MuskQuite, quite. You know.
44:23BBC InterviewerWhat was your plan for the shelter?
44:25Elon MuskI don't know. We could just let people stay there. It's nice.
44:28BBC InterviewerRight. Okay. I didn't know that.
44:32Elon MuskThey can bring their stuff, bring the tent, whatever.
44:34BBC InterviewerRight. And it's a roof over their head.
44:36Elon MuskYeah. If the building owner lets us, we'll do it.
44:39BBC InterviewerYeah. So if the building only lets you, you would happily do that?
44:44Elon MuskYes.
44:45BBC InterviewerOkay. 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 in my whole life in the last six months.
44:57BBC InterviewerWe're talking about the last six months of your Twitter boss. Twitter owner.
45:03Elon MuskWell, shutting down one of our service centers was quite difficult because it turns out there were. I thought the service centers were redundant, but there were in fact, a lot of things that were hard coded to this one server center.
45:17Elon MuskAnd so when we shut it down, we actually. It was quite catastrophic. We lost a lot of functionality, which sort of really rushed to put it back.
45:27BBC InterviewerWhen was that?
45:29Elon MuskThat was around late December, early January.
45:32BBC InterviewerSo that was the biggest sort of, I'm worried, biggest crisis.
45:36Elon MuskYeah, yeah.
45:37BBC InterviewerAnd what about hard in terms of emotion? I mean. I mean, it's letting go. I mean, what were the current. The levels of stuff and what are they now?
45:47Elon MuskI think we're around 1500 people at this point. And there was, I think, 7800.
45:56BBC InterviewerWhat was that say?
45:58Elon MuskI think it was around just under 8,000, 8,000. 1500 right now.
46:01BBC InterviewerOkay. And has it been hard letting that many people go?
46:05Elon MuskYeah. Not fun at all. It's painful,
46:15BBC InterviewerI mean, I guess. In what way do you. Do you feel like you need to speak to people when they.
46:20Elon MuskWhen.
46:20BBC InterviewerWhen they leave or.
46:21Elon MuskI mean, it's not physically possible to speak to that many people.
46:26BBC InterviewerHas that. I mean, you talked about that being the most technical bit. Is that. Has that been sort of the hardest thing emotionally, or is it.
46:32Elon MuskIt's one of the hardest things, certainly.
46:33BBC InterviewerYeah. The Nancy Pelosi tweet. But there have been, as an example of a few. There have been others. Do you feel like you're an impulsive person?
46:49Elon MuskI mean, have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes.
46:54BBC InterviewerDo you feel like I need bulletproof
46:56Elon Muskshoes at this point?
46:57BBC InterviewerI 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.
47:09Elon MuskI think I should not tweet after
47:13BBC Interviewer3:00am that's the rule.
47:16Elon MuskYeah. Well, maybe two.
47:17BBC InterviewerThat's the new rule.
47:18Elon MuskYeah, something like that.
47:20BBC InterviewerOkay, so there's a blanket band.
47:22Elon MuskI shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't.
47:26BBC InterviewerWhat are your Twitter. 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.
47:35Elon MuskWell, I think those are two good rules. Yeah. Don't tweet if you're wasted and. Or, you know, really upset about something. Yeah, probably. I mean, a good friend of mine actually had a good suggestion.
47:50Elon MuskIt 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.
48:02Elon MuskThat has been a good rule of thumb.
48:06BBC InterviewerOkay.
48:06Elon MuskI've got a bunch of things in my draft folder that I'm glad I didn't send.
48:12BBC InterviewerI 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?
48:21Elon MuskI mean, it was like Hindsight's 20 20, so a bunch of decisions that could have been made better for sure. But as I said, all's well, it ends well, and things are going pretty well.
48:34Elon MuskSo in the grand scheme of things, I can't complain.
48:39BBC InterviewerOkay. I'm going to just check my list of things to make sure.
48:42Elon MuskI've actually maybe there's something that people on the. The Twitter one to say ask. You know, I could ask them.
48:49BBC InterviewerThat's on you. That's on you.
48:50Elon MuskWow, there's 680,000 people listening.
48:53BBC InterviewerThere you go.
48:54Elon MuskThat's a lot.
48:55BBC InterviewerThat is a lot.
48:58Elon MuskLet's see. How do we see? Okay, let me see. I'll just look at my tweet and see what people are saying or what questions they have.
49:16Elon MuskDo you like the BBC? Do you like BBC?
49:18BBC InterviewerOkay, yeah, we're not going to interview.
49:23Elon MuskDo you like BBC?
49:25BBC InterviewerI know, I see what you're doing. I'm not going to respond to that. Okay, I think we can finish the interview there if you want to continue. Thank you very much.
49:33Elon MuskI really appreciate it. Surely you like BBC. Come on.
49:37BBC InterviewerI'm not engaging.
49:39Elon MuskAll right.
49:40BBC InterviewerElon, it honestly has been a pleasure talking to you. It really has. And if you want to carry on answering questions on this, then go for it, but I'm not going to.
49:50Elon MuskOkay, well, I just want to see if there's, like, any good. There's a lot of comments here.
49:55BBC InterviewerI can imagine.
50:01Elon MuskThere's so many. Anyway, so it's nice to be interviewed by the BBC. I have a lot of respect for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
50:11BBC InterviewerDid you say when the actual label is going to go public? Oh,
50:18Elon Muskdo we still say state media or whatever? Oh, it says government funded media currently as opposed to publicly funded media. I guess probably we can make that change. Tomorrow if you'd like to.
50:31Elon MuskIt's up to you.
50:33BBC InterviewerIt's up to you. We'll expect that tomorrow.
50:37Elon MuskI mean, do you have any requests on a personal level or you can speak on a personal level?
50:42BBC InterviewerNo, I don't.
50:43Elon MuskOkay. Okay.
50:44BBC InterviewerI think we've established that. What questions are people asking you? Go on.
50:52Elon MuskI mean it's like a lot of comments.
50:58Elon MuskI was literally reading on looking at replies to the fact that the space is.
51:06BBC InterviewerAre there any good questions that I've missed out in the last six months? I'm sure there are many.
51:14Elon MuskI mean people generally seem to like this interview. As far as I can tell, very few negative comments, generally positive.
51:23BBC InterviewerThat's probably bad for me.
51:29Elon MuskI'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.
51:45Elon MuskPeople like the fact that. And my dog Loki is the CEO and I'm really just scrolling as fast as I can here.
51:59BBC InterviewerI guess my reflection on this,
52:03Elon MuskI'd just like to say I like BBC. I do find it funny, I think,
52:12BBC InterviewerI mean, honestly listening to the interview, the answer about misinformation and saying, oh, we don't police misinformation in the same way, but we do try and get bots. Because we try and take down bots, we'll be effective at bots.
52:25BBC InterviewerThere's actually less misinformation on the platform.
52:28Elon MuskNo, I think that's a big factor
52:30BBC Interviewerbecause I'll ask you one more question on that because that is quite a lot of people I think will be listening to this. Really. You're arguing you can police content moderation far less and end up with less misinformation.
52:44Elon MuskFirst of all, we do have people working on contract moderation. It's not like we don't.
52:53BBC InterviewerI've spoken to lots of people who've been fired. So lots of people have been let go. I mean gone from 8,000 to 15.
52:58Elon MuskThe censorship bureau 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.
53:06Elon MuskThat's not what you want for a public, public square. You know, you got to have equal treatment for people from across the political spectrum. So you know, some of them are going to be upset about that.
53:22Elon MuskBut 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.
53:38BBC InterviewerI mean, you've been. You've had community notes placed on your own tweets. Yes. One of them involving an alleged diamond mine.
53:46Elon MuskDiamond mine.
53:47BBC InterviewerA mine that.
53:49Elon MuskWhat diamond mine?
53:50BBC InterviewerA mine that your father part owned.
53:53Elon MuskYeah. My father never owned a diamond. You think you have an emerald? Emerald mine.
53:57BBC InterviewerEmerald mine, yeah.
53:58Elon MuskI'd like to see a picture of this alleged emerald mine.
54:00BBC InterviewerBecause you've been. You've been community noted on that. Did you know that?
54:04Elon MuskNo. But he never owned an emerald mine. This is total bullshit.
54:08BBC InterviewerNot even a 50% stake? No, because in community. No, but first of all, okay, do you think emerald.
54:13Elon MuskDo 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.
54:24Elon MuskYou know, these things are hotly debated. If you've got something valuable, you. You have to have some property record, like a house, but much more important than a house.
54:34Elon MuskAnd yet there is no property record whatsoever. There is no picture of this mine whatsoever. It doesn't exist. It's fake.
54:41BBC InterviewerSo that's. It's a really good example then, because there is a community note on that tweet that says, you said this thing on the X date, blah, blah, blah.
54:51BBC InterviewerSo in that instance, the community notes didn't work. So you're saying that that's a way of solving misinformation, but you're literally saying one of those community notes. It's wrong.
55:01Elon MuskThe community note may be 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.
55:14BBC InterviewerI'm not. Right. But at this point, I'm just saying the community notes that it is. So you're saying it's this great panacea, but yeah, it's literally on your own tweet.
55:21BBC InterviewerThe community notes, according to. You're wrong.
55:26Elon MuskIf they're referencing an article, then the article may not be wrong, but they're still representing. Anyway, Community Notes is not going to be perfect, but it's the batting average of Community Notes I found to be extremely high.
55:42Elon MuskRight.
55:44BBC InterviewerSo the 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.
56:00BBC InterviewerBecause I think that's the bit that a lot of people will go, really?
56:03Elon MuskReally? 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, I think we can be the best the least inaccurate that's our goal the least inaccurate
56:27BBC InterviewerI
56:27Elon Muskthink we might be there already if we're not there we'll be there soon.
56:30BBC InterviewerDo you have I've spoken to people who think this do you have a kind of message for people who think that Twitter has been ruined?
56:40Elon MuskWell we have all time high usage so I don't think it has been
56:45BBC InterviewerSome people think it has been I'll
56:47Elon Musktell you that 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 okay
56:57BBC InterviewerI'm not going to ask you whether you think it's been ruined because obviously
57:00Elon Muskno I think it's great that's way better better by a lot