Running Twitter 'quite painful', firing people 'not fun at all': Elon Musk

Elon Musk on Wednesday said that he bought the microblogging platform Twitter because he had to and running it has been "quite painful". In an interview with BBC, Musk said that since he bought the platform for $44 billion last year, advertisers have either come back or have said that they would.

Musk also said that when he took over the company, it had just under 8,000 employees, now they are down to 1,500. He said that firing people is "not fun at all" and, at times, can be "painful".

Since the takeover, Musk has introduced sweeping changes to Twitter. He has laid off entire teams including the external communication team. In some cases layoffs were abrupt, and people found themselves logged out of their official email accounts.

Musk admitted this in the interview and said that he doesn't fire everyone in person.

"It's not possible to talk with that many people face to face," Musk said.

He added that Twitter's goal is to be the "most accurate" platform that it can be.

"No system is going to be perfect," he said.
On being asked if he would now sell Twitter if someone offered him $44 billion, Musk said he won't. He, however, added that he would if he could be sure that the buyer was as "committed to telling the truth" as he is.

Musk also said the legacy verified blue ticks on Twitter will be removed by next week. He added that any social media company that doesn't have paid-for verification will likely incur issues with things like AI.

He also dismissed the media houses who said they won't pay for blue ticks.

"It's a small amount of money, so I don't know what their problem is," Musk said.

Musk also said that he would comply with the law of the land in India rather than send his people to jail as the country has "strict social media laws".

He was asked about the micro-blogging platform taking down links related to the BBC's controversial documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"India has very strict social media laws. If it's a choice between complying with the laws or going to jail, I'd rather comply with laws than have any of my people go to jail," he said.

"We cannot go beyond the law of the country," the Twitter CEO stressed.

The first part of the two-part BBC documentary series, 'India: The Modi Question' raised a storm not just in India but also among the diaspora across the world.

Looking at the sensitive nature of the documentary, the Indian government banned it from being shown on social media, including Twitter, and elsewhere in the country.