In full: Elon Musk's live interview on the BBC

but now we're going to take you

live

to San Francisco, where, as you can see here, this is Elon Musk, he's talking to my colleague James Clayton, he's our tech correspondent base there, let's listen to their conversation as it happens. I'm not going to say anything. I'm saying I'm curious. I'm trying to say what do you mean by hateful content? I'm asking for specific examples. And if you just said that if something is slightly sexist and is hateful contact, does that mean it should be bad? Well you. You've asked me, you've asked me if my feed has less or more.

I would say it has a little more. That's what I'm asking, for example. Can you name an example? Honestly, no. Honestly, no. I don't need a single example. I'll tell you why, because I don't actually use it for your feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it and, in fact, a lot of people, a lot of people, it's pretty similar. I just, I just watch. For my followers, you can't name a single example, not even one. I'm not sure if you used that rate last since you took it for the last six months. Yes, then you must have seen it at some point.

You spew hateful content and I'm asking for an example, right? and I say, I say, sir, you don't know what you're talking about, you really do, because it can't even be a single example of hateful content. a tweet and yet you claim that the hate content was high, well that's a pulse, no, what I claim, what I don't, what I claim was, uh, there are many organizations that say that type of information it's increasing now, whether it's on my feed or not, I mean, right and if you look at someone like the Strategic Dialogue Institute at the U in the UK, they'll say that, so people will say all kinds of nonsense.

I'm literally asking for a single example and you I can't name one correctly and like I already said I don't use that feed but I don't think this is going anywhere I literally said you experience more hateful content and then I couldn't name a single example correctly and Like I said, it's absurd. I actually haven't looked at that feed I would have for a few weeks 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. in what we have, we only have a certain amount of time, um, misinformation covered, the BBC doesn't set the rules on Twitter, so I ask you, no, I'm talking about what the BBC misinformation has about covered up.

I'm literally asking you. about you change the labels the covert misinformation labels there used to be a policy and then it disappeared why that covert misinformation is no longer a problem does the BBC consider itself responsible at all for misinformation about masking and vaccine side effects and not reporting on that at all and what about the fact that the British government pressured the BBC to change its editorial policy, you know? This is an

interview

about the BBC. I thought not. Now I see why. you have made spaces on Twitter I am not a representative of the BBC's editorial policy I want to make that clear let's talk about something else you want to talk about the BBC okay let's talk about something else that you didn't expect that let's talk about something else Narendra Modi the BBC made a documentary um about Narendra Modi and his leadership during the riots and Gujarat um so we believe that some of that content was removed from Twitter was at the behest of the Indian government, I'm not aware of that particular situation so you're not sure.

I don't know if I don't know about that. You know exactly what happened with a certain content situation in India, but there was an idea. Because what can appear on social media is quite strict and we can't go beyond the laws of one country, but if you do, you incentivize countries around the world to simply pass more draconian laws. No, look, what if? We have the choice of whether our people go to prison or we follow the laws. We will comply with the laws. The same goes for the BBC. Alright. Since you became CEO, there's been another story in town.

I am no longer CEO. your idiot boss or what are you, no, my dog ​​Floki is the secret, okay, he's taken over. I saw that, yeah, okay, so Tick Tock has been in the news as well, there's talk that maybe through a demonstration they want to potentially ban it or force a What is his point of view on the situation? I don't really use tic tac. I mean, one of the reasons I emphasize that our goal here at Twitter is to maximize unrepentant user minutes or unregarded user time is that I hear a lot of people tell me that they spent a lot of time on Tick Tock but they regret it. of the time invested and that seems to be fine, well, we don't want to have time to regret it, we want you to not regret the time in which you learned things in which you were entertained and had fun.

In fact, you know, I laugh more at Twitter than anything else and a lot of people tell me the same thing, so it's a good sign for the tick itself. Thanks, I just don't know enough about what's going on there, um, I can. I'm not saying I have a strong opinion on tech talk, so you would have an opinion on whether it should be banned or not. You know I'm generally against banning things. So I'm probably not in favor. I mean, it would help Twitter. I guess if Tick Tock was banned because then people would spend more time on Twitter unless I'm on Tick Tock, but although that would mean that even if I had helped Twitter, I'd generally be against banning things, is that good?

Sometimes you feel like your many business interests can get in the way of you having an opinion. I mean, for example, Tesla has important connections in China. Wouldn't you have a certain opinion about something? or you feel uncomfortable saying something because of your other business interests elsewhere. Do I look uncomfortable? um uh, yeah, I mean, Tesla has activities all over the world and a kind of SpaceX um, you know, from time to time those things conflict, um, but it's not. like Twitter, you know, operates in China, which was the new China, so all of a sudden I noticed that there was no communication from the Chinese government regarding Twitter, okay, in terms of advertising, obviously, Twitter is no longer a private company, so I don't really know what it's going to be like to get all the advertisers back, uh, not all, but most, and you can see for yourself on Twitter even in the future, right?

I mean, I'm sorry for the following ideas for you because it sucks, right

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y so, um. That's not what I said, okay, well, why don't you use it for yourself? What's wrong with it? How's it going? Twitter is profitable now. Twitter is uh uh difficult. I would say we are roughly in balance at this point and I think. You said before, you see a world where you could make a profit. Is there a timeline? Do you think I mean depending on how things go if current trends continue? I think we could be profitable or I want to be.

More precisely, we could be cash flow positive this quarter if things continue to go well this quarter, as soon as possible, yeah, wow, do you have a message for advertising? I mean, can you tell which advertisers haven't returned? I think almost everyone has returned or said they are going to return. There are very few exceptions. Can you sign any of the exceptions? Actually, I don't know anyone who has said that they definitely won't come back. everyone is training to come back, but there are some who just jump into the world too. That's great, that's your message to advertisers.

They haven't come back, yeah, I mean, look, you know, yeah, yeah, Disney feels. comfortable um advertising you know, kids movies and Apple is comfortable advertising iPhones those are good indicators that Twitter is a good place to advertise I'm going to talk about if you regret anything and you know, I think you were Buddha in Dave Chappelle Concert I think your own lawyer said a little bit well some say a little others say a little more um I think your own lawyer said that you couldn't get a fair trial in San Francisco because there are a lot of people I don't necessarily like you here, yeah.

But you know I didn't say it. I was wrong, he was wrong against the uh because I was acquitted by the San Francisco jury unanimously, so I guess, but look, do you regret buying Twitter? I think it was something that had to be done. You know, I would say Twitter's pain level has been extremely high. This has not been some kind of party. So it's been a pretty stressful situation. I know that over the last few months it hasn't been easy. I was better apart from the pain. I mean, it's been pretty painful. But I think it should have been done.

I think that's not where a lot of mistakes were made along the way. Of course, you know, um and uh, but you know it all ends well, so I feel like we're headed to a good place, you know, where you roughly break even. I think we're tending to be cash flow positive very quickly, literally. In a matter of months, advertisers are coming back, I think the quality of the recommended tweets has improved significantly and we have received a lot of feedback from people who have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm and we have made a lot of improvements even because it was the main open source and we're going to continue to do that so overall I think the trend is very good so you know actually it was something I was going to ask you you mentioned pain but you actually tweeted uh I think back in February you said that the last few Three months have been extremely difficult.

I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone. Are you speaking emotionally? I mean, can you explain it well? But some people around here are dangerous. the forest was there, maybe, but can you just talk to me about the emotional tension of this? Yeah, I mean, look, I'm under I've been under constant attack. I mean, uh, it's not like I have a cold. heart or something like that, you know, if you're under constant attack of criticism it's and then that's fed to you non-stop, even through Twitter, um, that's hard, you know, um, no, at the end of the day, I You kind of think that if you miss your feedback loop, that's actually not good, so, you know, if that's the case, I think it's really important to get negative feedback.

I don't disable responses and in fact got rid of them. I deleted all my answers. Block list, so don't block anyone either. So can anyone know? I receive a lot of negative comments. What has been so good about receiving negative comments right when you talk about emotional stress? You're back in the comments. is that what's been hardest to accept is the kind of negative comments, yeah, I mean, if the media writes stories non-stop about why you're a horrible person, I mean, you know, it's hurtful, obviously. I'm interested. I've written a lot of these questions, but I haven't written this one, but it's interesting, it feels like you have a pretty interesting relationship with the media because, in some ways, you're quite Skeptical, quite critical of the established media, but also Do you feel hurt by what the media writes and, uh, you still get your news from the BBC, as you've already said well, do you feel like you have some sort of strange kind of relationship with the media?

Yes, go on, explain, no, It's, it's, it's, it's kind of a love-hate relationship, although I mean, it could be taught another way, more towards the head, um, but, you know, it's a, you know, I think this. it's kind of part and parcel of having a free media situation, which is that, you know, yes, yes, yes, I participate in the media being able to criticize me on a regular basis, in the United States and the United Kingdom and all that. , while in many other places you read it, you can't say bad things to powerful people, so I think it's better that we have a situation where the media can say bad things to present them to the people and us.

We're talking about media, let's talk about verification labels. Obviously you want to create another revenue stream that is subscription based. The way to do it is verification, because we have a situation right now where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge, whereas anyone else who can pay a few dollars a month, yes, they can, it might be true , what he imagined when he bought Twitter. I must confess that I take delight in removing the verified badge from the New York Times. that was great anyway they are still a

live

and well so they are doing well but seriously it could lead to misinformation again if you have verified accounts that are from anyone who can pay money they just go up to potentially, in the top of feeds, they get more action on Twitter, and in traditional media, they may not pay for verification.

Don't you see how that could be a driver of misinformation? Well I mean I think the media is a much bigger driver of misinformation than the media would like to admit it is um I mean that's a different question yeah um but you're saying who knows best to the average citizen or do you know someone who is a journalist, um and I think in many cases it is the average citizen who 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 this.

They get it wrong a lot,government, so the BBC objected to James emailing Elon. Musk immediately to get his response to the situation and as you can see, this is the culmination of that email. They've actually been chatting for about half an hour, in which um Elon Musk said that Twitter's new CEO is none other than his pet Sheba Innu, the puppy Flocky.