Billionaire Elon Musk revealed in a lengthy BBC interview published Wednesday that running Twitter has been “quite painful.”
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 after offering the company more than $40 billion for its social media product. In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, he was asked whether he had any regrets about the purchase. He said that his “pain level has been extremely high, this hasn’t been some kind of party.”
Musk told the outlet he only went through with the purchase because he believed he was about to be forced to anyway by a judge, the BBC reported. He went on to note that he’d be fine to sell the platform if the right buyer came along.
“It’s not been boring. It’s been quite a rollercoaster,” he continued, noting that the experience has been “really quite a stressful situation over the last several months.” But ultimately, he said, buying Twitter was the right thing to do. Things have apparently been going “reasonably well” as usage of the platform has increased since his purchase.
“Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes,” he conceded. “I think I should not tweet after 3 a.m.”
Elon Musk Calls Out The Latest Woke Investing Fad https://t.co/3Eo4eM8ee8
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 19, 2022
The BBC claimed they spent much of the interview being interviewed by Musk. When pushed on his decision to label the media outlet “government funded media” on Twitter, Musk acknowledged that the BBC’s leadership is less than thrilled with the decision. He apparently told the BBC that he would change the label to “publicly-funded.”
At the time of writing, the BBC’s label on Twitter remains as “government-funded media.” While the BBC is technically majority funded by the British taxpayers. It’s unclear how much Chinese advertising development continues to fund the outlet, but it was deemed “vital” for its journalism in February 2023. (RELATED: Musk Says ‘Absurd’ Russian Thread On Apocalyptic Predictions For 2023 Is ‘Epic’)
The outlet then argued that what their staff considers to be misinformation had spread extensively on the platform since Musk took the helm, and backed up this claim with unlinked and totally unverifiable “outside experts,” who went unnamed.