Twitter CEO Elon Musk mocked the platform’s previous ownership for overseeing an operation run like a “glorified activist organization” which was “absurdly overstaffed.”
During an explosive interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Musk said slashing the company’s workforce by 80% was not a tall task because he wasn’t concerned about censoring users.
“Turns out, you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter,” Musk of his cut backs.
Carlson noted that 80% of staff “is a lot” to leave.
“I mean, if you’re not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization, and you don’t care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people it turns out,” Musk responded, referencing firing Twitter staff.
“I think we just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed,” Musk argued, comparing the platform to a “group text service at scale.”
“Like how many people are really needed for that?” he added.
Musk also slammed the pace at which an oversized Twitter was making improvements to the platform, describing it as a “comedy situation.”
“If you look at the product development over time with Twitter – so like years versus product improvements – it’s like a pretty flat line. So what are they doing?” Musk told Carlson.
Watch full interview below:
“It took a year to add an edit button that doesn’t work most of the time. I mean, this is, I feel it was a comedy situation here,” Musk added.
“You’re not making cars, you know, it’s very difficult to make cars or get rockets to orbit. So you know, the real question is like, how did it get so absurdly overstaffed? This is insane,” he continued.
Later in the interviews, Musk declared that Twitter would “play a significant role” in domestic and international elections.
As the 2024 presidential election draws closer, Musk said Twitter will “play a significant role” in electoral contests “not just domestically but internationally.”
“The goal of new Twitter is to be as fair and even-handed as possible. So not favoring any political ideology,” he said
Musk later took aim at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for political contributions to Democrats, arguing it makes it impossible for Facebook to be an unbiased social media platform.
“My understanding is that [Zuckerberg] spent $400 million fundamentally in support of Democrats. Is that accurate or not accurate?” Musk asked Carlson, who responded that it was accurate.
“Does that sound unbiased to you?” Musk then asked.
Zuckerberg and his wife donated $419 million to the Center for Technology and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research, which helped turn out the vote for Democrats in 2020, putting Joe Biden over the top in key swing states.
When Carlson asked Musk if President Donald Trump would start tweeting again now that his account was reinstated, Musk appeared uncertain.
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