Musk says Twitter was run as a ‘glorified militant organization’

News

By Victor Nava

April 17, 2023 | 10:51 p.m.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Monday mocked the former owner of the social media company for overseeing an “absurdly overstaffed” operation run as a “glorified militant organization”.

In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Musk joked that managing Twitter after laying off 80% of its staff in the days following its October 2022 takeover was not such a task. cumbersome because it didn’t care about censoring users.

“Turns out you don’t need that many people to run Twitter,” the billionaire business mogul told Carlson after confirming that 80% of the company’s employees were either fired or voluntarily left after his death. $44 billion purchase of the social media platform.

A disbelieving Carlson noted that 80% “is a lot” of people on furlough, to which Musk replied, “I mean, if you’re not trying to run some kind of glorified militant organization, and you don’t care that much about censorship, so you can really let a lot of people go, it turns out.

“I think we just had a situation on Twitter where there was absurd overstaffing,” Musk explained, likening Twitter to a “large-scale group text service.”

“Like how many people are really needed for this?” he added.

Musk, who also owns spacecraft maker SpaceX and electric car company Tesla, went on to criticize the rate at which a bloated Twitter has been making improvements to the platform over the years, calling it a “comical situation”.

“If you look at 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.

“It took a year to add an edit button that doesn’t work most of the time. I mean, it’s, I think it was a comedy situation here,” a puzzled Musk said.

“You don’t make cars, you know, it’s very hard to make cars or put rockets into orbit. So, you know, the real question is, how did he become so absurdly overstaffed? It’s crazy,” he added.

With the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, Musk told Carlson he believes Twitter will “again play an important role” in electoral contests “not just nationally but internationally.”

“The goal of the new Twitter is to be as fair and unbiased as possible. So, not promoting any political ideology,” he said, while later ripping Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his political contributions to Democrats that he says prevent Facebook from being impartial.

“My understanding is that (Zuckerberg) spent $400 million basically to support the Democrats. Is this correct or not correct? Musk asked Carlson, who replied that was correct.

“Does that sound unbiased to you?” Musk then asked.

The Twitter CEO was referring to $419 million in donations from Zuckerberg and his wife to the Center for Technology and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research, which helped get Democrats to vote in 2020 and place the president Biden above in key swing states.

When asked if former President Donald Trump — a once-prolific tweeter who was permanently banned from the platform after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill — will start tweeting again now that he’s been reinstated, Musk was uncertain.

“Well, that’s obviously up to him,” Musk said, adding that he didn’t vote for Trump.

“I actually voted for Biden, not saying I’m a huge Biden fan, because I think that would probably be inaccurate. But you know, we have some tough choices to make in these presidential elections,” a- he said, noting that he would prefer “a normal person with common sense” to be in the Oval Office.