Elon Musk tries to explain the way is he acting at Twitter
Elon Musk has attempted to explain why he is acting so unusually as the chief executive of Twitter.
The company is an “emergency” state that is like a plane heading to crash into the ground, he said.
As such, he has been forced to act in ways that are “spurious or odd or whatever”, he said – but insisted that he did not habitually want to be so.
The worry about the financial problems of the company are the “reason for my actions”, he said.
“That's the reason not because I am, like, naturally capricious, or at least aspirationally. I'm not naturally capricious,” he said during a Twitter space.
The comments were made in a live chat hosted by engineer and hacker George Hotz. Mr Hotz had joined Twitter as an “intern”, just over a month ago, when he said he would work for the company for 12 weeks and attempt to fix the company’s search functions.
Just before he started the space, Mr Hotz announced that his plan had failed and that he would be leaving Twitter. He then hosted the space to announce his reasoning as well as discuss the status of Twitter’s engineering and underlying technology.
During that conversation, Mr Musk said that Twitter’s finances were in a poor state and he had been forced into “cutting costs like crazy”.
He said that rising interest rates had caused problems for the company, as well as the loss of advertisers. Those advertisers were making “quite reasonable” demands in asking for proof of the value of marketing on the company, he said, and suggested that he did not have a “clear answer” to those questions.
Without fixing those problems, Twitter would be in danger of dying, he suggested. And that, he explained, was the reason for behaving the way he has.
“That's the reason for my actions,” he said. “They may seem sometimes spurious or odd or whatever, is because we have an emergency fire drill in our hands.
“That's the reason – not because I am, like, naturally capricious, or at least aspirationally. I'm not naturally capricious.
He then described the company as like being “in a plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed. With the engines on fire and the controls don't work”.
Mr Musk’s controversial behaviour has included firing the majority of Twitter’s staff, including many whole teams; asking for major decisions on the company over polls on the site; and asking staff to commit to “hardcore” working practices. He has also indicated that he will step down as chief executive, once he has found someone “foolish” enough to take up the role.
