Elon Musk thinks there have been "many mistakes" since Twitter
Six months after purchasing the firm for $44 billion, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said running the social media network has been "quite a rollercoaster" and acknowledged "many missteps" along the road.
Musk appeared to implicitly recognise that one of those mistakes was the choice to refer to the broadcaster's account as "government-funded media" in a live interview with the BBC after accepting a last-minute request for the "spontaneity" of it.
After the BBC objected, he promised to modify the identification on the broadcaster's Twitter handle.
We're changing the label to "publicly funded" because we want it to be as truthful and accurate as possible, Musk added.
A yearly licence fee that is established by the government but paid by individual families is the main source of funding for Britain's national broadcaster.
This labelling row comes on the heels of a previous uproar over a similar action involving the US radio network NPR, which Twitter momentarily labelled as "state-affiliated" in the same way it refers to government-run platforms in China and Russia.
NPR ceased tweeting in opposition.
Twitter now refers to NPR, which has close to 9 million followers, as "government-funded media," and it has also done the same for the BBC.
For years, Musk has proclaimed his intense contempt for the news media. More recently, he added an automatic poop emoji response to emails received to the website's primary media address.
He also discussed Twitter's contentious decision to remove the New York Times' blue verified check mark after the publication refused to pay to preserve it in an interview with the BBC late on Tuesday.
Starting on April 20, any legacy verified Twitter accounts that were confirmed as genuine under the previous management of the company will have to pay to subscribe to Twitter Blue.
Musk stated that he does not want Twitter to support "some anointed class of journalists" who decide what counts as news as one of the reasons for this.
I'm hopeful that this will be more of a situation where the narrative is chosen by the public rather than the media, he said. He claimed that Twitter would "treat everyone fairly."
Musk said it had been "a challenging situation over the previous several months" while reflecting on his stint as the social media network's CEO since he assumed the position in October.
"On the road, were there many mistakes made? No doubt, "said him. "But everything works out in the end. I think our direction is positive."
With the return of sponsors, he said that the business was now "basically breaking even."
After resigning in response to a user poll on the website, he named his dog, Floki, when asked who would take over as CEO of Twitter.
