Elon Musk Claims Twitter Had ‘Four Months To Live’ Before Mass Sackings

When he acquired Twitter, Elon Musk claimed it had “four months to survive” and stressed it needed to make cost reductions to avoid going out of business.

The company’s billionaire owner acknowledged that since he assumed leadership, nearly 80% of the workforce has been let go.

Mr. Musk claimed that before he intervened, the social media network was “spending money like it’s out of fashion” in an extensive interview with the BBC at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Mr. Musk was asked if his method of firing employees was “haphazard and uncaring,” to which he responded, “I wouldn’t say it was uncaring.

“The issue is, the company is going to go bankrupt if we do not cut costs immediately.

“This is not a caring, uncaring situation. If the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”

He claimed that Twitter had “four months to live” due to a “negative cash flow position” of 3 billion US dollars.

As a result, since he acquired the platform in October for 44 billion US dollars (£35.7 billion), thousands of workers throughout the company have been let go.

The boss reported that there are currently roughly 1,500 employees, down from just under 8,000 when Mr. Musk assumed control.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX came under fire for laying off half of the company’s full-time employees in a single week, ending remote work, and giving the remaining employees the choice to accept longer, more demanding work schedules or quit. It also raised worries that the platform could have trouble surviving with the fewer engineers and maintenance staff who were available.

On Wednesday, Mr. Musk acknowledged that closing one of Twitter’s service centers had turned out to be “pretty catastrophic” since it caused the network to lose a significant percentage of its functionality.

Nonetheless, he claimed that Twitter was currently “roughly breaking even” and might soon resume being profitable.

According to how things go, if current trends continue, he continued, “If things keep going well, I think we could be profitable, or to be more specific, cash flow positive this quarter.

“I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back. There’s very few exceptions.”

Many advertisers stopped using the platform after Mr. Musk took control due to reservations about his handling of content and moderation.

He also disclosed that by the next week, legacy blue checkmarks would be eliminated.

The blue ticks of legacy-verified Twitter users would be deleted from the service on April 1 unless they paid a monthly charge of 8 US dollars (£6.40) to its Twitter Blue membership program, according to a statement made by Mr. Musk last month.

As a result, hundreds of prominent users of the network were preparing to lose the ticks that can be used to confirm their identity and set them apart from imposters. The April 1 deadline has passed, but the legacy blue ticks are still in effect.

Mr. Musk also said the social media site will update the BBC’s “government-funded media” tag after the broadcaster objected to the label.

The BBC contacted Twitter last week after the designation was attached to the main @BBC account.