Musk stated in the interview that social media now employs only 1,500 employees, which means a reduction of about 80% in the number of employees who were employed at the time of his acquisition.

On Tuesday evening, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk stated in an interview with the BBC that he had fired over 6,000 Twitter employees since taking over the social media platform.

Musk, who purchased the platform for $44 billion in October of last year, stated that Twitter now employs only 1,500 people, which represents an approximately 80% reduction from the pre-acquisition level.

According to Musk, “radical measures” were necessary because the company was facing a “negative cash flow situation of $3 billion.”

After an unsuccessful bid to acquire the company in April 2022, Musk attempted to withdraw from the deal citing concerns about the number of bot accounts on the platform.

Since then, Twitter has undergone a radical transformation, firing its top executives, reducing the number of employees, and implementing new verification and user account labeling policies.

According to Musk, Twitter has now “roughly” broken even, and advertisers are returning to the platform.

Musk also promised to change the label of BBC’s broadcasting from “government-funded” to “publicly funded” after being challenged during the interview.

Elon Musk also commented on the TikTok app, saying that while he himself does not own or use the app, he is usually “against banning things.”

“I think it would help Twitter if TikTok was banned, because then people would spend more time on Twitter and less on TikTok,” he said.

“But even if it helped Twitter, I would generally be against banning things.”

During the interview, Musk also joked that he is no longer the CEO of Twitter and has been replaced by his pet Shiba Inu named Floki.

Source: CNN