‘If I’m so smart, why did I pay so much for Twitter?’ Musk asks
Published on Jun 21, 2023 at 10:46 AM (UTC+4)
by Kate Bain
Last updated on Jun 22, 2023 at 11:40 AM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Kate Bain
Elon Musk has just posed a somewhat tough question.
Speaking at the VivaTech conference this week, Musk asked “if I’m so smart, why did I pay so much for Twitter then?”.
It’s a good one because even Musk himself has admitted he massively overpaid for the platform.
READ MORE! Twitter co-founder reveals what he thinks of ‘reckless’ and ‘impatient’ Elon Musk
Musk then went on to explain his reasoning for wanting to buy Twitter, saying he wanted to make a bad thing good.
“I was concerned Twitter was having a negative effect on civilization and corrosive effect on civil society, and anything that undermines civilization, I think, isn’t good,” he said.
“I felt Twitter kept moving in a negative direction and my hope and aspiration was for it to be a positive force for civilization.”
Since dropping $44 billion on the social platform in October, the billionaire argued he had done a lot of good.
“We’ve gotten rid of 90 percent of bots and scams and various bad things happening,” he said.
“We [also] got rid of 95 percent of child exploitation material on Twitter, which was a shock to see… some of what was going on for 10 years.”
Musk has also been responsible for getting rid of about 80 percent of Twitter’s workforce.
Back in April, six months after he took over, Musk admitted he had laid off more than 6,000 people, taking the workforce from about 8,000 to just 1,500.
He said the decision was “not fun at all” but “drastic action” was needed to save the company.
“This is not a caring [or] uncaring situation. It’s like, if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job,” he told the BBC.
Amid the mass layoffs, Twitter, and Musk himself, were at the center of a social media storm, with the hashtag #RIPTwitter trending.
Since then, Twitter has slowly seen advertisers return to the platform and its users start to get used to the many changes its new owner introduced.
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Kate is Lead Editor, overseeing coverage across automotive, tech, and lifestyle content on the site. She has more than 10 years’ experience as a journalist and news editor, having worked across a range of major publications including News Corp, Daily Mail Australia, and Sky News. Kate holds a Bachelor of Business Management from University of Queensland and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from Queensland University of Technology. She has been with Supercar Blondie since 2020 and played a key role in establishing supercarblondie.com as a leading automotive news destination.
