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Originally Published on DailyClout
“You just lied!” pressed Elon Musk to BBC reporter James Clayton. “You said you experienced more hateful content [on Twitter] and then couldn’t name a single example. That’s absurd!”
The above remarks were in response to James Clayton’s declarations that he has experienced more “hateful content” on Twitter since Elon took over the platform. But when Elon probed him to give an example, he stumbled, fumbled, and couldn’t come up with one instance.
This moment marks just one of many where BBC’s Clayton looked completely unprepared to deal with Elon Musk.
BBC’s James Clayton was hoping to be the one asking all the questions in this spontaneously-planned interview. But it turns out Elon’s curiosity sparked him to ask a few questions of his own.
One of those questions was about the BBC’s COVID misinformation policy.
“Does the BBC hold itself at all responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccinations — and not reporting on that at all? And what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change the editorial policy? Are you aware of that?” asked Elon Musk.
“This is not an interview about the BBC,” responded Mr. Clayton. “Let’s talk about something else!”
Clayton asked Musk about his decision to reinstate former President Trump.
Elon stated that he didn’t vote for Donald Trump, but he believes people of all political persuasions should be allowed on the platform. “Free speech is meaningless unless you allow people you don’t like to say things you don’t like. Otherwise, it’s irrelevant. At the point in which you lose free speech, it doesn’t come back.”
The next topic was “misinformation.”
“Do you believe you prioritize freedom of speech over misinformation and hate speech,” asked James Clayton.
Mr. Clayton was caught off-guard as Elon turned the tables on him.
“Who is the arbiter of that [misinformation]? Is it the BBC?” asked Musk.
James Clayton stammered, “Are you literally asking me?”
“Yes,” replied Elon. “Who is to say that one person’s misinformation is another person’s information?”
Paid blue checkmarks were another topic. BBC’s Clayton asked if that feature would dilute the pool of sources people could trust.
Elon expressed that he often trusts the average citizens over professional journalists —because when a journalist doesn’t know an industry or topic too well and only has a few facts to play with, their article doesn’t exactly “hit the bullseye.”
“You’re sort of saying, who knows best? The average citizen or someone who is a journalist? And I think in a lot of cases, the average citizen knows more than the journalist,” he opined.
“If someone comes in and offers you $44 billion for Twitter right now, would you take it?” questioned Clayton.
” No,” replied Elon.
“Would you consider it?” Clayton asked.
“No,” answered Musk. Because “I do want to have some source of truth that I can count on.” And Mr. Musk said he believes that Twitter does that in real-time — and that the platform will only get more accurate as time progresses.
Lastly, Mr. Clayton asked for Elon’s response to criticisms that he “ruined” the platform.
“Well, we have all-time high usage. So I don’t think it has been [ruined],” expressed Musk.
“Some people say it has been. I’ll tell you that,” replied BBC’s Clayton.
“They’re probably the same people who predicted that Twitter would cease to exist, and their predictions have turned out to be false,” Elon responded
For BBC’s self-interpretation of the interview, you can read that here:
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