Twitter owner Elon Musk has accused a BBC reporter of lying during an interview in a row over whether incidents of hate speech are increasing on the social network. The Mail has the story.
Mr. Musk was asked by U.S. tech journalist James Clayton how he would respond to claims that there are not enough staff at Twitter to police rising hateful content.
But he challenged the reporter to give him examples of such content – and when Mr. Clayton declined to do so, Mr. Musk accused him of spreading a “false” claim.
During a wide-ranging discussion at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, Mr. Musk also said that Twitter had “four months to live” when he bought the firm. He insisted it needed to cut costs to save it from bankruptcy and confirmed that about 80% of its staff have been axed since he took over last October.
And, explaining the last-minute nature of the interview – for which Mr. Clayton is said to have had only 20 minutes to prepare – Mr Musk later tweeted: “I said BBC could come Twitter, then, to my surprise, a reporter shows up.” Mr. Musk also described the interview as “penetrating deep and hard”.
Speaking during the chat, Mr. Clayton asked Mr. Musk: “We’ve spoken to people very recently who were involved in moderation and they just say there’s not enough people to police this stuff, particularly around hate speech in the company. Is that something that you want to address?”
Mr. Musk replied: “What hate speech are you talking about? I mean, you use Twitter. Do you see a rise in hate speech? Just a personal anecdote? I don’t.”
And Mr. Clayton said: “Personally, for you, I would say I get more of that kind of content, yeah, personally. But I’m not going to talk for the rest of Twitter.”
Mr. Musk then asked him to “describe a hateful thing”, and Mr. Clayton said: “Well, yeah, you know, content that would solicit a reaction, something that is slightly racist, slightly sexist.”
Mr. Musk then asked Mr. Clayton whether he thinks that “if something is slightly sexist it should be banned”. Mr. Clayton denied this was the case, but Mr. Musk pressed him to give specific examples.
Mr. Clayton then said: “Honestly, I don’t… I don’t actually use that feed anymore because I just don’t particularly like it. And actually a lot of people are quite similar. I only look at my followers.”
The Twitter owner said: “I’m asking for one example and you can’t give a single one…. I say sir that you don’t know what you are talking about. You cannot give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. And yet you claimed that hateful content was high. That is false, you just lied.”
But Mr. Clayton said there were “many organisations” that would say hateful posts on Twitter were on the rise, such as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, before moving on to discuss Covid misinformation.
MailOnline contacted the BBC to establish whether it will be responding to Mr. Musk’s claims that Mr. Clayton lied, but a spokesman said: “We won’t be commenting on this.”
Today, Mr. Musk retweeted a post by user @TexasLindsay_ which said he had “shut down this pro-censorship BBC reporter and left him scrambling on how to justify his own questions on misinformation and the supposed rise in hate speech”. Above this post, Mr. Musk wrote: “Penetrating deep & hard with @BBC.”
Worth reading in full.
Musk also accused the BBC of covering up the side effects of Covid vaccinations and spreading misinformation about masks. He said:
Does the BBC hold itself at all responsible for misinformation regarding masking and the 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 editorial policy?
The BBC’s own special ‘Disinformation Correspondent’ Marianna Spring has been carrying on some kind of weird vendetta against Musk by writing a string of articles mainly about herself and citing some dubious data supposedly showing that she has been subject to increased abuse since Musk took over, but which in fact mainly show she gets more negative tweets when she makes controversial BBC programmes.
So Musk has good cause to criticise the BBC for its coverage of Twitter.
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Interesting that the BBC use the Institute for Strategic Dialogue as a reference. Sceptics might not be shocked to learn that they have some interesting funding sources and an apparent left-wing addenda including targeting advertisers.
Yes. Soros and Gates again!
Also a couple of Government departments. Perhaps Mr Musk was a bit hasty to change Twitter’s designation of the BBC?
Too bad more people don’t confront and challenge lazy reporters when they make accusations and claims that are general, abstract and without substantive evidence.
I find you can just stop listening whenever someone mentions “hate speech”. It’s a strong indicator that the speaker is incapable of independent thought and reasoning.
Of far more importance than hate speech, is surely Musk telling Clayton that the BBC spreads misinformation :-
“Has the BBC changed its covid misinformation?…I’m talking about the BBC’s misinformation about covid….does the BBC hold itself responsible at all for covid misinformaton?…for misinformation about 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 editorial policy…” Clayton – “Let’s talk about something else.”
Apparently this was seen/heard by over 3 million. It can’t be unseen nor unheard.
Baby steps but this will make people think. Maybe.
By the way, the BBC have released part of the interview on their website – it lasts a full 90 seconds.
And no mention of covid/misinformation whatsoever. Lol.
To be fair, on the BBC website, where the BBC has the 90-second video, it states at the bottom of the short blurb about it:
Watch the full interview here
with a link to the full 57-minute video:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-65249138
It appears that the BBC posted the full interview (“3 hours ago”) eight hours after posting the 90-second version (“11 hours ago”).
There were technical problems with the sound, noisy interference at times, I don’t know if that had anything to do with the delay.
The BBC kept pushing the line that epidemics (stochastic processes) grow exponentially (deterministic). Of course they grow between zero and exponential according to a logit-normal distribution with an average value that has been known since 1927.
Musk is right in this regard, of course.
However, he himself has a LOT of form when it comes to talking a lot of crap about things. They call him the Pretengineer.
Not to mention his rank hypocrisy on just about everything.
Still, my dislike of him subsided when I found one thing on which to agree with him – that COVID was – literally – just the flu.
So now I have two things on which to agree with him! Keep it up, Elon, because in my eyes, you’ve got a long way to go.
He has another helpful quality which is that he is capable of being quite disagreeable – he doesn’t back down to please people. The world needs more of that.
When you’ve built a SpaceX and a Tesla I guess Musk will have even further to go in your eyes.
Musk did neither of these things.
You missed the bit about vaccines https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/04/12/elon-musk-bbc-interview-vaccine-side-effects-cover-up/ [no comments allowed]:
Lying entails asserting something that is false. What exactly does Clayton assert in the dialogue above that is false?
You’re nitpicking. Musk’s point was that the assertions about hateful tweets being on the rise were false.
Musk was making the assumption that the reporter and the BBC were making the accusation on behalf of “many organisations” and I doubt he was wrong.
Clayton asserts that he has had many instances of ‘hate’ speech on his twitter feed. Musk asks for specifics. Clayton can’t provide because he hasn’t been on his feed for four weeks. Musk tells Clayton that if makes an assertion but cannot back it up then the assertion is a lie. I agree.
Musk tells Clayton that if makes an assertion but cannot back it up then the assertion is a lie. Well Musk is wrong and needs to look up the definition of a lie. To lie is to assert something false, knowing it is false, with the intention to mislead. Just not being able to remember an example is no proof of that.
More to the point – it is a minor detail how much hate speech Clayton has on his twitter feed. What matters is if hate speech is rising on twitter and, if so, what Musk is doing about it. It is Musk being interviewed not Clayton. Musk has cleverly diverted the discussion away from the topic by attacking the interviewer.
Clayton has made an accusation. He could not back it up. He should apologise. Has he apologised..?
The only place that hate on Twitter has increased, it appears to me, is that directed at Musk.
Has he apologised..?
No idea – I didn’t watch the entire interview. Does it matter? It doesn’t affect the main topic.
For progressives, the concepts of misinformation and hate speech have a lot of similarity. Essentially they relate to data and opinions that they disagree with. Consequently the hysterical reaction to Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
The ‘hate speech’ will be 99% stuff they disagree with and were able to censor until 6 months ago. Now it’s out there in the new Twitter ‘public square’.
Hopefully this will move the parameters of the Overton Window enough for common sense and evidence based science to re-emerge..
What is your definition of hate speech?
There is also lying by omission, which the BBC does a lot of. The BBC almost never reports that people have been damaged by the vaccines, which is lying by omission.
‘I would say I get more of that kind of content’
It may not be false but, if Clayton cannot back it up, then it is a lie……and, as far as I am aware, he has not backed it up.
I’m a bit mixed on Musk. Tesla is China financed and Twitter is a mixed bag, still. However, I very much enjoyed his ritual disembowling of this badly prepared BBC hack.
He is doing what all on the right should doing – making the BBC the story. Attack, keep attacking.
Well done sir.
The BBC and the Trusted News Initiative, the irony of it. Hey BBC what about both sides of the climate debate or covid or even release the Balen report.
Without knowing much about Elon Musk, I used to dislike him. Then since he took over Twitter I started to like him. After hearing this interview – which is the first time I’ve ever heard him talk at length – I love him!
He’s not only very intelligent, he also has a lot of common sense.
I’ve noticed how everything the BBC has said about him since he took over Twitter has been negative, which is very revealing about the BBC, which is supposed to be impartial.
It was also quite revealing that when Elon Musk said at the end that there had been mostly positive comments about the interview, that people generally liked it, and there were very few negative comments, the interviewer said “That’s probably bad for me”! Meant humorously of course, but ’there’s many a true word spoken in jest’. Why would an interview that was generally liked be bad for the interviewer? I think what the interviewer had in mind was that his BBC bosses wouldn’t like it!
Yes, I looked on the Telegraph comments about this …this morning. They were pretty much universally pro-Musk. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed Musk taking this twerp to task..
Presumably the ‘many organisations’ who say that hate speech on Twitter is rising, are the usual suspects, with no real proof at all….what they mean is that ordinary people are fighting back, finally, against the lies and mis-information they’ve had to endure for the last few years….it’s funny how they don’t like it when the shoe is on the other foot!?
From a personal point of view, I think Elon Musk’s electric cars and space rockets are pretty much a waste of time. However, his most significant contribution to the history of the world may well be as the richest, most powerful and reasonably eloquent advocate of free speech. I greatly admire him for this, even if he shouldn’t really be able to own Twitter single handedly.
It’s a pleasure to watch him skewer this BBC stooge..
Just to wade into the who-gives-a-f***-opinion-of-a-super-wealthy-lad; I like the guy. He’s a bit weird, but I’ve “followed” him for a while now, and before my COVID cult awakening, I always liked his views on space travel and the like. I’m a tech nerd at heart and I always felt like he was a bit of an arrow to follow and had a semi-romantic view of humanities voyage into the stars.
Nowadays, post-awakening sure I see where he’s a bit of a grey area and an easy target (from both “sides” i’ll add…) but I still think he has value. I’d defend him as a bit autistic, probably should have remained in the business sphere of his life, but ultimately I just wish he would take a few lessons in debate! Get JP involved!
That said, it’s great to see this reporter twat squirm under pressure. Repeating the same old shit. His face when Musky asks about mask and vaccine misinformation is very telling; he’d never even heard or considered that there was a serious alternative…
I guess in the BBC’s little world, if The Institute for Strategic Dialogue claims something, it must be true. Move along …..
Perhaps they’ll send an adult/someone credible the next time they decide to interview Musk.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall for the de-brief back at the BBC. Clayton’s plan of turning up unannounced but unprepared for what came back at him backfires spectacularly (“This is not about the BBC”…”Oh you think it isn’t” – in Clayton’s little world the BBC is beyond reproach). Perhaps they will prepare the flimsy Marianna if she is able to go into the ring with some genuine opposition. Not.
I wonder what that BBC Spring is planning this morning….? Me thinks she will be a bit cross…..
She’ll deny it ever happened by not commenting on it. She’s got a well-paid job to defend after all.
Spring is only Mk.1 model prototype click-bait in the psyop war. She’s not able for this.
What a joke the BBC has become, its reporters are akin to lower 6th students writing about their latest feelings of being victimised. There is nothing professional anymore about the organisation, its lazy, and wedded to a yoof victim narrative which is insulting to the vast majority of people who think they have to pay them a fee to watch a TV set that the BBC or Government did nothing to contribute towards, and on which they can watch other channels/providers. Time to privatise the BBC and let the market decide. I am sure all the young victims its appealing to will more than happily fork out a couple of hundred pounds per year to be preached too.
I wonder if there will ever be other Robin Day’s or Jeremy Paxman’s.
Great the Musk called Clayton out on his, and the BBC’s claims. And when Clayton said “I don’t actually use that feed anymore because I just don’t particularly like it”, that’s exactly what Musk was getting at when he asks “if something is slightly sexist it should be banned[?]”, i.e. it shouldn’t be banned, but open to normal debate, which if you don’t want to participate, you just ‘switch off’.
Musk is absolutely right to ask the fundamental question “who decides”, as the left have been particularly vociferous that ‘they’ should, which means banning anything that they don’t agree with. That can never happen.
It’s clear the BBC journalists are more than slightly stupid
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