Elon Musk sat down with BBC reporters last night in a Twitter Spaces interview to clear the air over his recent decision to label the Corporation as “government-funded” and discuss the prevalence of “hate speech” – however loosely defined – on the platform. It went about as smoothly as you’d expect. 

BBC tech reporter James Clayton claimed he’d seen more hate speech on the app since Musk took over, to which Musk inevitably asked for specific examples. For some reason, Clayton couldn’t quite recall any – instead claiming he’d seen “hateful content” on the new “For You” recommendation page, though he no longer uses that feature so isn’t exposed to it anymore. Right. Musk wasn’t having it:

“I say sir that you don’t know what you are talking about… because you cannot give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. You claimed that hateful content is high. That is false, you just lied… that is absurd.”

Musk then went on the attack over the BBC’s coverage of the UK government’s Covid policies, to which Clayton was equally lost for words…