Elon Musk wants Twitter’s SF HQ to shelter homeless, he says

The conversation, about an hour long and punctuated at times by Musk’s slightly maniacal laughter, focused on his leadership of the social media platform and came after a tense week for the platform’s relationship with the press. Musk likened his dramatic purchase of Twitter to a “soap opera,” admitted that he sometimes sleeps on a couch in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, claimed he tried to turn part of the building into a homeless shelter, defended his dramatic job cuts and joked that his dog is now the company’s chief executive. 

“It’s not been boring,” Musk said, when asked to reflect on his first six months in charge. “It’s been quite a roller coaster.” 

He said that he originally tried to get out of buying Twitter for $44 billion because of what he perceived as the platform’s major bot problem, but his lawyers pushed him to close the deal. He later called buying Twitter “something that needed to be done.”

“This hasn’t been some sort of party; it’s been really quite a stressful situation over the last several months,” Musk said. He later added that he’s felt emotional strain from the media firestorm about him: “It’s not like I have a stone-cold heart.”

Musk also said that there have been mistakes along the way, but insisted that Twitter is headed in a good direction: “All’s well that ends well.” 

“Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yeah,” he said, adding, “I need bulletproof shoes at this point.” 

James Clayton, a BBC tech reporter, opened the interview by asking if Musk sleeps in the office. The billionaire described an empty library on Twitter’s seventh floor where he can catch some sleep on a couch. He later added that he plans to keep Twitter in San Francisco — he said he likes the office building and claimed that he wants to convert an unused portion of the building into a homeless shelter.

“We tried to turn it into a homeless shelter and the building management, building owner rejected it,” he said, adding that he would still like to do it. The management firm, Shorenstein Properties, did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment.

“What was your plan for the shelter?” Clayton asked.

“I don’t know, we could just let people stay there. It’s nice,” Musk said. “... They can bring their stuff, bring their tent, whatever.”

They also discussed Musk’s poll about stepping down from leading Twitter, leading the billionaire to joke, “I’m not CEO anymore. ... My dog Floki is the CEO. He’s taken over.” More seriously, Musk said he doesn’t yet have a successor in mind.

The Twitter and Tesla CEO tweeted out a clip of the interview Wednesday in which he skewered Clayton for a question about hate speech on the platform — Musk demanded specific examples, which the journalist couldn’t immediately provide, then went on the attack. 

“I say, sir, that you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Musk said. “You can’t give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. And yet you claimed that the hateful content was high. That’s false. You just lied.”

The billionaire continued the offensive, calling out the BBC’s coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine. Clayton shifted the conversation back toward Twitter, noting that he isn’t a representative of the BBC’s editorial policies and saying that he understood why Musk had wanted the interview done live on Twitter Spaces. 

“I’m interviewing you, too,” Musk said, smiling. “You weren’t expecting that.”

Hear of anything happening at Twitter or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.

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