Bill Gates says Elon Musk is taking a ‘seat-of-the-pants’ style approach to running Twitter

Bill Gates says fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk has adopted a “seat-of-the-pants” style approach to decision making at Twitter. The Microsoft co-founder told Financial Times in an interview Tuesday that Musk’s management style could increase polarisation on the platform.

Speaking on the challenge of digital polarisation, Gates said, “I think, certainly, the Twitter situation is stirring things up. That, instead of an objective set of measures done by a broad group of people, you're sort of seeing seat-of-the-pants type activity.”

Seat-of-the-pants refers to decision-making that relies on personal experience and judgment rather than objective measures or technology.

Gates said that Twitter needs to “focus on the things that incite riots or lead to huge misconceptions about the safety of vaccines or masks, or those types of things.”

The task of battling misinformation would be daunting “even a fair-minded person with the world’s best technology and infinite staffing budget,” he told FT.

Bill Gates and Elon Musk have sparred in the past over their opposing views on issues like space travel and climate change – but the Microsoft billionaire is not alone in taking exception to Musk’s style of running Twitter.

Since he acquired the social media giant in October, Elon Musk has made a slew of decisions that have invited criticism. He fired top leadership – including CEO Parag Agrawal – laid off nearly half of Twitter’s workforce and told remaining employees they would have to adapt to a new “hardcore” work culture if they wanted to continue at the company.

Musk’s policies on content moderation also alienated advertisers, with some choosing to leave the platform altogether.

Bill Gates’ remarks on Musk came shortly after reports emerged suggesting that the Tesla CEO had enlisted executives from his other companies to work at Twitter.