Mark Cuban believes that an Elon Musk-led X may succeed so long as Musk doesn’t get in his own way.
Cuban shared his views on Musk’s ownership of the platform formerly known as Twitter in an interview with GQ, published on Tuesday. The billionaire said he had mixed views on Musk’s performance.
“You know, it’s bifurcated. On one hand, technically, he’s been a genius. I’ve been pleasantly surprised,” Cuban told the magazine. “While the features fail every now and then, like any technology platform, I think Discover is much better.”
“I think he’s on the right track to make it a good business. Unless he fucks it up himself with his posts on X,” Cuban continued.
Cuban told GQ that when it comes to running X, Musk is his “own worst enemy.”
“He really has got a unique chance to do some really incredible things with it if he can get out of his own way,” he added.
Cuban told Insider that he’s optimistic about X’s prospects under Musk and that it would do well despite Musk’s erratic posts on the platform.
“I think how the platform performs is light years ahead of where it was,” Cuban told Insider. “The challenge is that Elon is a victim of his own algorithms. They give too much ‘weight and bias’ to his posts, which in turn rewards content that engages with Elon and his active followers.”
Cuban told Insider he thinks excluding Musk from the algorithms wouldn’t damage the X owner’s reach but could also maximize the reach and engagement of other X users.
“In my opinion, that would encourage a greater variety of topics and posters,” Cuban continued, adding that his opinion was based on the last time he reviewed the platform’s algorithm support page a few months ago.
Musk’s ownership of X has seen the platform go through a period of turmoil and uncertainty. He’s laid off nearly 90% of the employees since he took over the company in October.
In July, Musk wrote in an X post that the company’s advertising revenue had dropped by half.
“We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk wrote. “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”
Representatives for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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