Bill Gates says Elon Musk is taking a 'seat-of-the-pants' approach to decision-making at Twitter

• Bill Gates said Elon Musk has taken a "seat-of-the-pants" approach while at Twitter, per the FT.
• Gates also told the FT that Musk's Twitter was "stirring up" digital polarization.

Bill Gates said Elon Musk has adopted a "seat-of-the-pants" style of decision-making at Twitter, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft, said in an interview with the publication that Twitter was making digital polarization worse. He said it was unclear whether the challenge of tackling digital polarization was down to human judgment or engineering.

"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," Gates told the FT.

The philanthropist added that social-media platforms needed to pay attention to what caused misunderstandings about vaccine safety or what incited riots.

Twitter and representatives for Gates didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal US operating hours.

Gates' comments came as reports suggested Musk enlisted executives, lawyers, and engineers from some of his other businesses, as well as his cousins and fans, to work at Twitter.

Thousands of employees, including senior bosses, have exited Twitter after rounds of layoffs, firings, and resignations, leaving the company with depleted teams.

Musk, who runs four other companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, has come under scrutiny for his management of Twitter since acquiring it in late October. In the 12 hours after Musk's deal was finalized, the use of the N-word on Twitter jumped by nearly 500%, per the Network Contagion Research Institute's findings. Not long after this, some companies started to suspend their advertisements on Twitter out of concern for content moderation on the site.

One of the biggest decisions Twitter made under Musk's leadership was reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump after poll users voted in favor of bringing him back to the platform. Twitter had suspended Trump's account after tweets he made during the US Capitol riots in January 2021.

Musk on Sunday posted a poll about stepping down as the head of Twitter — 57.5% of users voted for him to go.