Elon Musk may have already broken an important provision of the deal he signed with Twitter. A day after Twitter announced the terms of his deal with Musk, the Tesla CEO is already raising questions about his willingness to abide by a no-demotion clause.
According to an SEC Musk “is permitted to tweet about the merger or the transactions contemplated herein, so long as such tweets do not disparage the company or any of its representatives,” Musk said on Twitter on Tuesday. In other words, Musk can tweet about the deal as much as he wants, but he can’t disparage Twitter or its staff.
But once again, Musk seems unwilling to self-moderate and has done so at the expense of a top Twitter exec.
Musk responded to a tweet earlier on Tuesday night Politically Story in which Twitter’s top policy executive Vijaya Gadde reported, during a meeting with employees who discussed Musk’s acquisition. The original tweet also referenced Gadde’s role in the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story. (The company was quick to try to narrow down the story, citing its policy on hacked materials.)
“Having a major news organization’s Twitter account suspended for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk replied. On Wednesday, Musk took aim at Gadde again and tweeted a meme based on her appearance on one of Joe Rogan’s podcasts.
The tweets that created a wave directed at Gadde has prompted two former Twitter CEOs to come to her defense. Twitter co-founder and former CEO EV Williams wrote that Gadde is “one of the most thoughtful, principled people I know.”
Ex-CEO Dick Costolo was more pointed. “You’re making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats,” he said called. “Bullying is not leadership,” he wrote separately tweet. “All I’m saying is that Twitter has to be politically neutral,” Musk replied.
Notably, neither Jack Dorsey — who recently acquired Musk — nor current CEO Parag Agrawal have commented directly. Agrawl tweeted on Wednesday that he was “proud of our people who keep getting their work done with focus and urgency despite the noise.”
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Regardless, this sort of “noise” from Musk is unlikely to go down well with Twitter employees, many of whom are already concerned about the direction Musk will take the platform.
has musk claims that he wants Twitter to be “politically neutral,” which he says “effectively means angering the far right and the far left alike.” Early reports dealing with changes in for high-profile reports suggest that far-right politicians are seeing a sharp surge in following.
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