Twitter employees freaked out and one even apparently vowed to quit over the company’s takeover by tech billionaire Elon Musk this week, according to internal Slack messages obtained by The New York Post.
The messages show woke workers inside the San Francisco-based social media company panicked and despondent over the prospect of Musk allowing what he considers free speech to take place on the platform,
“Vocal Twitter employees on internal chats indicate their biggest fear is Donald Trump being unbanned. Many express strong hatred toward [Elon Musk] & say they’re sick of hearing about ‘free speech,'” Andy Ngo said Monday, citing sources. “They’re concerned about their mental health. #ElonMuskBuyTwitter.”
From my sources: Vocal Twitter employees on internal chats indicate their biggest fear is Donald Trump being unbanned. Many express strong hatred toward @elonmusk & say they’re sick of hearing about “free speech.” They’re concerned about their mental health. #ElonMuskBuyTwitter
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) April 25, 2022
The reporter on Wednesday published accounts of the freakout at the New York Post on Wednesday.
“Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech,” a reliability engineer at the site said, according to Ngo.
“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled,” a senior staff software engineer posted to Slack, calling Musk an “a**hole.”
“We’re all spinning our wheels, and coming up with worst case scenarios (Trump returns! No more moderation!). The fact is that [Musk] has not talked about what he’s planning on doing in any detail outside of broad sweeping statements that could be easily seen as hyperbolic showboating,” the employee wrote.
“Not the place to say it perhaps, but I will not work for this company after the takeover,” a senior staff video engineer announced to his colleagues.
“Following the back-and-forth among multiple employees angry about the news, some warned that their communications on Slack could be searched,” Ngo reported. “The employees then moved their conversations onto their personal devices using the encrypted chat application Signal.”
Employees at a video meeting reportedly pressed Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal about the Tesla founder, video from Project Veritas revealed.
For example, one employee “asked for more clarity on what Musk may have meant by ‘free speech,'” Tech Crunch reported. “Agrawal said everyone understood what free speech meant, as it’s a concept that’s existed for a while,” according to the report.
“But I think I am going to try and read the question behind the question here, which is, where might Twitter’s product go as a private company in the future once the deal closes?” Agrawal responded, adding, “To best gain perspective on this … we’ll find ways to bring Elon in for a Q&A with all of you.”
The CEO told employees the company “will continue making decisions as we always have, guided by the principles we’ve had, which doesn’t mean things won’t change. Things have been changing. I’ve been in this role for four months. … Once the deal closes, different decisions might be made. For us to gain insight into that, we’ll be finding a way to have Elon talk with all of you at the soonest possible opportunity.”
Tech Crunch on Wednesday admitted the leaked video from Project Veritas “appears” to match prior reports about the call.
Reporter Yashar Ali on Monday said employees at a Twitter all-hands meeting worried about the Musk takeover, including one employee asking, “how did we go from poison pill to this so quickly?”
1. There's going to be an all hands meeting at Twitter in about 15 minutes and Twitter employees are submitting questions.
A source at Twitter is showing me some of the most common questions for this meeting…
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 25, 2022
3. Understandably lots of questions about what this sale will mean for employee stock options/grants.
Someone asks if any employee protection measures were negotiated as part of this deal.
Another person asks if this means there will be a hiring freeze until the deal closes.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 25, 2022
5. Another Twitter employee asks: “how did we go from poison pill to this so quickly?”
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 25, 2022