Elon Musk bought more than 9 percent of Twitter shares and will soon have a seat on the board of directors.
This has generated a stir within the social network, especially among employees.
Some understand that the inclusion policy that the company has been carrying out for years has a setback.
They fear that Musk may support changes in the firm’s corporate culture.
It should be remembered that the founding tycoon of Tesla and Space X has been criticized before for posting memes that make fun of transgender people, of campaigns to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and has come to compare presidents of other countries with Adolf Hitler.
As published this Thursday, April 7 Reutersafter speaking with numerous Twitter employees, “some people are dusting off their resumes and thinking about leaving.”
“I don’t want to work for someone like Elon Musk,” said another.
Twitter workers believe that Musk will apply his “freedom absolutist” thinking
Another fear of the workers of the little blue bird social network is that Musk could be a stumbling block in the company’s intentions to moderate aggressive content.
Musk called himself in early March as a “free speech absolutist” and everything indicates that it is in his plans to allow Donald Trump to participate in the network again.
The former president of the United States was “canceled” from Facebook and Twitter after the incitement to violence during the episodes of the capture of the Capitol on January 6 last year.
It is quite likely to happen. For example, Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert posted this week on the subject: “Now that Elon Musk is the largest shareholder of Twitter, it’s time to remove political censorship, bring Donald Trump back to Twitter.”
With the Tesla mogul on the board, Twitter employees say his well-known views on moderation could bring down a years-long effort to make Twitter a place with healthier speech and enable a resurgence of troll attacks. .
When Trump was canceled on Facebook and Twitter, Musk said that US tech companies were acting as “de facto arbiters of free speech.”
Musk and Twitter
Musk’s history on Twitter is fraught with problems. In 2018, for example, he accused an English diver who helped rescue children trapped in a cave in Thailand of being a pedophile.
His statements on the network regarding the sale of Tesla shares also earned him a heavy fine by the US SEC, considering that with his statements he manipulated the price.
Sam Abuelsamid, researcher at Guidehouse-Insights, explains it in an interesting way: “If Donald Trump were richer than he appears to be, he would have wanted to do the same and buy Twitter, but he doesn’t have enough money. So Elon Musk did what Trump would have liked to do.”
Now read:
A populist decision by Musk on Twitter will be very welcome by the CMs
Bomb: Elon Musk buys a stake in Twitter
Elon Musk discusses leaving Twitter, will it be a much more boring network?