Elon Musk is an extraordinary businessman and buy twitterbehaved like. There was no official message of welcome or hope for the future of the company, its employees and social network users.
Instead, the billionaire spent the week publicly criticizing the platform’s team, which violated the ongoing agreement for the acquisition. And it alarmed many with the signal that Twitter should be “politically neutral” by interpreting it as “generally liberated” for extremist positions.
Despite expressing his views on social networks on a daily basis, the truth is that even the richest man in the world cannot achieve complete freedom of expression for himself, since last week (April 27) he lost the attempt to annul the court decision that blocked him. Freely tweeting about Tesla.
Under Elon Musk’s rule, there must be changes to Twitter’s freedom of expression
Elon Musk describes himself as an “absolutist of free speech.” However, the electric vehicle company has been banned from posting about it since 2018, when it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after controversial posts affecting the stock market.
At the time, Musk said he had “guaranteed funding” to potentially make Tesla private—which wasn’t true. Their messages made the company’s stock price fluctuate, and the court intervened.
Since then, tweets and other public statements about the company have required approval from Tesla’s lawyers.
The billionaire has now tried to end this “guardianship”. However, his appeal was denied and he was left without the authority to speak freely about Tesla.
Despite this, Musk continues to post acid on Twitter and has repeatedly said he wants to make the platform a “fortress of free speech.”
In weeks before the purchase announcementHe has already hinted at changes he wants to make in the moderation policies of the social network, which he sees as a threat to the free dissemination of ideas.
On Wednesday, he tweeted: “For Twitter to be trusted by the public, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting both the far right and the far left alike.”
For Twitter to deserve the public’s trust, it must be politically neutral; this effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
The message comes after controversial comments about Twitter’s own staff – contradicting a commitment it won’t “pay off” the company or its agents as it finalizes the deal to buy the social media platform.
However, a day after the agreement was signed, which was posted on the SEC website, Musk responded to tweets from two political commentators who criticized the Twitter team.
Elon Musk criticizes Twitter employees in his posts on the platform
One of the biggest controversies right now is about Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s chief legal officer.
Elon Musk responded to a Twitter post by podcast host Saagar Enjeti on Tuesday night, claiming Gadde was “emotional” at a meeting to discuss the deal with the billionaire, citing a report.
In the post, Enjeti referred to Gadde as Twitter’s “best censorship advocate”, referring to the company’s decision to block a story post from Twitter in 2020. New York Post It’s about Hunter, son of President Joe Biden.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, the newspaper published a report classified as unconfirmed, alleging that Hunter Biden tried to introduce his father, then vice president of the United States, to an executive of the Ukrainian company he worked for.
Twitter said it blocked the report because it contained images of hacked material containing personal and private information.
He then declared that discussion or comments on hacked material should not be banned, and even changed its moderation policy on the subject, limiting itself to banning material directly posted on the platform by hackers.
The US election commission unanimously decided that Twitter made valid decisions on business grounds.
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US election commission clears Twitter for banning report on Joe Biden’s son
In response to this critical comment to his Twitter lawyer, Musk wrote:
“Suspending a major news organization’s Twitter account for publishing a true story was absolutely incredibly inappropriate.”
His rally led to negative tweets from users, including claims that Gadde would “go down in history as a horrible person”, while other posts called for him to lose his job.
Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo criticized the platform’s new owner’s behavior for bringing “harassment and threats” to a company employee, adding: “Bullying is not leadership.”
What’s going on? You are a manager in the company you have just bought, with the aim of harassment and threat.
– dick costolo (@dickc) April 27, 2022
Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s current CEO, tweeted shortly afterwards: “I took this job to power up service and change Twitter for the better, right route where we need it.
We are proud of our people who continue to do their job with focus and urgency despite the noise.”
I took this job to make Twitter better, fix the course where we needed it, and strengthen the service. We are proud of our people who continue to do their work with focus and urgency despite the noise.
– Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 27, 2022
Hours later, Musk returned to provoke and criticize the social network. Sharing an App Store screenshot, he said that Donald Trump’s rival social media platform, Truth Social, has surpassed Twitter and TikTok in iPhone downloads.
Truth Social currently surpasses Twitter and TikTok in the Apple Store pic.twitter.com/RxawVUAYKH
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
The businessman added that Truth Social only exists because “Twitter censors freedom of expression” – another indication that moderation rules for users need to change under his direction.
As the current and former CEO of the social network points out, Musk’s attitude of criticism of decisions and employees is not unique to typical business leaders and has the potential to cause distrust and even disengagement from strategic professionals, which is ultimately not good for Twitter. for a company and users.
Twitter employees were skeptical of its new owner from the very beginning.
The internal repercussions of Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition were reported by journalist Casey Newton in the Platformer newsletter.
In the early hours of Monday morning 4/25 before the sale was approved, there was a lot of worry, anxiety and uncertainty as it was days since the heads of the social networks had shared with them everything about the negotiation. With the South African billionaire.
An employee on the company’s Slack joked about whether he was excited about the prospect of working for Musk; Newton said the answers weren’t so funny.
Just before the markets closed, the following news came: Elon Musk has been confirmed as the new owner of Twitter. Reactions were diverse.
Employees told him, “The emotion on Slack’s public channels was very worried and negative.
Someone told me, ‘I’m a little surprised at how much people seem to be giving up. “Big bum,” said another.
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But speaking to people one-on-one, Newton reported that the reactions were milder.
“Some of the employees I spoke with were open to the idea that a private Twitter run by Musk has a better chance of improving the service than a public company that owes its shareholders.”
“They like the fact that he wants to weed out malicious bots and provide more clarity on how recommendation algorithms work.”
However, a real general concern is that many Twitter employees stock up on half or more of their salaries. With Musk, the owner of the platform, the company will no longer be traded on the stock market, as it will be kept private.
“One person told me, ‘Group chats discussing whether it makes economic sense to work on Twitter in the first place.’”
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source: Noticias
