Recently leaked internal messages from Twitter’s Slack workplace communication platform show employees panicking about Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. One employee, who labeled Musk an “a**hole,” wrote: “We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled.”
The New York Post reports that leaked internal communications between Twitter employees reveal that many are panicked and angry about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. Musk announced plans to purchase the company for $44 billion on Monday, an offer which the company has accepted.
Jack Dorsey and Twitter employees (@Jack/Twitter)
Using the business communication platform Slack, employees expressed their fears over Musk’s takeover. One employee, a site reliability engineer who identifies as a “nonbinary transgender and plural person” wrote: “Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech.”
A senior staff engineer who referred to Musk as an “a**hole,” stated: “We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled.” They added: “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.”
One senior staff video engineer stated plans to quit in the event of a Musk takeover: “Not the place to say it perhaps, but I will not work for this company after the takeover.” Some employees began to warn that Slack conversations could be searched, prompting many to move to discuss the situation via the encrypted chat app Signal.
One reliability engineering manager said that Musk’s opinion on free speech is really “cover for ‘I want to not be held accountable for saying or amplifying harmful things.’” Another stated that“self-reported censorship is sometimes just horrible people f—king around and then find[ing] out,” to which a senior content strategist responded: “and it doesn’t happen often enough.”
That same content strategist has worked as a left-wing political operative outside of Twitter and has been vocally critical of Musk. Last week she responded to a tweet from Musk, stating: “Sometimes I think it can’t be as bad as I’m imagining it’ll be. Then I see something like this and I’m all ‘nope it’ll be even worse.’”
Multiple Twitter employees have publicly stated their distaste for Musk, one engineering manager named Jay Holler tweeted: “The problem with @elonmusk is that he has demonstrated a pattern of harmful behavior consistently that disproportionately impacts marginalized people, so maybe let’s not give him any more power than he already stole?” Holler later added, “I’m radicalized now.”
The problem with @elonmusk is that he has demonstrated a pattern of harmful behavior consistently that disproportionately impacts marginalized people, so maybe let’s not give him any more power than he already stole? https://t.co/NcAxBujS9o
— Jay Holler 🎧 (@jayholler) April 5, 2022
Laura Gomez, who previously led localization for Twitter, said in a since-deleted tweet: “A M*sk-owned Twitter is one of the greatest threats to the 2022 and 2024 elections. We are f*cked if this happens.”
Read more at the New York Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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