Twitter CEO Elon Musk can’t take a joke | Honor Tech

Elon Musk, a “free speech absolutist,” appears to take exception to the criticism leveled at him.

On Monday, Twitter fired two engineers who publicly challenged Musk on his technical expertise, Bloomberg reported. The following day, Twitter reportedly fired greater than 20 individuals who posted unfavorable feedback about Musk on the corporate’s inside office messaging app, Slack. according to Casey Newton of Platformer.

It is fairly normal for employees to be fired in the event that they publicly criticize their employer. First Modification rights to free speech are typically not protected at work. However these firings appear to contradict Musk’s personal id as a free-speech advocate who purchased Twitter on a mission to free it from heavy-handed content material moderation that he felt customers had been unfairly censoring for expressing their beliefs.

“A great signal of free speech is: Can somebody you do not like say one thing you do not like? If that is the case, then we have now free speech,” Musk mentioned at a TED occasion in April.

Musk has mentioned he desires to make Twitter a extra open “digital sq.” and has signaled his assist particularly for conservatives like Trump who complain, with out proof, that Twitter is unfairly making use of its content material moderation guidelines on their content material. in opposition to.

It appears there are some limits to Musk’s absolute model of free speech and that his personal staff are an exception.

A not too long ago fired Twitter worker who spoke to Recode on situation of anonymity mentioned Musk’s firings put him on a listing of “thin-skinned” leaders “who simply need absolute freedom of expression for themselves and their followers.”

In the event you’ve been following Musk for some time, the contradictions between his beliefs on free speech and his administration model should not shock you. In recent times, Musk has overtly used his energy as a billionaire and energy person of social media to attempt to quash critics of him. He has threatened Tesla employees for organizing, accused journalists of corruption for writing unfavorable articles about his corporations, and tried unsuccessfully to close down a Twitter account that posted in regards to the whereabouts of his non-public jet by providing up {the teenager} behind it. $5,000.

Listed here are a number of the some ways Musk appears to waver in his dedication to free speech, each throughout his early days as Twitter CEO and prior to now.

Hearth staff who criticize your management

One of many first grassroots staff Twitter fired as soon as Elon started his reign on the firm was reportedly Manu Cornet, an engineer identified for posting cartoons about Twitter’s work tradition on his weblog.

Whereas Cornet mentioned he wasn’t given a particular purpose aside from his “latest conduct” for being fired, he suspects it might need been as a result of he was serving to coworkers put together for layoffs by making a instrument that allowed them to avoid wasting work emails. He additionally hand-delivered a printout of one in every of his cartoons to Musk at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters days earlier than he was fired.

The cartoon featured Musk breaking a statue of the Twitter brand, with one other character standing subsequent to him saying “You break it, you purchase it!”. When Musk noticed the cartoon, he reportedly instructed Cornet, “Nicely, I purchased it anyway.”

Over the following few days after Cornet’s firing, Musk went on to chop 50 p.c of Twitter’s employees. Extra not too long ago, Twitter made cuts concentrating on staff who publicly challenged Musk on Twitter and the corporate’s inside Slack. To make the precise cuts, Musk’s group was “requested to overview messages” on Twitter’s inside communication techniques and “make a listing of staff who had been insubordinate,” in line with the New York Occasions.

Two of the staff who had been not too long ago fired publicly challenged Musk’s technical understanding of the Twitter product.

Musk tweeted a grievance alleging that Twitter was loading slowly in different international locations as a result of its technical infrastructure was poorly designed. former engineer Ben Leib republished Musk’s tweet with a remark that reads: “As a former Twitter timeline infrastructure tech lead, I can confidently say this man has no concept what he is speaking about.” Leib was fired the identical day.

Equally, former engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, who labored on the Twitter app for the Android cell working system, was fired shortly after tweeting that Musk’s understanding of Twitter technical problems was “wrong”.

Musk seems to be publicly having fun with his layoffs, tweeting a dig in response to a information headline in regards to the layoffs on Tuesday: “I wish to apologize for firing these geniuses. Unquestionably, his immense expertise will probably be of nice use elsewhere.” He tweeted laughing emojis in response to the dialogue in regards to the scenario. He too posted that another employee fired he had a “tragic case of adult-onset Tourette’s.”

Suspending comedians who make enjoyable of him

Musk often posts crude jokes on Twitter. A few latest examples embrace evaluating Invoice Gates to a pregnant emoji captioned, “in case it’s essential to lose a boner fast,” and making a masturbation joke about competing social media app Mastodon.

Shortly after his deal to purchase Twitter went by, Musk tweeted: “Comedy is now authorized on Twitter.”

Besides, underneath the ever-changing guidelines of Elon’s Twitter, it isn’t. Final week, Twitter suspended the accounts of a number of well-known folks, together with comedians Kathy Griffin and Sarah Silverman, after they pranked it by altering their names to “Elon Musk” and posting some hilarious tweets.

“I’m a free speech absolutist and eat scrumptious breakfast every single day,” Silverman posted, underneath his convincing-looking “Elon Musk” joke account.

Musk argued that what Silverman and others had been doing amounted to spoofing, and commenced tightening the platform’s guidelines on parody accounts.

The scenario turned much more sophisticated after main company manufacturers, from pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly to Nintendo, started to be trolled, and within the case of Eli Lilly, it induced the corporate’s inventory worth to briefly plummet. . This spate of imitations, which had been enabled by Musk’s rapidly enacted new verification system, reveals how even one thing so simple as “legalizing comedy” is not that straightforward. Particularly when that comedy is directed at Musk and his firm’s advertisers.

Accepting cash from international locations that suppress free speech

To finance his $44 billion Twitter deal, Musk secured funds from buyers together with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia and Qatar Holding, an funding agency owned by the nation’s sovereign wealth fund.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been criticized for oppressive legal guidelines that censor political speech. It’s a notably major problem in Saudi Arabia, whose Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly ordered the assassination of US-exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

Musk shouldn’t be the one one receiving funds from Saudi sources. The Saudi Arabian authorities and people near it put money into many Silicon Valley tech darlings, together with Uber, DoorDash and Slack.

However once more, Musk seems to be compromising his normal of embracing absolute free speech by accepting cash from governments that overtly violate these ideas.

Union busting at Tesla

Elon Musk has made it abundantly clear that he’s not a fan of unions.

That has gotten him into hassle as a result of, in the US, employees have a legally protected proper to debate and type unions to enhance their working situations.

After employees on the Tesla auto manufacturing facility, a lot of them involved about security laws, started organizing a union, Musk’s firm reportedly fired an worker union activist, stopped staff from handing out flyers and even banned staff to put on pro-union T-shirts. Musk received personally concerned, tweeting in opposition to union efforts, which the Nationwide Labor Relations Board deemed threatening and later ordered him to take down.

Musk has mentioned that Tesla employees earn greater wages than their business friends and that unionization will damage employees. Which may be true, however why did Musk, a free speech advocate, attempt to stop employees from discussing their points and making their very own selections about it?

What Musk’s contradictions present is that saying you are in favor of free speech is straightforward; Fulfilling that freedom is troublesome.

Within the coming months, as Musk is predicted to alter Twitter’s content material moderation insurance policies and think about reinstating banned accounts, similar to that of former President Donald Trump, we’ll have a greater concept of ​​who will probably be protected by Musk’s ethos of free speech and who will probably be Excluded.