According to a SEC statement released by twitter on Tuesday, Musk “is allowed to issue Tweets regarding the Merger or the transactions provided herein, provided that these Tweets do not devalue the Company or any of its Representatives.” In other words, Musk can tweet about the deal whatever he wants, but he can not discredit Twitter or his employees. But once again, Musk seems reluctant to temper himself, and he did so at the expense of a top Twitter executive. On Tuesday night, Musk responded to a tweet from an earlier Politico report that Twitter’s top politician, Vijaya Gadde, had cried during a meeting with staff discussing Musk’s acquisition. The original tweet also noted Gadde’s role in handling the Hunter Biden laptop story from Twitter in 2020. (The company quickly reversed its course after initially trying to narrow the story, citing its infringing policy.) “Suspensioning the Twitter account of a major news organization to publish a true story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk replied. On Wednesday, Musk targeted Gand again, posting a meme on Twitter based on her appearance in an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2019. The tweets, which sparked a wave of harassment against Gadde, prompted two former Twitter CEOs to defend her. Twitter co-founder and former CEO EV Williams wrote that Gadde is “one of the most thoughtful, principled people I know.” Former CEO Dick Costolo was sharper. “You are an executive in the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats,” he said. “Bullying is not leadership,” he wrote in a separate tweet. “I’m just saying that Twitter should be politically neutral,” Musk said. It is worth noting that neither Jack Dorsey – who recently enthusiastically supported the acquisition of Musk – nor current CEO Parag Agrawal has commented directly. Agrawl wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that he was “proud of our people who continue to do the job with focus and urgency despite the noise.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Regardless, this kind of “noise” from Musk is unlikely to suit Twitter employees, many of whom are already worried about Musk’s direction on the platform. Musk said he wanted Twitter to be “politically neutral”, which he said “essentially means upsetting the far right and the far left alike”. Early reports examining changes in the number of followers for high-profile accounts suggest that far-right politicians are seeing a sharp increase in followers. All products offered by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, regardless of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of these links, we may gain an affiliate commission.
