Elon Musk may have already breached a key provision of the deal he signed with Twitter. A day after Twitter announced the terms of his deal with Musk, the Tesla CEO is already raising questions about his willingness to abide by a no-demotion clause.
According to an SEC filing shared by Twitter on Tuesday, Musk “is permitted to tweet about the merger or the transactions contemplated herein, so long as such tweets do not disparage the company or any of its representatives.” In other words, Musk can tweet about the deal as much as he wants, but he can’t disparage Twitter or its staff.
But once again, Musk seems unwilling to self-moderate and has done so at the expense of a top Twitter exec.
On Tuesday night, Musk responded to a tweet about a previous Politico story that reported that Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top political executive, cried during a meeting with staffers over the Musk acquisition. The original tweet also referenced Gadde’s role in Twitter’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. (The company quickly changed course after initially trying to narrow the story, citing its policy on hacked materials. )
“Having a major news organization’s Twitter account suspended for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk replied. On Wednesday, Musk took aim at Gadde again, tweeting a meme based on her appearance on a 2019 episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast.
The tweets, which have sparked a wave of harassment directed at Gadde, have prompted two former Twitter CEOs to speak out in their defence. Twitter co-founder and former CEO EV Williams wrote that Gadde is “one of the most thoughtful, principled people I know.”
Ex-CEO Dick Costolo was more pointed. “You’re making an executive of the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats,” he said called. “Bullying is not leadership,” he wrote separately tweet. “All I’m saying is that Twitter has to be politically neutral,” Musk replied.
Notably, neither Jack Dorsey — who recently enthusiastically supported the Musk acquisition — nor current CEO Parag Agrawal have commented directly. Agrawl tweeted Wednesday that he was “proud of our people who continue to do their jobs 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 go down well with Twitter employees, many of whom are already concerned about the direction Musk will take the platform.
has musk claims that he wants Twitter to be “politically neutral,” which he says “effectively means angering the far right and the far left alike.” Early reports looking at changes in follower counts for high-profile accounts suggest that far-right politicians are seeing a sharp rise in follower counts.
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