“Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting U.S. President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules,” Musk tweeted.
Bari Weiss of the Free Press tweeted a thread of Twitter’s internal messages regarding Trump’s ban from the platform.
In the thread, employees discussed whether Trump’s tweets on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the riot at the U.S. Capitol, incited violence or violated Twitter’s terms.
Some Twitter employees demanded Trump be banned, saying things like “we have to do the right thing and ban this account” and it’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules.”
But the employees assigned to evaluate whether tweets violate Twitter’s policies disagreed. One called out “employee advocacy” and another concluded, “I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement.”
“But Twitter executives did ban Trump, even though key staffers said that Trump had not incited violence—not even in a ‘coded’ way,” Weiss wrote.
After Twitter employees determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of company policy, Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.”
Then, employees on the “scaled enforcement team” suggested that Trump’s tweet may have violated Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy—if you interpreted the phrase “American Patriots” to refer to the rioters.
Members of that team then came to “view him as the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.”
Trump’s permanent ban was announced soon after “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
In the image, Musk’s smiling face is seen on the body of someone who kneeled beside a new grave and flipped the “V” sign at the camera. White text outlined in black that spells “BOTS” was added to the photo over the section of the gravestone that typically lists its occupant’s name.
Musk accompanied the image with an emoji of a smiley face sticking its tongue out.
He later responded to comments on the image, writing that previous company leadership “lied to make their user numbers seem artificially higher, so turned a blind eye to fake/spam accounts.”
Musk posted the image just hours after Twitter relaunched its Twitter Blue subscription service. People who pay the monthly subscription fee will now be able to add a blue checkmark to their account, following a review of their account by the company. The blue checkmark used to be free, but required accounts to be “active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest” in order to qualify, according to Twitter’s website.
Twitter Blue is one of the strategies Musk is using to crack down on bot accounts. On Sunday morning, the day before Twitter Blue launched, Musk tweeted that bot accounts “are in for a surprise tomorrow.” Later Sunday, Musk tweeted that it was his “guess” Twitter had a “small number of humans with large bot/troll armies.” The company was in the process of “shutting down IP addresses of known bad actors,” Musk added.
Musk’s intention to weed out bot accounts predates his official acquisition of Twitter. After signaling interest in taking over the company, Musk tweeted in April: “If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
Private Jet Services Group (PJS) said Twitter chartered two flights between New Jersey and San Francisco in October for the company’s former chief marketing officer Leslie Berland.
Berland was laid off in November after Elon Musk let go of about half of employees when he took over the company, according to Bloomberg, who also was the first to report the lawsuit.
PJS alleges Twitter breached their contract and quasi-contract. It accuses Twitter of never paying the bill for the two flights after it sent the bill in early November.
Marty O’Neill, Twitter’s head of global strategic sourcing, emailed PJS on Nov. 16, saying “Twitter is not liable for these expenses” as “only Designated Representatives” were allowed to book services through PJS, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit says Twitter and PJS signed an agreement in 2020 for the social media company to book services through the jet firm via “designation representatives,” but Twitter “did not always follow the process” and allowed employees who were not designated representatives book flights in the past.
PJS said Twitter breached its contract by refusing to pay “under circumstances that make it reasonable for PJS to expect payment.”
Twitter employee Taylor DeLorenzo responded to the email that then-CEO Parag Agrawal authorized the flights, according to the lawsuit.
“It was an urgent need the week the deal closed, and Leslie was the main person from Twitter liaising directly with Elon,” DeLorenzo’s email read, according to the complaint.
O’Neill said he “can’t emphasize enough that new management wants to hold firm on this,” the complaint said.
Musk’s comments came in response to some individuals resigning from the platform’s Trust and Safety Council last week.
Anne Collier, a former member of the council, posted a December 8 letter on Twitter that said Twitter users’ “safety and wellbeing” are “on the decline.” The letter said this decline is occurring even as Musk says otherwise.
In response to Collier’s post containing the resignation letter, one Twitter user shared an article about a January 2021 lawsuit alleging there was an incident in which Twitter did not take down child porn because the company didn’t find the content violated its policies.
In the response thread to Collier’s letter, Musk wrote: “It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”
Dorsey then responded to Musk’s comment by writing, “this is false.”
“No, it is not,” Musk told Dorsey. He said one Twitter employee who joined the company earlier this year reported that “almost no one was working on child safety” when she became the head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council. That employee brought their concerns to the company’s leadership at the time, Musk said, “but they rejected her staffing request.”
“I made it a top priority immediately,” Musk added.
In Collier’s letter, she and two other former members of the Trust and Safety Council said they do not believe Musk should “be allowed to define digital safety.” Despite recent layoffs, their letter said the company still has employees “who care about reducing hate speech and protecting users.” Since Musk took over the company, the letter said the percentage of slurs targeting Black Americans has “jumped” 195 percent and the number of slurs targeting LGBTQ+ individuals has increased by 58 percent. The amount of antisemitic content “soared” by more than 60 percent immediately following Musk’s acquisition, they said.
After acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, Musk laid off about half of its employees with three months severance.
Now, two former employees are suing the company, claiming the mass layoffs disproportionately affect women.
The lawsuit filed in a San Francisco federal court last week alleged that 57 percent of female employees were laid off, compared to 47 percent of male employees, according to the Associated Press. This comes despite Twitter employing more men overall before the layoffs.
Among engineering-related roles, 63 percent of women were laid off compared to 48 percent of men, according to the lawsuit.
Former employees Carolina Bernal Strifling and Willow Wren Turkal filed the lawsuit on behalf of other women “who are more often caregivers for children and other family members, and thus not able to comply with such demands.”
“The mass termination of employees at Twitter has impacted female employees to a much greater extent than male employees – and to a highly statistically significant degree,” Boston workers’ rights attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who filed the lawsuit, wrote. “Moreover, Elon Musk has made a number of publicly discriminatory remarks about women, further confirming that the mass termination’s greater impact on female employees resulted from discrimination.”
Liss-Riordan said outside of the courthouse before a hearing that she wanted to show that “the richest man in the world is not above the law.”
“Musk and Twitter think they’re never going to be held accountable in court. We are arguing that the arbitration agreements (signed by Twitter staff) are not enforceable. But if we have to go through arbitration one by one, we are ready to do that,” she said.
The outgoing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director told Nature that he doesn’t pay attention to Twitter drama and doesn’t “feel the need” to respond to Musk’s call for him to be prosecuted.
“A lot of that stuff is just a cesspool of misinformation, and I don’t waste a minute worrying about it,” he said.
When asked if he feels his safety is at risk following this attacks online, Fauci said he has armed federal agents to protect him.
“[Musk’s tweet] stirs a lot of hate in people who have no idea why they’re hating, they’re hating because somebody [famous] is tweeting about it,” he added.
The stock’s highest value of 2022 was recorded during the first week of the year. The stock has steadily declined since mid-September.
While investors who shorted the stock lost more than $10 billion last year, investors who did the same in 2022 won back about $11.5 billion, according to CNN Business.
Recent polling has suggested that certain activities of Tesla CEO Elon Musk could be impacting the stock’s performance and overall confidence in the company. According to one Morning Consult survey, the net favorability of three companies Musk now controls—Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter—dropped last month.
Morning Consult wrote that Musk’s purchase of Twitter, which became official in late October, “has had a deeply politically polarizing effect” on the social media platform that “rippled into his other companies,” including Tesla.
Another poll conducted by YouGov found Tesla’s approval rating dropped into the negatives in early November.
The health policy professor, Jay Bhattacharya, said Twitter CEO Elon Musk invited him for the visit.
Bhattacharya said he learned that his account was added to the blacklist the day he created a Twitter account in August 2021. The platform also did not allow Bhattacharya’s account to be verified, he said.
“It will take some time to find out more about what led Twitter 1.0 to act so imperiously,” Bhattacharya said in a Sunday Twitter thread, adding that he is “grateful” to Musk “who has promised access to help find out.”
“I will report the results on Twitter 2.0, where transparency and free speech rule,” Bhattacharya said.
Bhattacharya’s name was mentioned during a second release of the “Twitter files,” which Musk and reporter Matt Taibbi launched last week. The second report that involved Bhattacharya was posted online by Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press, whose report focused on Twitter’s “secret blacklists.”
Weiss reported that Twitter employees created the lists to limit the spread of some content on the platform. She gave Bhattacharya’s account as one example of an account that reportedly appeared on these lists due to a tweet he posted about the impacts of coronavirus lockdowns on children.
Bhattacharya told News Nation last week that he was “shocked” when he learned his account was on a Twitter blacklist. He said he first joined Twitter “mainly to share scientific data and my thoughts about school openings” and “the harms to children from lockdown.”
After a news conference Sunday following the the successful Artemis I mission, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson that he asked SpaceX President and CEO Gwynne Shotwell if Musk’s Twitter “distraction” will affect the spacecraft manufacturer.
“Tell me that the distraction that Elon might have on Twitter is not going to affect SpaceX,” Nelson, said he asked Shotwell.
Shotwell assured Nelson that it would not.
“I assure you, it is not,” she responded, according to Nelson. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Nelson said he spoke with Shotwell last weekend and left the meeting smiling because he knows Shotwell, not Musk, is running Space X.
“I hugged her with a smile on my face, because I know she is running that thing. She’s running SpaceX,” he said, adding that he does not have concerns about Space X.
The blue checkmark was previously only available to “active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest” that the platform “verified based on certain requirements,” according to Twitter’s Help Center. Now, subscribers will receive the blue checkmark once their account has been reviewed and Twitter has confirmed that it “has met our eligibility criteria.”
Accounts that were previously issued a blue checkmark will be able to retain that status, according to Twitter’s website.
After the rollout, Twitter said the color used for some checkmarks will be changed, with “a gold checkmark for businesses” and “a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts.”
Twitter attempted to launch its subscription service last month but ultimately delayed the rollout, with CEO Elon Musk saying at the time that the platform wanted “to make sure that it is rock solid” before officially launching. Twitter announced last week that its relaunch was planned for Monday.
The cost of a Twitter Blue subscription is $8 per month for web subscribers and $11 per month for iOS subscribers. In addition to the blue checkmark, subscribers will be able to edit tweets and upload 1080p videos. Subscribers will have access to a “reader mode” on the platform and “will be able to change their handle, display name or profile photo,” Twitter said in a December 10 thread.
Handle, display name and profile photo changes would require the platform to conduct another review of subscriber accounts, which means the blue checkmarks for any such accounts would be temporarily removed until the review has been conducted, Twitter added.
By Monday morning, the tweet, in which Musk said his pronouns were “Prosecute/Fauci,” had over nearly 171,000 retweets, 1.1 million likes and nearly 32,000 quote tweets.
Fauci served under former President Donald Trump as the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and was a leading member for President Joe Biden’s White House COVID-19 Response Team as well as Biden’s chief medical advisor. Fauci announced in August that he will step down from government service this month.
Both during and after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci was the subject of backlash from people who questioned the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine as well as the virus’ origins. Many conservative lawmakers have called for government investigations into the origins of the pandemic and have accused Fauci of “hiding information” about COVID-19’s origins.
Former CIA director and Obama White House official John Brennan defended Fauci as a “national hero” who will be remembered “for generations to come for his innate goodness & many contributions to public health.”
Brennan quoted Musk’s tweet, saying the tech billionaire “will be remembered most for fueling public hate & divisions” despite his business success.
“You may have money, but you have no class,” he tweeted.
Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres from New York said Musk only wants to criminalize Fauci “because he disagrees with him.”
“Elon is no champion of free speech,” he said in a tweet. “The GOP and their allies are fixated on Dr. Fauci and Hunter Biden instead of the real issues we face.”
Other blasted Musk for mocking the LGBTQ community with his pronouns joke.
Former NASA Astronaut and retired U.S. Navy Captain Scott Kelly condemned Musk for mocking and promoting hate towards an “already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence” community.
Musk responded that he disagrees with Kelly, saying “forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.”
He added that Fauci lied to Congress and “funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people.”
MSNBC executive producer Kyle Griffin said Musk’s tweet is “denigrating the trans community.”
Several conservative lawmakers, however, showed their support for Musk’s tweet online, bolstering calls to investigate Fauci.
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colorado Congresswomen Lauren Boebert gave their approval for Musk’s pronouns.
Boebert also called Fauci’s prosecution “long overdue.”
Donald Trump Jr. also showed his support for Musk’s sentiment.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said Fauci’s resignation “should not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic.”
“He must be required to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the Wuhan lab leak,” Paul tweeted. “His policies destroyed lives.”
At 5:58 a.m., Musk tweeted, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” and replied to the tweet, “Truth resonates…”
Musk received a wave of both criticism and support online. Critics of the tweet blasted Musk for not only spreading misinformation about Fauci and minimizing his contributions to curbing COVID-19 pandemic, but for mocking the LGBTQ+ community.
Despite being called out, Musk maintained that he was a truth teller.
In response to a tweet claiming “the Left” is upset for Musk “dropping truth bombs” that disrupts their insulated “bubbles of lies and propaganda,” Musk said it’s “easy to fool people, but it is almost impossible to convince people that they have been fooled.”
On Monday, Musk said he upset the “Branch Covidians” and said “the woke mind virus” needs to be defeated “or nothing else matters.”
In a video clip from the show, the crowd is heard booing and cheering for Musk when he came onstage.
“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle said, before noting “Cheers and boos, I see.”
Chappelle noted the crowd’s response, joking that some people in the audience may have a personal gripe against Musk.
“Controversy, buddy. It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” the comedian said to the tech billionaire.
He also joked that those booing had “terrible seats.”
Speaking of Musk, Chappelle said, “This n***** not even trying to die on earth. His whole business model is f*** earth, I’m leaving anyway.”
He also noted that he didn’t want to “miss this opportunity” to own the first comedy club on Mars and joked Musk gave him a jetpack last Christmas.
Musk thanked Chappelle for having him on stage and asked, “what should I say?”
When the crowd kept booing, Chappelle bit back again. He said the jeers were “the sound of pending civil unrest.”
“I can’t wait to see what story you decimate next motherf*****,” he said.
“You shut the f*** up with your boos. There’s something better you can do. Booing is not the best thing you can do… I am your ally,” Chappelle continued. “I wish everybody in this audience peace and the joy of feeling free in the pursuit of your happiness.”
