Elon Musk, the potential new owner of Twitter, spoke for the first time with the company’s employees today in a question and answer session. The meeting was supposed to be an opportunity for him to allay employee concerns after the Tesla CEO publicly criticized the company, its leadership and the number of spam bots on the platform over the past few weeks. But Musk’s responses on some key issues such as layoffs, content moderation, and remote work were vague. They probably did little to satisfy employees concerned about Elon’s leadership, according to several staff members who spoke with Recode after the meeting and Slack’s internal conversations seen by Recode.
“I love Twitter,” Musk said at the start of the meeting, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Recode. Musk, who dialed about 10 minutes late on the video conference, apparently from his cell phone, added: “Some people use their hair to express themselves, I use Twitter. I think it’s the best forum to communicate. Get to know a lot of people at once and get that message across to people. “
At the meeting, Musk seemed to withdraw from a more absolutist stance toward “freedom of speech” on the platform. He said that while people should have the right to free speech, they don’t necessarily have “freedom of speech,” which means Twitter shouldn’t expand on ideas like Holocaust denial to platform. While his response to this topic was more nuanced than some of his previous statements, it seems unlikely that he will fully answer employee questions about how Musk will exactly change the company’s approach to moderating hate speech. violent.
“There’s freedom of speech or freedom of scope,” Musk said. “And freedom of speech is one thing, because, like now, anyone could walk into the center of Times Square right now and say whatever they want, they could just walk into the middle of Times Square and deny the Holocaust, okay? “You can’t stop them, they’ll just do it. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it, you have to promote it to millions of people.”
At the 45-minute meeting, Musk did not go into too much detail about his tactical plans as a Twitter owner, giving uncompromising answers about whether he plans to lay off staff or force employees to work remotely in the office.
Twitter CMO Leslie Berland asked Musk selected questions that employees had sent in the days leading up to the meeting, many of which were critical or pressured to learn more about their plans to run the company. When asked how he thought about the layoffs on Twitter, Musk answered vaguely.
“The company needs to be healthy. Right now, the costs outweigh the revenue. So it’s not a fantastic situation,” Musk said. “And so there should be some streamlining of staffing and spending so that revenue is greater than cost. Otherwise, Twitter just isn’t viable.”
“Anyone who is obviously a major contributor should have nothing to worry about,” Musk said. Similarly, he said that if an employee is “exceptional”, distance work is fine, but that “the bias is very much towards work in person”.
Since first submitting its $ 44 billion bid to buy Twitter in April, Musk has created a flurry of uncertainty about the deal, and at one point tweeted that it was “pending.” of his concern about the prevalence of spam bots on the platform. The move raised questions about whether Musk was trying to renegotiate the deal at a lower price or whether he was trying to withdraw altogether.
While some employees are excited about Musk’s arrival and hope it can help the company increase its size and profitability, the volatility surrounding the deal and Musk’s unclear concept of free speech have left many Twitter employees worried about how they plan to manage the platform once it’s over. in charge.
“He is showing dangerous ignorance about technical, political and operational issues,” said a Twitter employee after the meeting, who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisals. “The problem is that this shortfall could negatively affect everyone. This is not just about employees. Employees care about the impact of their product on the world. “
Musk, however, seemed confident in his ability to run Twitter. When asked what he understands and what he needs to learn about the company, Musk said he gets Twitter because he’s a superuser (Musk is one of the most followed accounts on the platform with 98.3 million followers).
“I will definitely have a good understanding of the product because I use Twitter almost every day,” Musk said. “What I understand least is, you know, like this kind of bot spam or multi-user account; basically, anything that affects the numbers of monetizable daily users is probably my main concern.”
Musk agreed to come to another question and answer with Twitter employees if there were any further questions.
