News that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk will take a seat on Twitter’s board of directors has some Twitter employees worried about the company’s chances of being able to moderate content, company officials told Reuters.
Within hours of the revelation this week that Musk had acquired enough shares to become Twitter’s top shareholder, conservative politicians began flooding social media with calls for Donald Trump’s return to the platform. Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after last year’s January 6 attack on the Capitol. The attack was promoted by supporters of the former US president.
“Now that @ElonMusk is Twitter’s biggest shareholder it’s time to lift political censorship. And bring back Trump!” wrote Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert on Monday.
While Twitter reiterated this week that its board of directors does not make policy decisions, four Twitter employees who spoke to Reuters said they were concerned about Musk’s ability to influence the company’s decisions about abusive users and harmful content.
The employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, point to Musk’s record of using Twitter to attack critics. In 2018, Musk accused a British diver helping to rescue children trapped in a cave in Thailand of being a pedophile. The billionaire ended up winning a defamation lawsuit brought by the diver against him in 2019.
“I find it hard to believe that (the board) has no influence,” said one official. “If that’s not the case, why would Elon want a seat on the council?”
But other employees Reuters spoke to said Musk’s involvement could help accelerate the pace of new feature and product launches, as well as provide a fresh perspective as an active Twitter user.
Representatives for Tesla and Musk declined to comment.
Twitter’s board of directors features prominently in discussions within the social network, more so than at other tech companies, an official said. That’s because, unlike Meta, where founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg controls the company through a two-class share structure, Twitter has only a single class of stock, making the company more vulnerable to activists like Musk Twitter teams often consider how to communicate a strategy or decision to the board, for example, the official said.
On Thursday (7), Musk posted a 2018 image of him smoking weed on Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast, with the text: “Twitter’s next board meeting will be lit.”
An official familiar with the company’s operations said there are no current plans to reinstate Trump’s account. A Twitter spokesperson said there are no plans to reverse any policy decisions.
But a veteran automotive analyst who has followed Musk’s operating style at Tesla said a change in that Twitter stance could only be a matter of time.
“If Donald Trump were really rich, he would have done the same thing, but he couldn’t afford it. So Elon is doing what Trump would want done,” said Sam Abuelsamid of Guidehouse Insights.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter gets Trump’s account back now that Elon owns nearly 10% of the company,” Abuelsamid said.
In the long run, employees said Musk’s involvement could change Twitter’s corporate culture, which they say currently values ​​diversity. Musk has come under fire for publishing memes that make fun of transgender people and efforts to fight Covid-19. He also came to compare some world leaders in these memes to Hitler.
Several Twitter employees are alarmed by the warm welcome given to Musk by Chief Executive Parag Agrawal and co-founder Jack Dorsey, and have already started looking for jobs at other companies.
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