Posted on 11/23/2022 11:49:50 AM PST by Red Badger
The Washington Post is reporting that Elon Musk made several “woke” staff members “cry” when he started rolling out his free speech agenda at Twitter.
In a Tuesday tech report, the newspaper accuses Musk of undermining Twitter’s ability to “protect vulnerable communities.”
The article, written by reporters Cat Zakrzewski, Faiz Siddiqui, and Joseph Menn, argues that Musk imposed his will on the company by gutting the “Trust and Safety team.”
The team previously handled the censorship of Twitter users and deliberated to “define dangerous language.”
The piece, headlined “Musk’s ‘free speech’ agenda dismantles safety work at Twitter, insiders say,” suggests he did so callously.
The report mentions multiple times that Musk’s decisions made Twitter employees “cry.”
The story cited more than a dozen former and current Twitter employees frustrated with how Musk undid “years of careful work.”
At the top of the list of employees’ complaints was Musk’s decision to reinstate the Twitter accounts of President Donald Trump, satirical conservative site The Babylon Bee, and others that were deemed threats by the now-defunct Trust and Safety team.
The report added, “Massive layoffs and Musk’s demand that remaining employees pledge to work ‘hardcore’ hours have left one of the world’s most influential social media sites operating with a skeleton staff and experts predicting an eventual crash.
“Meanwhile, advertisers are fleeing.”
It was then claimed that Musk leveraged “culture-war issues” to make the company in his own image.
The piece said, “Musk has moved rapidly — at times erratically — to undermine a regime built over a decade to define dangerous language on the site and protect vulnerable communities, replacing it with his own more impulsive style of ad hoc decision-making.”
As the article continued, the reporters said they spoke to “more than a dozen current and former employees.”
Those employees reportedly claimed that Musk was able to impose his will on Twitter because he “fired or alienated Trust and Safety team leaders and reversed their decisions.”
Rather than repopulate the team, the piece claimed, “Musk is looking to automate much of the Trust and Safety team’s work to police content — eliminating some of the nuance from complicated decisions for a cheaper approach.”
The report implies that Twitter will make poorer moderation decisions going forward.
The Washington Post reported how, “On his first night as owner, Musk fired its leader of 11 years, former Trust and Safety head Vijaya Gadde.”
Gadde has previously been identified as Twitter’s “censorship chief” and was instrumental in banning Trump and blocking the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
While suggesting that Musk is insensitive, the Post’s report stated that within hours of assuming control of the site, “Gadde’s access to company email and other systems was cut off; she couldn’t even say a formal farewell.
“At a Halloween party at Twitter headquarters where workers had brought children dressed in costumes, some employees quietly left to go cry.”
Mentioning Musk’s decision to reinstate The Babylon Bee and renowned clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, The Post stated, “If the company restored the two accounts without a clear reason, it would undo years of careful work.”
It characterized Musk’s decision as a “sudden demand” that was “problematic.”
The piece also described “Black Thursday” – the day on which Musk laid off a big portion of the Trust and Safety team, writing, “As layoff notices went out — first to Asia and Europe, then the United States — a group of longtime Twitter executives huddled together in a conference room and cried.”
Thenmozhi Soundararajan, the executive director of an Indian rights group called Equality Labs, after seeing her emails to fired Twitter employers bounce back to her, told the paper, “It is such a dangerous time to have fired the moderators and this team.
“Twitter has been already in a state of failure, this is just the nail in the coffin.”
I flew in to visit a vendor and missed the CEO who generally came out to greet me and to assure me I could present any problem directly to him.
It turns out that on that morning he took the company station wagon to the airport to pick up the visitors who just bought the company out. They took his credit cards, the auto keys and left him at the airport. His stuff was pointed out to me in two or three or boxes stacked by the door.
That’s my experience with buy out transitions
Maybe we and the WaPo are reading this wrong.
What if these are tears of joy?.................
Yes, no notice.
That is usually the way.
No time for sabotage or theft of company assets.
One place I worked, they fired everyone that made more than a certain salary, and that included the janitorial staff.............
I hope it's not too late to turn the ship around. Glad Elon bought Twitter. It's a start.
The Ship of State is like and Aircraft Carrier.
It takes a long time to turn around...................................
In the overall scheme of things, $44 B is petty cash from the earnings of the Shanghai Tesla facilities
Back in the 30’s 40’s or,whenever it was, there was a campaign to rout out communists in our country, because communism was seen as a great evil. The campaign went too far, and innocent people suffered because of it, and so public sentiment sympathized with the targets, and the campaign backfired.
Now we have communists .iving right out inmthe open, flaunting their antiamerican trash for all to see. They no longer fear being investigated and blacklisted. So they turn their efforts to blacklisting those who oppose their communistic agenda, and we are living in a now fascist society where the left are engaged in a hostile takeover of this nation, and thye don’t even try to hide it or ther disdain for our nation anymore.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.