What you need to know
- Elon Musk attended a Twitter all-hands meeting to answer questions from staff on Thursday.
- A series of leaked Slack messages reveal a group of employees furious with some of the responses he gave.
- They include objections to Musk saying "All Lives Matter", and his description of Republican Mayra Flores as a "moderate candidate."
A series of leaked Slack messages from Twitter employees have revealed that some workers are furious about the answers Elon Musk gave at a Twitter all-hands meeting he attended on Thursday.
Speaking to all employees for the first time since he launched his takeover bid of the social media giant, Musk addressed a range of issues including layoffs, misinformation, remote work, and more. Key takeaways compiled by Business Insider revealed that Musk thinks layoffs are likely at the company, describing its financial situation as not great given the company spends more than it makes, but that any job cuts would be to help the company not "pure disruption."
HE told workers that he really liked Twitter, and wants to increase its user base to 1 billion people, while increasing opportunities for advertising and making payments on the platform, he describe news, entertainment, and payments as three critical areas.
He also said his biggest concern about the company was bots but admitted he didn't fully understand the issue at the moment. On remote work, he said that people would have to be exceptional in order to work remotely.
One anonymous employee writing for the same outlet praised Musk for trying to motivate colleagues, and said "it seemed like some of my colleagues were experiencing "Musk-derangement syndrome" again."
However, a series of damning leaked messages from Twitter's #oneteamqs Slack channel reveals a slew of employees absolutely furious at some of the responses given by Musk during the meeting.
In a video shared by Project Veritas allegedly drawn from within Twitter's Slack, employees bemoaned Musk, clearly in response to several hot-button topics including who he votes for politically. In response to a question about how his political views would affect the company Musk said he was "a moderate" who had voted Democrat in the past but had recently voted for republican candidate Mayra Flores, who has publicly referenced QAnon slogans. Employees were quick to pick up on this and his support for Ron DeSantis, one railed in all caps "I'm sorry, what world am I living in?"
Multiple employees also objected in response to Musk's apparent use of the phrase 'All Lives Matter' while another quipped "Ya'll told me this man was a genius."
The stream of messages closed with a message from one employee who said: "a hearty (middle finger emoji) to the board for selling the company to someone who cannot get through a single coherent sentence about this platform and who thinks a QAnon candidate is a 'moderate candidate'."
Ironically, because of Musk's prominent presence on Twitter he has seen and responded to the video, simply replying "interesting."
His embattled takeover of Twitter continues after Musk announced his intention to buy the platform earlier this year. As noted in the QnA, the biggest issue at hand in the takeover is Twitter's reckoning of how many bots and spam accounts are active on the platform, which impacts the value of advertising and could seriously dent the overall value of the platform.
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