SAN FRANCISCO (NewsNation) — Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Friday tweeted out new policies regarding hate speech on the platform.
“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
The policy, he noted, “applies to the individual tweet, not the whole account.”
Musk said several suspended accounts have been reinstated but a decision on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s account “has not yet been made.”
The ambiguous policy comes as Twitter continues to bleed engineers and other workers after Musk gave them a choice to pledge to “extremely hardcore” work or resign with severance pay.
While it’s not clear exactly how many of Twitter’s already-decimated staff took Musk up on his offer, the newest round of departures means the platform is continuing to lose workers just at it is gearing up for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, one of the busiest events on Twitter that can overwhelm its systems if things go haywire.
Hundreds of employees signaled they were leaving ahead of a Thursday deadline set by Musk, posting farewell messages, a salute emoji or other symbols familiar to Twitter workers on the company’s internal Slack messaging board, according to employees who still have access to the board. Dozens also took publicly to Twitter to announce they were signing off after the deadline.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is representing fired Twitter employees in a class-action lawsuit, said Musk is “out of control” and claimed the latest edicts show he doesn’t care about employees.
“Unfortunately, Musk has shown the worst side of himself, has treated the workers so unfairly, and he’s single-handedly destroying this company,” Liss-Riordan said Friday on “CUOMO.” “He’s really just out of control. In my nearly quarter-century representing workers, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Earlier in the week, some got so angry at Musk’s perceived recklessness that they took to Twitter to insult the Tesla and Space X CEO. “Kiss my ass, Elon,” one engineer said, adding lipstick marks. She had been fired.
Twitter leadership sent an unsigned email after Thursday’s deadline saying its offices would be closed and employee badge access disabled until Monday. No reason was given, according to two employees who got the email— one who took the severance, one still on payroll. They spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution.
A trusted phalanx of Tesla coders at his side as he ransacked a formerly convivial workspace, Musk didn’t appear bothered.
“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” he tweeted Thursday night. But it soon became clear some crucial programming teams had been thoroughly gutted.
Indicating how strapped he is for programmers, Musk sent all-hands emails Friday summoning “anyone who actually writes software” to his command perch on Twitter’s 10th floor at 2 p.m. — asking that they fly into San Francisco if not local, said the employee who quit Thursday but was still receiving company emails.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
