Angry Twitter employees are going to grill Elon Musk at a company town hall – Protocol

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and former CEO Jack Dorsey like Elon Musk. Twitter employees? Not so much.

The news that Tesla's leader would join Twitter's board did not sit well with employees, who have expressed concern that Musk's values seem to contradict the company's. Twitter now plans to host Musk at a town hall to (hopefully?) clear the air, according to company messages obtained by The Washington Post. The meeting is being dubbed an AMA, and the Post said it's not very common for the company to host one.

We say that Twitter is whats happening and what people are talking about right now," Agrawal wrote in an email to employees on Thursday. "Often, we [at] Twitter are whats happening and what people are talking about. That has certainly been the case this week ... Following our board announcement, many of you have had different types of questions about Elon Musk, and I want to welcome you to ask those questions to him.

Musk is at once one of Twitter's biggest posters and one of its biggest critics. A few weeks before news that he bought a big stake in Twitter went public, Musk tweeted that he was considering building his own social media platform. He's a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" who has called for an open-source algorithm and criticized Twitter's content moderation policies. Republican lawmakers still upset about former President Donald Trump's ban on the platform have taken a liking to Musk's tweets attacking Twitter and appointment to Twitter's board.

Employees are worried that Musk's seat on the board could set the company back on its progress toward eradicating hate speech and misinformation on the platform. "Free speech" has often been used as cover for harassment and misinformation and has led to far-right Twitter clones like Gab and Trump's own Truth Social. The employees are not alone, either. A digital ad agency leader said Musk's role may scare off brands from doing business on Twitter, and Reddit's former CEO expressed concern about the move.

We know that he has caused harm to workers, the trans community, women, and others with less power in the world, one employee said, according to messages seen by the Post. How are we going to reconcile this decision with our values? Does innovation trump humanity?

Quick question: If an employee tweeted some of the things Elon tweets, theyd likely be the subject of an HR investigation, another employee wrote on Slack. Are board members held to the same standard?

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Angry Twitter employees are going to grill Elon Musk at a company town hall - Protocol