Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images
After purging half of Twitterâs staff with a snap of his fingers and firing as many as 5,500 additional contract employees without so much as a goodbye, âfree speechâ maximalist Elon Musk is now additionally getting rid of anyone who dares criticize him, both on Twitter and even in the companyâs private Slack.
Yesterday, Musk admitted to firing an engineer who attempted to correct him publicly on Twitter, and Eric Frohnhoefer wasnât the last to go that way â Twitter software engineer Sasha Solomon also tweeted that she got âfired for shitpostingâ after a series of now-deleted tweets criticizing Musk, adding âkiss my ass elon.â
More Twitter employees are publicly criticizing Elon for making up stories about how Twitter works and getting fired.
Itâs becoming a wave of mass insubordination with Twitter engineers going out in a blaze of glory.
Every time I think this acquisition canât get worse, it does. pic.twitter.com/lKFs9Uk0xq
â Dare Obasanjo (@Carnage4Life) November 15, 2022
Others who complained in public also got the ax:
Looks like I just got fired for shitposting tooâď¸ https://t.co/G7MD2nzmMp
â nickrw (@nickrw) November 15, 2022
After 12 amazing years and 3 weeks of chaos, Iâm officially fired by Twitter.
Never expected I would have stayed this long, and never expected I would be this relieved to be gone.
I have a lot of stories to tell. But to my fellow (ex-)tweeps-#LoveWhereYouWorked pic.twitter.com/lVWbqpcSXO
â Yao Yue 岳峣 (@thinkingfish) November 15, 2022
Those who largely just retweeted criticism of Musk are also being shown the door:
Thatâs it for me. 8.5 years as an SRE at Twitter and Iâve just been fired. Iâm grateful to all my colleagues for getting to learn from and grow with you all. Iâm proud of the thing we built. Iâm sad to see whatâs happened to it. Looking forward to taking a break
â Billy Becker (@thenetmonkey) November 15, 2022
Welp thatâs it for me folks!
âYour recent behavior has violated company policy.â
If you ask me why exactly I really donât know
â Lananana (@svetlanathon) November 15, 2022
But many employees are reportingly being fired just for criticizing Musk in the companyâs private Slack.
âMy twitter account was protected at the time, so I can only assume this was for not showing 100% loyalty in slack,â wrote Nick Morgan, who had tweeted some criticism on his Twitter account as well. He posted a copy of his firing notice:
â Nick Morgan (parody) (@skilldrick) November 15, 2022
We canât confirm that his Twitter account had previously been set to private, but heâs not the only one eyeing Slack. Gergely Orosz tweeted that around 10 people have been fired for speaking up internally in a Slack watercooler channel â and Platformerâs Casey Newton has sources that say the number might be closer to 20.
For those saying that criticizing should be done in private: I have reports for a number of employees similarly terminated the past 24 hours who were criticizing Musk’s tweet on an internal Slack watercooler channel. Some criticized other eng leaders.
~10 people, as I hear.
â Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 15, 2022
Employees say it appears that around 20 people have been fired so far for their Slack posts.
â Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 15, 2022
Anonymous employees told Bloomberg that at least a dozen employees have been let go after criticizing Musk on various platforms.
Twitter, which no longer has a communications department, obviously isnât saying anything about the firings, but Musk confirmed them in a backhanded tweet: âI would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.â
I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022
I wonder if The Onion might have it right:
âThe top priority right now is creating a task force to figure out who is being mean to me.â https://t.co/gaUjRctaNC pic.twitter.com/pddL521iZS
â The Onion (@TheOnion) November 15, 2022