Elon Musk Fires Twitter Employees After Ordering Their Tweets and Messages Scoured for Criticism: Report

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Several Twitter employees were fired after Elon Musk requested their tweets and work conversations to be scrutinized to detect criticism of him.

Musk unceremoniously fired one employee who contradicted him on the platform. As Twitter’s workforce has been slashed, its new owner is making personnel changes based on criticism directed at him, the New York Times reported on Monday.

According to the report, Musk asked confidantes to sift through the Twitter accounts and internal company messages of his employees to weed out those who do not share his vision for the company. Violators were terminated in the middle of the night:

Mr. Musk’s team was asked to comb through messages in Twitter’s internal chat platform and make a list of employees who were insubordinate, people briefed on the plan said. They also sorted through employees’ tweets, looking for criticism. Those deemed rule breakers received emails around 1:30 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, notifying them that they were fired, according to emails viewed by The Times.

Some were reportedly fired simply for publicly discussing the termination of the workers Musk let go, the Times said.

Musk officially took over at Twitter on Oct. 28, and the platform has seen some significant changes in the weeks since. Thousands of employees and contractors have been let go – most with little to no warning.

Last week, the platform was inundated with parody accounts for people, corporations, and historical figures after users took advantage of a Twitter Blue feature that would verify literally anyone willing to pay $7.99.

Twitter has since worked to fix the issue.