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Elon Musk is firing Twitter employees even when they criticize him in private

Elon Musk is firing Twitter employees even when they criticize him in private

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Musk confirmed he’d fired employees after they spoke out in Twitter and even the company’s private Slack. Platformer’s sources say 20 people have been fired for Slack posts so far.

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A photo illustration of Elon Musk making a thumbs-up gesture against a background of arrows pointing up.
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

After purging half of Twitter’s staff with a snap of his fingers and firing as many as 5,500 additional contract employees without so much as a goodbye, “free speech” maximalist Elon Musk is now additionally getting rid of anyone who dares criticize him, both on Twitter and even in the company’s private Slack.

Yesterday, Musk admitted to firing an engineer who attempted to correct him publicly on Twitter, and Eric Frohnhoefer wasn’t the last to go that way — Twitter software engineer Sasha Solomon also tweeted that she got “fired for shitposting” after a series of now-deleted tweets criticizing Musk, adding “kiss my ass elon.”

Others who complained in public also got the ax:

Those who largely just retweeted criticism of Musk are also being shown the door:

But many employees are reportingly being fired just for criticizing Musk in the company’s private Slack.

“My twitter account was protected at the time, so I can only assume this was for not showing 100% loyalty in slack,” wrote Nick Morgan, who had tweeted some criticism on his Twitter account as well. He posted a copy of his firing notice:

We can’t confirm that his Twitter account had previously been set to private, but he’s 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 — and Platformer’s Casey Newton has sources that say the number might be closer to 20.

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 isn’t saying anything about the firings, but Musk confirmed them in a backhanded tweet: “I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.”

I wonder if The Onion might have it right: