Tag: Twitter layoffs

With 300 Lawyers Watching Closely, Elon Musk Apologizes For Mocking Disabled Worker

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

Elon Musk loves trolling. Even more, Elon Musk loves giving absolute shit to the lazy do-nothings whom he laid off from Twitter because they were dead weight who weren’t willing to be hardcore. So when a laid-off Twitter employee in Iceland took to Twitter to confirm whether he’d been laid off or not (he’d been locked out of his company work systems with no explanation), Musk lit into him, publicly accusing him of malingering and maybe faking a disability, and mocking the guy for obviously trying to win sympathy and a bigger payout.

Oh dear. It turned out not to be some random codemonkey. The shitcanned worker, former Twitter senior director Haraldur Thorleifsson (known as Halli), replied with the details of his disability (he has muscular dystrophy and severe mobility limitations), and pointed out that he’d joined Twitter after the company’s previous management purchased his entire company, the digital branding company Ueno, in 2021.

Thorleifsson is also kind of a big deal in Iceland, as CNN reports. He

has been recognized by the United Nations and the president of Iceland for spearheading a charitable effort to build 1,000 wheelchair ramps around Reykjavik to increase the city’s accessibility.

When his company was acquired by Twitter, he chose to take the payment as wages, so he’d be taxed at a higher rate, as a way of “paying it forward” to Iceland’s social safety net.

Musk may have eventually been tapped on the shoulder by some expensive attorneys to inform him that berating a laid off employee and accusing him of faking his severe disability wasn’t a great look from an employment law perspective. Late Tuesday, Musk finally apologized to Thorleifsson and insisted it was all a big misunderstanding, and golly, maybe he’d like to keep working at Twitter? No harm, no foul, please don’t sue my pants off.

Thorleifsson’s initial request wasn’t particularly mean; he simply wanted some clarification:

Dear @elonmusk [waving hand emoji]

9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.

However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You’ve not answered my emails.

Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?

Musk’s first reply was skeptical right from the start, asking Thorleifsson to detail the work he’s been doing and scoffing at the projects Thorleifsson said he’d worked on. Musk topped that off with a video clip from Office Space to mock the very idea that Thorleifsson did anything worthwhile at all, haha!

God, why do these losers think they deserve anything from the Great Man?

Thorleifsson replied that well, sure, “you have every right to lay me off,” but a lotta guys woulda actually told people that had happened. He noted in a follow-up tweet that he’d received an email confirming he was no longer employed, and asking if he could please be paid his severance.

Musk, replying to someone else’s summary of the conversation, got snotty:

The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.

But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!

HAW HAW.

Thorleifsson ever so politely posted a long thread Tuesday with plenty of context on his disability and his work history. Quote-tweeting Musk’s accusation that maybe he wasn’t really that disabled, Thorleifsson wrote,

Hi again @elonmusk

I hope you are well.

I’m fine too. I’m thankful for your interest in my health.

But since you mentioned it, I wanted to give you more info.

I have muscular dystrophy. It has many effects on my body.

Let me tell you what they are:

He went on, in sufficient detail to make clear that he has a good life but that he also is very definitely disabled, and now needs help to even get in and out of bed or to use the toilet. He also outlined his business success, noting that

We worked for more or less every big tech company.

We grew fast and made money. I think that’s what you are referring to when you say independently wealthy?

That I independently made my money, as opposed to say, inherited an emerald mine.

He noted that when he sold his company to Twitter, he accepted an offer that was lower than might have been wise, because “like you I made a bet on Twitter having a lot more potential than it has had.” He also added,

I joined at a time when the company was growing fast. You kind of did the opposite.

There was a lot going on. The company had a fair amount of issues, but then again, most bigger companies do.

Or even small companies, like Twitter today.

This is where I would like to offer Mr. Thorleifsson a job at Wonkette, although it would be a big drop-off in income.

He went on to detail his time at Twitter, and how he kept working on everything his manager asked for, although HR never quite explained what his job description in the rapidly shrinking company was. He saved the coup de grace for the thread’s last few tweets:

And now finally to my fingers, which I know you have great concern for. Thank you for that btw.

I’ll tell you what I told them. I’m not able to do manual work (which in this case means typing or using a mouse) for extended periods of time without my hands starting to cramp.

I can however write for an hour or two at a time.

This wasn’t a problem in Twitter 1.0 since I was a senior director and my job was mostly to help teams move forward, give them strategic and tactical guidance.

But as I told HR (I’m assuming that’s the confidential health information you are sharing) I can’t work as a hands on designer for the reasons outlined above.

I’m typing this on my phone btw. It’s easier for because I only need to use one finger. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257

Gosh, we wonder which finger he’s giving Elon there.

He closed by asking again whether he would be paid what he’s owed, adding “I think you can afford it?”

As a postscript, Thorleifsson offered one more thought, referring to reports that Musk has become so paranoid that he is always accompanied by at least two bodyguards when he’s at Twitter HQ, including when he goes to the restroom:

Oh! I forgot to mention that I read you can’t go to the toilet on your own either @elonmusk

I’m sorry to hear about that. I know the feeling.

The only difference is I can’t do it because of a physical disability and you’re afraid someone you hurt will attack you while you poop.

And then, nothing for hours.

Musk eventually tweeted, late Tuesday, to say he was very very sorry and that he’d had a video call with Thorleifsson to clear everything up and everything’s fine now. Musk was just dealing with some inaccurate information — surely a first in the history of Twitter — and now everything’s fine. How are you?

Based on your comment, I just did a videocall with Halli to figure out what’s real vs what I was told. It’s a long story.

Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet.

BETTER TO TALK TO PEOPLE THAN TO COMMUNICATE VIA TWEET.

Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and sentient AI’s, we present Elon Musk’s eventual epitaph, on a future headstone that will be guarded so that no one may piss on it.

Musk followed that with,

I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful.

He is considering remaining at Twitter.

The news reports we’ve seen note that Thorleifsson hasn’t said what his own plans are. But on Twitter, he announced today that he’s releasing a music album. We get the feeling he may be done with Twitter anyway.

[AP / Mashable]

Please keep Wonkette typing at you with any fingers that may be relevant to the topic. We love you!



Source link

#Lawyers #Watching #Closely #Elon #Musk #Apologizes #Mocking #Disabled #Worker

Difficult times ahead for Twitter, survival at stake as key staff quits, says Musk- Technology News, Firstpost

Post By Science And Technology , , ,


The Associated PressNov 11, 2022 18:15:46 IST

Elon Musk believes with key staff leaving the platform owing to the massive changes that are being made to the corporate culture at Twitter, the future of Twitter may be at stake, so much so that they may have to file for bankruptcy within a year.

Elon Musk warned Twitter employees Thursday to brace for “difficult times ahead” that might end with the collapse of the social media platform if they can’t find new ways of making money.

Workers who survived last week’s mass layoffs are facing harsher work conditions and growing uncertainty about their ability to keep Twitter running safely as it continues to lose high-level leaders responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.

That includes Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust and safety — a previously little-known executive who became the public face of Twitter’s content moderation after Musk took over and who had been praised by Musk for defending Twitter’s ongoing efforts to fight harmful misinformation and hate speech. An executive confirmed Roth’s resignation to coworkers on an internal messaging board seen by The Associated Press.

The developments were part of another whirlwind day in Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform. It began with an email to employees from Musk on Wednesday night ordering workers to stop working from home and show up in the office Thursday morning. He called his first “all-hands” meeting Thursday afternoon. Before that, many were relying on the billionaire Tesla CEO’s public tweets for clues about Twitter’s future.

“Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message,” wrote Musk, before he described a dire economic climate for businesses like Twitter that rely almost entirely on advertising to make money.

“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” Musk said. “We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”

At the staff meeting, Musk said some “exceptional” employees could seek an exemption from his return-to-office order but that others who didn’t like it could quit, according to an employee at the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity out of a concern for job security.

The employee also said Musk appeared to downplay employee concerns about how a pared-back Twitter workforce was handling its obligations to maintain privacy and data security standards, saying as CEO of Tesla he knew how that worked.

Musk’s memo and staff meeting echoed a livestreamed conversation trying to assuage major advertisers Wednesday, his most expansive public comments about Twitter’s direction since he closed a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform late last month and dismissed its top executives. A number of well-known brands have paused advertising on Twitter.

Musk told employees the “priority over the past 10 days” was to develop and launch Twitter’s new subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check mark next to the name of paid members — the mark was previously only for verified accounts. Musk’s project has had a rocky rollout with an onslaught of newly bought fake accounts this week impersonating high-profile figures such as basketball star LeBron James and the drug company Eli Lilly to post false information or offensive jokes.

In a second email to employees, Musk said the “absolute top priority” over the coming days is to suspend “bots/trolls/spam” exploiting the verified accounts. But Twitter now employs far fewer people to help him do that.

An executive last week said Twitter was cutting roughly 50% of its workforce, which numbered 7,500 earlier this year.

Musk told employees in the email that “remote work is no longer allowed” and the road ahead is “arduous and will require intense work to succeed,” and that they will need to be in the office at least 40 hours per week.

Twitter’s ongoing exodus includes the company’s chief privacy officer, Damien Kieran, and chief information security officer Lea Kissner, who tweeted Thursday that “I’ve made the hard decision to leave Twitter.”

Roth’s resignation is a “huge loss” for Twitter’s reliability and integrity, said his former coworker and friend Emily Horne.

“He’s worked incredibly hard under very challenging circumstances, including being personally targeted by some of the most vicious trolls who were active on the platform,” said Horne, who oversaw global policy communications at Twitter until 2018. “He stayed through all of that because he believed so deeply in the work his team was doing to promote a public conversation and improve the health of that conversation.”

Cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos, a former Facebook security chief, tweeted Thursday that there is a “serious risk of a breach with drastically reduced staff” that could also put Twitter at odds with a 2011 order from the Federal Trade Commission that required it to address serious data security lapses.

“Twitter made huge strides towards a more rational internal security model and backsliding will put them in trouble with the FTC” and other regulators in the U.S. and Europe, Stamos said.

The FTC said in a statement Thursday that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” said the agency’s statement. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

The FTC would not say whether it was investigating Twitter for potential violations. If it were, it is empowered to demand documents and depose employees.

In an email to employees seen by the AP, Musk said “Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree.”

“Anything you read to the contrary is absolutely false. The same goes for any other government regulatory matters where Twitter operates,” Musk wrote.

Twitter paid a $150 million penalty in May for violating the 2011 consent order and its updated version established new procedures requiring the company to implement an enhanced privacy protection program as well as beefing up info security.

Those new procedures include an exhaustive list of disclosures Twitter must make to the FTC when introducing new products and services — particularly when they affect personal data collected on users.

Musk is fundamentally overhauling the platform’s offerings and it’s not known if he is telling the FTC about it. Twitter, which gutted its communications department, didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Musk has a history of tangling with regulators. “I do not respect the SEC,” Musk declared in a 2018 tweet.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently examined for possible tardiness his disclosures to the agency of his purchases of Twitter stock to amass a major stake. In 2018, Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in fines over Musk’s allegedly misleading tweets saying he’d secured the funding to take the electric car maker private for $420 a share. Musk has fought the SEC in court over compliance with the agreement.

The consequences for not meeting FTC’s requirements can be severe — such as when Facebook had to pay $5 billion for privacy violations.

“If Twitter so much as sneezes, it has to do a privacy review beforehand,” tweeted Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford University researcher who said she previously provided Twitter outside legal counsel. “There are periodic outside audits, and the FTC can monitor compliance.”





Source link