At a company-wide meeting yesterday, Tesla employees asked Elon Musk what to do with the Twitter drama about his attempt to acquire the social media platform. The CEO says “ignore” him.
Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter and make it private doesn’t seem to have much to do with Tesla at first glance, but it does affect the company in some ways.
First, Musk sold shares of Tesla for billions of dollars to finance the acquisition, which had a negative impact on the shares. This, in turn, affects the morale of Tesla employees, as it affects stock options, which can be a significant part of their compensation.
At another level, there have been many controversies surrounding the acquisition that affect Tesla employees at the political level. Musk has made it clear that he wants to turn Twitter into something closer to a real platform for free speech.
This should not be political in itself, but the right believes that Twitter has a leftist bias, which has led the platform to ban or suppress several prominent conservative figures, despite some research discrediting the theory. Musk agreed with this theory and said he would allow some of these conservative figures back if the acquisition took place.
This position created a lot of drama, especially on the left side of the political spectrum, and also influenced Tesla employees. One of these employees asked Musk during a general meeting at Tesla yesterday “how the drama on Twitter affects people at Tesla and what you can do to protect them from it.”
The CEO thought about it for a second and said he ignored Twitter:
Well, you know. Ignore Twitter. Ignore. Ignore.
Musk then announced his acquisition of the social media company and is trying to turn it into a free speech platform. Interestingly, he mentioned during the field that he wants about 80% of Americans to be on the platform:
In the case of Twitter, it’s about how we can ensure that there is a digital city square that is as inclusive and trusted as possible, and where ideally, I don’t know, 80% of Americans are in it. They can express their opinion with reasonable freedom.
That would be a huge jump from approximately ~ 25% of adults in the United States who are reported to be using the platform.
Musk’s acquisition has not yet been put to a vote by shareholders, and Tesla’s CEO has threatened to terminate the deal if he is not provided with data showing what percentage of Twitter’s user base consists of bots.
Today, the company finally agreed to send the data to Musk. Now it’s a wait-and-see game to see what Musk thinks about the data and whether the acquisition will pass.
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