Elon Musk to Address Twitter Employees for First Time in a Virtual Town Hall

Elon Musk is set to address the concerns of Twitter employees and answer their questions at a company-wide meeting.

Musk's takeover efforts have been rocky, with concerns over bot accounts and free speech at the forefront of the negotiations.

(Photo: IANS/Twitter)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is set to address Twitter employees at their company-wide town hall meeting on Thursday, 16 June. This is the first time the billionaire will be directly interacting with Twitter staff following his $44 billion dollar deal to buy the platform.

He will be taking questions from the staff and addressing the issues that have been raised in the days since the takeover deal was struck.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal made the announcement of the town hall to employees on 13 June in a company-wide email. The meeting will be moderated by Twitter’s CMO Leslie Berland.

According to Insider, issues that will be raised during the meeting will include, the possibility of allowing Donald Trump back onto the platform, possible employee layoffs, and changes to the platform’s content moderation policies. These issues were hotly debated topics that followed Musk’s takeover deal.

These contentious ideas, among others, have become a source of concern for Twitter employees, many of whom fear that Musk will cause a loss of stability and financial issues for the company. Musk himself has had his own share of concerns with the takeover.

In May, Musk had put the deal on hold over concerns about spam and fake accounts; even threatening to call off the deal unless Twitter released data proving that less than 5 percent of their accounts were bots.

Musk vs Twitter – An Ideological Mismatch?

Twitter is set to become a privately owned company after the takeover. Musk has also been vocal about his plans to introduce changes such as making the content moderation algorithm open source and allowing users to edit Tweets after posting them.

He has been a vocal critic of the platform in the past, stating that there is too much unwarranted censorship on the platform. His vision for Twitter seemingly revolves around protecting free speech and increasing transparency.

Twitter staff have been understandably perturbed by the prospect of their company being taken over by Musk. Many feel like his vision does not align with the company’s culture and agenda. There have been talks of mass resignations and walkouts in protest of the transition.

A sting operation conducted in May with an alleged Twitter engineer captured him saying that Twitter has an inherent left-wing bias and does not actually support freedom of speech.

Though this investigation is not from the most credible of sources, it furthered the discussion around Twitter’s internal culture and how Musk’s acquisition would affect it.

There have also been rumours of mass layoffs, which has not helped the unrest among employees.

All these issues are set to be Addressed by Musk at the town hall meeting on 16 June. Parag Agrawal has been attempting to maintain morale among Twitter Employees and ensure the acquisition goes smoothly.

He made an announcement to employees in late April that there were no plans for layoffs at the time, however, the situation now is still uncertain. Despite his cooperation and support of Musk’s endeavour, it is also rumoured that Agrawal will be removed as the company’s CEO.

More light will be shed on the whole affair once Musk makes his first formal address to the employees of the social media giant.

(With inputs from IANS)