Project Veritas on Tuesday night released a leaked audio (listen below) from an all-hands meeting at Twitter in the wake of the company’s purchase by Elon Musk.
In attendance at the meeting, which lasted around 45 minutes, were Bret Taylor, a Twitter board member, and Parag Agrawal, CEO of the company.
Twitter CMO Leslie Berland moderated the crying room and set the tone by asking what the board and Musk plan to do to about the “mass exodus of employees, considering the acquisition is by a person with questionable ethics.”
“The question of attrition,” Taylor said, “as Parag stated, one of the themes of today is continuity and ensuring that Parag and his leadership team continues to operate the business successfully on behalf of our users, on behalf of our customers, and that has obviously been a big topic of conversation at the board, and as I mentioned, an area that is important to Elon Musk as well, because the importance of Twitter as a service.”
Berland then asked, “Elon made it clear in public that a large part of the reason he bought the platform was because of our moderation policies and disagreements in how we deal with health [sic].”
“This puts Twitter Trust and Safety, as well as anybody who cares about health on the platform, in a difficult position,” she added.
For our VIP members: Musk’s Purchase of Twitter Is Only One Battle Won in a Larger War on Big Tech Censorship
Agrawal assured employees “the capabilities we’ve built around content moderation are fundamental to keeping Twitter safe and growing.” (If that’s the case—if they can find a way to con Musk into continuing the censorship business model—then all their little emotional breakdowns will have been for naught. )
Some additional excerpts from the group-therapy session meeting:
- Taylor “I also just want to acknowledge all the emotions of today. It is an emotional day. I want to acknowledge it.”
- Taylor: “By law, we are required to act in the best interest of our shareholders.”
- Taylor: “I can’t speak to why people leak [information to journalists], but people do. I can’t imagine how disruptive it was for all of you.”
- Parag Agrawal, Twitter CEO: “It’s important to acknowledge that all of you have many different feelings about what is happening.”
- Agrawal: “Many of you are concerned, some of you excited, many people here are waiting to understand how this goes and have an open mind.”
- Agrawal: “We’ll be finding a way to have Elon talk with all of you at the soonest possible opportunity.”
- Agrawal: “As you’ve heard from all of us, we don’t have all the answers.”
The poor dears are clearly struggling to cope with the news of their new social-media overlord. We’ve seen many of them threatening to quit and take their talents (!) elsewhere because the censorship gig is up. (Remember when all the Hollywood glitterati threatened to move to Canada if Donald Trump won? LOLOLOL!)
The “feelings” and “emotions” the executives acknowledged may have been quelled somewhat by Agrawal’s suggestion that the platform’s content moderation policies censorship will continue. Time will tell if Musk, who hasn’t yet taken control of the company, will be able to accomplish his ambitious list of goals for Twitter, but I think we can all agree that it can’t get much worse.