‘Twitter doesn’t believe in free speech…’: secret recording reveals

WASHINGTON: Twitter does not believe in free speech and people working at the company hate ‘hated’ Elon Musk’s USD 44 billion bid to take control of the company, said a man, who is being described as a senior engineer with the social media giant.

An American far-right activist group Project Veritas released a video purportedly showing a senior Twitter engineer Siru Murugesan admitting that the company has a strong left-wing bias, and that right-wingers were openly censored.

Murugesan was caught on camera saying that the company culture at Twitter is extremely far left, and said his colleagues ‘hate, hate, hate’ the proposed takeover by the Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

According to Murugesan, Twitter’s office politics was so left-leaning that the people working at the micro-blogging site have changed their original views to adjust to the prevailing atmosphere.

Twitter recently agreed to an acquisition by Tesla CEO in a deal worth USD 44 billion, although it is still subject to shareholder approval. However, Elon Musk declared that the USD 44 billion takeover bid of the micro-blogging site is on hold.

Musk himself has frequently complained about a left-wing bias on Twitter. He had said Twitter’s decision to ban former US President Donald Trump was a mistake and he would reverse it if his acquisition of the social media company is successful.

On the question of how his co-workers responded to the news of Musk’s buyout, Murugesan replied: “They’re like, this would be my last day if this happens.”

Murugesan said ‘a lot has changed’ since Musk began the takeover process in April and employees were worried for their jobs, as his companies run differently in contrast to Twitter’s ‘socialist’ workplace.

“He’s a capitalist and we weren’t really operating as capitalists, more like very socialist. Like we’re all commie as f***.”

Murugesan said the company’s operating procedures were extremely lax and “essentially like everyone gets to do whatever they want”.

Murugesan said that many staffers had openly tried to thwart the Musk takeover and a lot of employees revolted against it.

After Musk announced Twitter takeover, Murugesan said, “Employees warned of the ‘exodus’ of staff.”

“We did all we could, to like revolt against it,” he said.