The US billionaire vowed to foot legal bills of every employee “unfairly treated” over their tweets
FILE PHOTO © AP / Noah Berger
The billionaire owner of X, formerly known at Twitter, has offered legal help to users unfairly fired, canceled or otherwise mistreated by their employers over the posts they had shared or liked on his social media.
“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday evening. “No limit. Please let us know.”
Musk, who has championed himself as a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” was forced to follow through on his promise to acquire the company for around $44 billion last October.
Since then, he fired around three quarters of Twitter’s staff and introduced a controversial paid subscription model in a bid to make the company profitable. He also rolled back many of the platform’s restrictive speech policies and released troves of documents detailing its collaboration under previous management with the US government and pro-censorship NGOs to stifle anti-establishment content.
Critics accused Musk of turning the platform into a haven for bigotry and hate speech for loosening its censorship policies. However, the billionaire has struggled to convince some conservative Twitter users of the sincerity of his free speech absolutism since hiring NBCUniversal ad maven and World Economic Forum member Linda Yaccarino as the platform’s new CEO in June. This comes despite his taking a gratuitous swipe at liberal bogeyman and fellow billionaire George Soros and hosting Republican presidential candidate and anti-woke crusader Ron DeSantis’ announcement of entry into the 2024 race.
Recently rebranded as X, Twitter has complied with 80% of all government takedown requests in the first six months since Musk took over as CEO, a significant increase from the 50% rate that characterized the pre-Musk era.
