Musk faces ire for mocking fired Twitter employee

Twitter owner Elon Musk apologized on Tuesday after facing a wave of criticism from social media users over a viral public exchange with an employee who was unsure if he had been fired.

The now former employee, Haraldur Thorleifsson, appealed to Musk to clarify his professional situation. The result, however, was an argument in which Musk claimed that Thorleifsson “didn’t work” and tried to cast doubt on his disability.

What happened?

Haraldur Thorleifsson, who uses a wheelchair and goes by the handle “Halli” on Twitter, first noticed in late February that he couldn’t connect to the company’s systems.

When he asked the company’s HR department if he had been fired, Thorleifsson said he didn’t get a clear answer.

After nine days without access to the system, he turned to Twitter for answers and tagged Musk.

“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll reply to me here?” He wrote.

Musk responded, but began questioning Thorleifsson about his duties at Twitter and what his role was.

As the exchange went on and the discussion around it grew, Musk claimed that Thorleifsson “didn’t do any real work”.

He went on to say that the fired employee “claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing”, but criticized the man for “tweeting a storm”.

“Can’t say I have much respect for this,” Musk wrote.

‘It would have been good’ to know about the layoff, says former employee

Thorleifsson, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, said the information publicly tweeted by Musk was “confidential health information”.

“For a long time I thought my arms would stay strong. A doctor told me they would. But eventually they lost their strength. Which, I don’t mind saying, was hard to take,” he wrote.

“The reason I asked in public is because you (or anyone else on Twitter) haven’t responded to my private messages.”

“You had every right to dump me. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he added.

Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, joined Twitter in 2021 when the company acquired his startup Ueno.

He opted to be paid in wages for his company’s purchase price to pay taxes to Iceland’s social services – a move that won praise in the Icelandic media.

How did Musk respond to the criticism?

Musk’s comments drew the ire of users on the platform, many of whom questioned whether Musk’s comments about Thorleifsson’s disability were legal.

On Tuesday night, Musk apologized for his response.

“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of her situation. It was based on things I was told that were false or in some cases true but not meaningful,” he wrote.

Musk said he spoke with Thorleifsson on a video call several hours after the conversation.

Business tycoon Musk has been embroiled in a series of controversies since he acquired Twitter in October 2022. Shortly after his $44 billion leveraged buyout, he initiated multiple rounds of layoffs that led to more than two-thirds of the company being laid off. company team.

Musk has also sparked a backlash against planned changes at Twitter, such as the introduction of a charge for the blue tick that indicates active, notable and authentic accounts of public interest.

Musk has also raised eyebrows in the past because of his inflammatory posts on the platform.

Edited by: John Silk