Gizmodo reached out to Twitter for confirmation on Wednesday morning but did not receive a response. After Musk’s layoffs, Twitter no longer has a communications department.
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In addition to cutting Twitter’s workforce in half since he took ownership of the company, Musk appears to be focused on weeding out anyone who criticizes or disagrees with him. On Tuesday, the Twitter owner fired employees who were shitposting about him in Slack with an email, which stated that their behavior had “violated company policy.”
After some employees shared that they had been fired on Twitter, Musk mocked them in a tweet.
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“I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere,” he wrote.
Tuesday wasn’t the only day Musk quashed rebellion, though. One day earlier, Musk fired Eric Frohnhoefer, a software engineer who had been at the company for more than eight years, with a tweet. Frohnhoefer had disagreed with Musk in public about why Twitter was running slow in some countries. Musk later deleted the tweet where he said Frohnhoefer was fired, even though it had already spread far and wide by then.
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Orosz, the newsletter author, said on Wednesday that software engineers at Twitter told him they were relieved to receive Musk’s midnight email giving them the choice to leave with pay.
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“Many wanted to leave and were interviewing so this makes it easy for them [to] leave,” Orosz tweeted. “For those on visas tied to employment, this won’t make it easier though.”