Tech mogul Elon Musk has hinted that he is planning to fire Twitter’s “censorship chief,” who earns $17 million per year at the company.
Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde is seen as the leading advocate for censoring conservatives at the social media giant.
Gadde, who earned $17M last year as Twitter’s top legal counsel, has been put on notice that she is among the highly paid executives who stand to lose their job once Musk completes his takeover of the company.
Musk is reportedly planning to slash jobs and reduce executive pay as part of his plan to shake up Twitter.
After disclosing plans to acquire the company earlier this month, Musk expressed “no confidence” in Twitter’s current management — which doesn’t bode well for their future once he takes the helm later this year.
The 48-year-old Gadde, who played a key role in banning President Donald Trump from the platform, reportedly broke down in tears when addressing colleagues about the future of Twitter.
“Three people familiar with the meeting,” told Politico that Gadde became emotional and cried at times during the meeting.
She has become a lightning rod for controversy in recent days due in no small part to Musk himself, who tweeted a meme that painted her as oblivious to a “liberal bias” at Twitter.
The meme draws on an appearance by Gadde and her then-boss, former CEO Jack Dorsey, on Joe Rogan’s podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” in 2019.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
During that appearance, conservative journalist Tim Pool confronted both Dorsey and Gadde about instances in which right-wing voices were banned from Twitter.
Pool asked, “So your platform restricts speech?”
“Our platform promotes speech unless people violate our rules,” Gadde replied.
“In a specific direction,” he said.
“In any direction,” she insisted.
“It’s about a pattern and practice of violating our rules.”
Pool stopped the ridiculousness, saying: “You have a pattern and practice of banning only one faction of people.”
He cited a report from media outlet Quillette.
Out of 22 high-profile bannings from 2015, Quillette “found that 21 of them were only on one side of the cultural debate.”
“But I don’t look at the political spectrum of people when I’m looking at their tweets,” she protested.
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The Musk tweet, as well as a critical tweet by journalist Saagar Enjeti, who called Gadde Twitter’s “top censorship advocate” who “censored the Hunter Biden laptop story,” prompted pro-Musk Twitter users to criticize her.
Musk also implicitly criticized Gadde by calling Twitter’s decision to block reports on Hunter Biden’s laptop “obviously incredibly inappropriate.”
In Exhibit B of Musk’s April 13 Schedule 13D filing with the SEC, he stated: “If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
Sources told Bloomberg last week that Musk “featured job cuts” in his pitches to potential lenders for the deal.
Bloomberg reported that “Musk told bankers that he would be focused on the social-media company’s bottom line and floated the idea of cutting both costs and jobs, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Additionally, on Friday, Reuters reported “three people familiar with the matter” said Musk told bankers he intended to reduce executive salaries as part of his cost-cutting plans.
