The prospect of Elon Musk’s wrangling control of Twitter Inc. elicited a wide range of reaction — most of it revulsion — among current and former employees of the company.
A handful who spoke with MarketWatch on the condition that they not be named said the mercurial Musk would decimate Twitter’s TWTR, +7.48% name, especially if he were to re-admit controversial figures jettisoned from the platform like former President Trump, should he be successful with his unsolicited bid.
Musk as the face of Twitter cheapens a brand carefully cultivated over years, groused one employee, who said, “The idea of a figure like Musk taking over is horrifying for the company’s reputation.”
Added another worker: “This all feels like a circus, a publicity stunt.”
Another simply summed up the hostile bid as a “s— show.”
The pushback among the rank and file started when Musk announced in April that he had acquired 9.1% of the company’s outstanding shares to become its largest shareholder, and has only intensified after his vow to transform Twitter into the world’s “platform for free speech” with a bare-bones hostile bid of $43 billion. (Twitter called an all-staff meeting late Thursday. Later that day, Musk said at the TED 2022 conference, “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”)
