At the direction of Elon Musk
Twitter responds to journalists with a poo emoji
3/20/2023 8:34 am
Tesla founder Elon Musk does not think much of the press, that is now well known. Since its takeover of Twitter, journalists have had a hard time connecting with the company. If a media representative nevertheless dares to make an inquiry, they will receive a clear answer in future.
In the future, all press inquiries to Twitter will be automatically answered with a poo emoji. This was announced by the owner of the short message service, Elon Musk, in a tweet. A press request from RTL to press@twitter.com confirmed the new setting – the broadcaster also received the said emoji in response.
Tesla founder Musk has long been known for his hostile attitude towards the press. The company has not answered any more inquiries from journalists since the multi-billionaire took it over last October, according to the US newspaper Forbes. He also completely dissolved the press department of his car company Tesla 2020. “Other companies spend money on advertising and manipulating public opinion, Tesla focuses on the product. I trust people,” Musk tweeted in April 2021. He said he declined requests from investors to reopen the press department further in the newspaper.
In public, the lack of exchange between the Twitter owner and the press often causes confusion. For example, Musk announced in February that Twitter would in future share its advertising revenue with the authors. There were many questions about the details, but hardly any answers. Since the company also did not issue a press release on the subject, it is still unclear how exactly the revenue sharing program works.
Musk is also not the first time with inappropriate statements and disrespectful tweets. In May 2022, for example, he responded with a poop emoji to former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal when he tweeted an attempt to increase confidence in the company’s estimate of how many Twitter accounts are so-called bots. Musk had previously stressed that he wanted to put the takeover of the group on hold because of the large number of fake accounts. Twitter itself estimated the number at less than five percent at the time. When Musk went to trial for the Twitter takeover back-and-forth, the company used his inappropriate tweet as evidence.
Musk recently behaved just as disrespectfully towards a former employee with a disability. For example, Haraldur Thorleifsson lost his job at Twitter in the course of a mass layoff, but only found out about this through an exchange of messages with the Twitter boss himself. When Thorleifsson was no longer able to log into his official accounts, he decided to contact Musk via tweet. “Maybe if enough people retweet, you’ll reply to me here?” he wrote.
The Twitter boss then questioned several of his employee’s roles before coming to his personal conclusion. “The reality is that this man (who is wealthy) hasn’t been doing any real work and is citing as an excuse he has a disability that prevents him from typing, all the while posting a storm of tweets.” After a video call with the ex-employee, Musk finally apologized for his allegation. It was a misunderstanding.
