Days after Twitter accepted Elon Musk‘s offer to buy the social network for $54.20 per share in cash, reports have emerged suggesting that Musk might slash jobs and reduce the salaries of the company executives. Vijaya Gadde, who is company’s top advocate and known for censoring conservatives, is also on the verge of losing her job that pays her $17 million per year.
According to the reports, Musk has stated that he has no confidence in the current management of the company and that he has all together different plans for the social network. However, if Gadde is fired, she will receive a $12.5 million severance package that includes the company shares she has acquired as benefit over the period of time.
The equation between the new owner of the Twitter and the company executive stands disturbed as the later had claimed that Musk and many other Twitter critics were misogynists. Lara Cohen, Twitter’s global head of partners said this on April 27 after Musk targeted Vijaya Gadde for her decision to block the distribution of the New York Post report on Hunter Biden laptop controversy that erupted in the year 2020.
The Hunter Biden laptop controversy involved a laptop computer that was dropped off at a Delaware repair shop by an unidentified person in 2019 and never collected. It was then brought into public light by the New York Post three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election. The Post had reported that emails were found in a cache of data extracted from the hard drive of the laptop computer that appeared to belonged to Hunter Biden.
The company’s top female advocate had temporarily implemented measures on Twitter to prevent sharing of the Post’s article as the Hunter Biden laptop controversy was questioned by mainstream media outlets and analysts due to the alleged unknown chain of custody of the laptop and its contents. The intelligence officials had also suspected that the controversy might have been part of a disinformation campaign by Russian intelligence or its proxies.
Though the left and liberal cabal deemed the story fake, later it was proven true that the content of the laptop indeed belonged to Hunter Biden. Elon Musk on April 27 took a jibe at Gadde for censoring the Post’s story and said that the act was ‘incredibly inappropriate’. In a tweet, he wrote, “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”
Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
48-year-old Vijaya Gadde who reportedly cried while addressing colleagues about the future of Twitter was also criticised for showing off her ‘liberal bias’. Musk on Wednesday shared another tweet in which Gadde was seen appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ in 2019 with her then-boss, former CEO Jack Dorsey. Journalist Tim Pool had then interviewed the duo to expose the instances in which right-wing voices were banned from Twitter.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
Vijaya Gadde has been associated with Twitter since 2011. She oversees trust and safety and legal and public policy functions at the company. Gadde is often tasked with handling sensitive issues like dangerous speech and harassment on the platform. Reports suggest she also played a leading role in finalizing the deal between Twitter and Musk.
Her role at Twitter is considered to be one of the most controversial of all. It is her team’s work to decide how to moderate content on the platform. The two cases where she has faced the maximum criticism to date are the termination of ex-President Trump’s account and the blockade of distribution of the New York Post article about US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in 2020.
