More From Musk On Twitter

In yesterday's headlines: Elon Musk Puts Twitter’s $17M-Per-Year ‘Censorship Chief’ on Notice

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.

Wikipedia confirms that Gadde is in fact Twitter's "policy, safety lead director and a chief legal officer and general counsel", which suggests she has a much more wide-ranging role than your typical SVP-legal affairs. Farther down, it notes

In 2018, Gadde joined Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for meetings in India where they talked with several Dalit activists about their experiences on Twitter; after the meeting, the activists gave Dorsey a sign reading "Smash Brahminical Patriarchy," which he was later photographed holding. The photograph attracted controversy, with some critics calling the sentiment discriminatory against Brahmins while others deemed it an appropriate response to caste- and gender-based oppression in India. Gadde responded to the social media furor with an apology in a series of tweets, "I'm very sorry for this. It's not reflective of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us - we should have been more thoughtful. Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all. We failed to do that here & we must do better to serve our customers in India."

She was one of the key officials at Twitter involved in decisions to suspend the account of former American President Donald Trump.

In other words, it looks as if for whatever reason, she got to tell Jack Dorsey what to think. Or in other words, she de facto ran the company, which however is unprofitable. No question Musk should put her on notice.

There's a subsidiary issue, which may have affected the timing of Musk's announcement, though I would also guess he'd been advised not to comment directly on the case: just last Saturday, April 30, Judge William Alsup ruled against Twitter's motion for summary dismissal in the case of Berenson v Twitter.

[Gadfly journalist Alex] Berenson, a vocal critic of the government’s pandemic response, sued Twitter after the company kicked him off the site for describing Covid vaccines as an advance therapeutic with risky side effects.

. . . Alsup focused his ruling on Berenson’s allegations that the company changed the ground rules on the content Twitter would allow on its platform, despite assurances from an executive that his posts weren’t up for censorship.

“Collectively, these actions plausibly qualify as a clear and unambiguous promise that Twitter would correctly apply its COVID-19 misinformation policy and try to give advance notice if it suspended plaintiff’s account,” Alsup wrote in his decision.

He also noted that “[a]ny ambiguities in a contract like Twitter’s terms of service are interpreted against the drafter, Twitter.”

I'm subscribed to Berenson's Substack (though not any sort of donor), and his position is that his attorneys have already pursued discovery on the case.

We have just sent Twitter a list of questions we would like them to answer, documents we would like them to produce, and admissions of fact we would like them to make. Here’s a sample:

Here's the situation for Twitter, which yet again is not profitable: Judge Alsup has allowed the case to proceed to trial, at least for now. The trial could be ten years away. But Berenson's attorneys are already making demands for discovery, which are first, expensive for Twitter to answer, and second, likely to damage Twitter's reputation further over that period of years, especially in an environment where corporate managers who play woke are coming under increasing attack.

Legal analysts say Twitter still has hope -- at least maybe a couple years down the road if Judge Alsup loses patience with Berenson or something:

This is an unusual ruling because, as Jess Miers and I documented, most account termination cases lose on the motion to dismiss. Two factors help explain this aberration. First, the backchannel communications between Berenson and Twitter execs are rare. (Compare King v. Facebook, where a rank-and-file employee’s sympathetic message didn’t help the plaintiff). And if those conversations occur, most trust & safety professionals never imply any promise in any conversation with any user. Second, Judge Alsup often gives plaintiffs chances on the motion to dismiss, only to drop the hammer on them later in the case when he feels like they overpromised and underdelivered. So it wouldn’t surprise me if Berenson loses this case on summary judgment with a derisive Judge Alsup opinion if Berenson can’t prove up Twitter’s promises or the reasonableness of his purported reliance on them.

But that's down the road, that is, if Twitter gets lucky, but meantime, there's all that discovery, and of course all those multimillions already going to Twitter's outside counsel, trial ten years away or no, which Twitter can ill afford.

And Elon Musk was presumably just briefed that Twitter's $17 million general counsel set the company up for this.