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I think there's a much simpler and less juicy angle here: someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication, and it got removed. It's not surprising or

I think there's a much simpler and less juicy angle here: someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication, and it got removed. It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). This isn't "Twitter took down a disparaging post about Twitter", it's that they tried to stop the sharing of internal data. That being said, I don't disagree with the sentiment here in the sibling comments, this just isn't the steelman you're looking for. Best of luck to all remaining and recently parted Twitter folk.

actually_a_dog 4y ago
Oh, please. This "internal communication" was a bunch of blue hearts if the source is to be believed. What vital business information did that leak?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  It's much easier to have a rule that says "no public posting of internal communications" than "make a judgement call about whether an internal communication is vital or not". And with an upheaval going on at Twitter at the moment, nobody has the time to do the latter.
  - mathattack 4y ago
    This! Sometimes it’s not bad behavior, it’s “we just don’t have time for this sh!t.” Their HR and PR people are busy enough today. This isn’t a broad defense of Musk or Twitter. Just a comment that there doesn’t have to be a conspiracy around any corner.
    - jrumbut 4y ago
      Whether it is malicious or lazy, it shows where "free speech" ranks among their values. You have time for the things you really care about.
  - meheleventyone 4y ago
    But it's one thing to have that rule and punish people that leak and another to delete the leaks from your platform. Particularly if you profess to be pro-freedom of speech.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Leaking confidential information that you agreed to not leak is actionable as a contract violation. It's not a free speech issue.
      - meheleventyone 4y ago
        Of course it is. The contract is merely an agreement that you won't exercise your right. It's actionable in a civil court obviously. That however says nothing about your right to publish or that the content must be removed just that changing your mind might have repercussions.
        johnbellone 4y ago
        It isn't.
      - brookst 4y ago
        Are you suggesting that Twitter will similarly remove leaks of other companies' confidential information? Or is this just a special case where they will be free speech absolutists for everyone else but carefully curate what people are allowed to say about Twitter?
        mcrad 4y ago
        Twitter has a responsibility to its shareholders to protect its information. Why on earth are people jumping to the conclusion they would take on any similar responsibility for another company??
        ytpete 4y ago
  - maxbond 4y ago
    It seems far more likely removing this tweet was a response to the publicity it was getting, and was an effort to keep such dissent from being aired publicly (and thus a contradiction with Musk's stated principles and goals for this takeover), than that it was an ordinary moderation process that just happened to produce this outcome. The disruption you cite makes it far less likely that this is by the book, not more.
    - shawnz 4y ago
      What makes that explanation more likely than the other? Imagine there was no optics problem here, and it was just a highly publicized tweet of some internal comms with no PR consequences, it would still obviously need to be removed, right?
      - maxbond 4y ago
        That's not obvious to me, no. What I'd imagine is something like this being escalated, and that there would be reasonable cases to be made either way; that all internal information should be removed on principle, and that removing this tweet would harm the company without improving it's security posture. Twitter has historically been pretty reluctant to remove tweets, so I wouldn't be surprised if, under normal circumstances, they ended up keeping it up. But I wouldn't be surprised the other way either. But closing our eyes to the optics of the situation would be a mistake. These are not normal circumstances by a long shot. Given the turmoil Twitter is going through and the heavy handed approach the new management is employing, it seems likely to me that very little work is being done through the normal channels (who's to say there's even someone on the other side of that channel?), while much is being done by direct instruction from the new management.
    - politician 4y ago
      Isn't it more likely that organizational inertia is the culprit? Elon doesn't have the capability to change the day-to-day activities of 7,500 people following established policies and procedures in the amount of time that he's had the authority to do so. There are some coarse-grained things that he can do, like fire the the top execs. The idea that he can strategize and effect change at the fine-grained level of emergent phenomena like a picture of an internal comms channel is bonkers, conspiracy theory stuff. He's got to lay off half the company to begin to even get some kind of handle on all of the machinations going on outside of his team's review.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    There is no expedience exception for free speech. If they want to claim to value free speech, they need to actually do so, and that includes making that kind of judgement call.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    > "no public posting of internal communications" If you're really a free speech absolutist then this is a violation of that principle (not of a law, but of a principle). Workers should be able to freely talk about their condition with other workers, both internally and externally to the company. And as an absolutist, then the ability of individuals to freely speak without any chilling effects must take precedence over the companies concerns. The employees are effectively being "cancelled" and much more effectively than the people who most complain about that actually have their ability to speak being impaired.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Contracts are not laws. Contracts are an exchange of value. The civil court system enforces those contracts. For example, failing to pay your mortgage is not theft. It is a contract dispute. If you freely accept payment in exchange for not revealing certain secrets, that does not violate your free speech rights in any way.
      - lamontcg 4y ago
        > If you're really a free speech absolutist then this is a violation of that principle (not of a law, but of a principle). I literally wasn't talking about free speech rights.
- qaq 4y ago
  If it had anything that's PI under GDPR for example like names
- blueprint 4y ago
  the fact there's an internal communication system and what stack it's built on, for starters. I'd imagine employees were required to agree not to disclose that sort of info but I could be mistaken.
- mcrad 4y ago
  Why does it matter how vital the info it is? You "oh, please" people love to split hairs until you miss the overarching point.
isx726552 4y ago
> someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication, and it got removed Yeah, except Musk himself already did that: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824 I mean it’s his company he can do as he likes, but that was one of the first things he did after the buyout.
- viscanti 4y ago
  So did Elon look up every private message in company chat that had the word Elon in it? Then he's sharing some of the juicy ones on twitter?
  - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
    Now I'm genuinely curious if that constitutes a violation of GDPR (if Twitter was European) or CA's regulations (but Twitter is in CA, so maybe?)
    - adventured 4y ago
      Corporate communication is corporate property and fully accessible as it pertains to investigations of corporate wrong-doing. You can be certain Twitter's new legal team is looking at everything. The issue is whether the persons in question were communicating in the capacity of working for Twitter. It's very clear that they were, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if the clown show at Twitter did all manner of unethical things in conflicting with Musk.
      - viscanti 4y ago
        > Corporate communication is corporate property and fully accessible as it pertains to investigations of corporate wrong-doing. I guess it depends on your definition of corporate wrong-doing. If Elon just looked for all posts that include his name and he's firing everyone who was critical of him, that might stretch the definition for most people. That could even cross over into creepy big-brother like oversight and might dissuade people from working at Elon led companies (or maybe attracts people who want him searching their private messages for references to him).
padheyam 4y ago
Agree re: the less sinister explanation. I think only this particular tweet has been removed and the other tweets referred in the article are still up.
- ehfeng 4y ago
  Hanlon's razor except s/stupidity/corporate policy/g.
- smcl 4y ago
  This one's still up: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lupire 4y ago
    Is that Elon publicly accusing one of his own execs, who still works at Twiqtter, of fraud? I can only imagine how much collateral the banks demanded to fund Musk's boondoggle.
tshaddox 4y ago
> It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). It's not surprising or controversial, but it's in direct opposition to the idea that Twitter should allow all legal speech.
- blueprint 4y ago
  But is it what you're calling "legal" speech to disclose confidential info? If so, is it not just like they issued themselves a takedown notice and immediately executed on it?
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    Yes, it's legal. Twitter can always sue the person that tweeted it to have them remove it, let a judge decide.
    - throwaway858 4y ago
      This isn't how it works. If a website is hosting content that infringes on some NDA, then you are supposed to sue the website (and not the person who posted it to the website -- who are often anonymous and can't be directly sued). So Twitter would need to sue itself to demand that it take down the content. And the judge would reject the suit and scold Twitter for wasting the courts time, and tell Twitter that if it wants something removed from its own website then it should just remove it.
      - ytpete 4y ago
        I don't believe that's true. For copyrighted work, you can issue a takedown notice to the website - but copyright is federal law. NDAs are just private contracts. If you could sue someone for hosting/posting NDA content, then any leaks or whistleblower content could be hidden from the public just by suing the all the news websites. Generally I think you can only sue the person who violated the NDA, not anyone further down the chain who posted the material. The same is even true for classified info in most cases - the NY Times won a famous Supreme Court cases about that over publishing the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era. Same principle that protected publishing the Snowden leaks, etc.
tomhallett 4y ago
I think the question is - did the twitter employee delete their own tweet, regardless of their reasoning, or was the tweet deleted in the backend by a different twitter employee?
sjm 4y ago
Is Twitter going to remove all screenshots/leaks of any company's internal comms? If not, this is not a good look.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Any company can request that Twitter take down screenshots of their own internal communications. Both before and after Elon, I imagine Twitter would comply if the request went through the legal channels (i.e. lawyers sending letters).
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I can't remember the details now, but I remember a couple years back the New York Times published a big exposé on a screwup in the Middle East perpetuated by... The New York Times. My understanding is that this type of thing isn't even so uncommon.

actually_a_dog 4y ago

Oh, please. This "internal communication" was a bunch of blue hearts if the source is to be believed. What vital business information did that leak?

WalterBright 4y ago
It's much easier to have a rule that says "no public posting of internal communications" than "make a judgement call about whether an internal communication is vital or not". And with an upheaval going on at Twitter at the moment, nobody has the time to do the latter.
- mathattack 4y ago
  This! Sometimes it’s not bad behavior, it’s “we just don’t have time for this sh!t.” Their HR and PR people are busy enough today. This isn’t a broad defense of Musk or Twitter. Just a comment that there doesn’t have to be a conspiracy around any corner.
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    Whether it is malicious or lazy, it shows where "free speech" ranks among their values. You have time for the things you really care about.
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  But it's one thing to have that rule and punish people that leak and another to delete the leaks from your platform. Particularly if you profess to be pro-freedom of speech.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Leaking confidential information that you agreed to not leak is actionable as a contract violation. It's not a free speech issue.
    - meheleventyone 4y ago
      Of course it is. The contract is merely an agreement that you won't exercise your right. It's actionable in a civil court obviously. That however says nothing about your right to publish or that the content must be removed just that changing your mind might have repercussions.
      - johnbellone 4y ago
        It isn't.
    - brookst 4y ago
      Are you suggesting that Twitter will similarly remove leaks of other companies' confidential information? Or is this just a special case where they will be free speech absolutists for everyone else but carefully curate what people are allowed to say about Twitter?
      - mcrad 4y ago
        Twitter has a responsibility to its shareholders to protect its information. Why on earth are people jumping to the conclusion they would take on any similar responsibility for another company??
        ytpete 4y ago
- maxbond 4y ago
  It seems far more likely removing this tweet was a response to the publicity it was getting, and was an effort to keep such dissent from being aired publicly (and thus a contradiction with Musk's stated principles and goals for this takeover), than that it was an ordinary moderation process that just happened to produce this outcome. The disruption you cite makes it far less likely that this is by the book, not more.
  - shawnz 4y ago
    What makes that explanation more likely than the other? Imagine there was no optics problem here, and it was just a highly publicized tweet of some internal comms with no PR consequences, it would still obviously need to be removed, right?
    - maxbond 4y ago
      That's not obvious to me, no. What I'd imagine is something like this being escalated, and that there would be reasonable cases to be made either way; that all internal information should be removed on principle, and that removing this tweet would harm the company without improving it's security posture. Twitter has historically been pretty reluctant to remove tweets, so I wouldn't be surprised if, under normal circumstances, they ended up keeping it up. But I wouldn't be surprised the other way either. But closing our eyes to the optics of the situation would be a mistake. These are not normal circumstances by a long shot. Given the turmoil Twitter is going through and the heavy handed approach the new management is employing, it seems likely to me that very little work is being done through the normal channels (who's to say there's even someone on the other side of that channel?), while much is being done by direct instruction from the new management.
  - politician 4y ago
    Isn't it more likely that organizational inertia is the culprit? Elon doesn't have the capability to change the day-to-day activities of 7,500 people following established policies and procedures in the amount of time that he's had the authority to do so. There are some coarse-grained things that he can do, like fire the the top execs. The idea that he can strategize and effect change at the fine-grained level of emergent phenomena like a picture of an internal comms channel is bonkers, conspiracy theory stuff. He's got to lay off half the company to begin to even get some kind of handle on all of the machinations going on outside of his team's review.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  There is no expedience exception for free speech. If they want to claim to value free speech, they need to actually do so, and that includes making that kind of judgement call.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > "no public posting of internal communications" If you're really a free speech absolutist then this is a violation of that principle (not of a law, but of a principle). Workers should be able to freely talk about their condition with other workers, both internally and externally to the company. And as an absolutist, then the ability of individuals to freely speak without any chilling effects must take precedence over the companies concerns. The employees are effectively being "cancelled" and much more effectively than the people who most complain about that actually have their ability to speak being impaired.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Contracts are not laws. Contracts are an exchange of value. The civil court system enforces those contracts. For example, failing to pay your mortgage is not theft. It is a contract dispute. If you freely accept payment in exchange for not revealing certain secrets, that does not violate your free speech rights in any way.
    - lamontcg 4y ago
      > If you're really a free speech absolutist then this is a violation of that principle (not of a law, but of a principle). I literally wasn't talking about free speech rights.
qaq 4y ago
If it had anything that's PI under GDPR for example like names
blueprint 4y ago
the fact there's an internal communication system and what stack it's built on, for starters. I'd imagine employees were required to agree not to disclose that sort of info but I could be mistaken.
mcrad 4y ago
Why does it matter how vital the info it is? You "oh, please" people love to split hairs until you miss the overarching point.

isx726552 4y ago

> someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication, and it got removed Yeah, except Musk himself already did that: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824 I mean it’s his company he can do as he likes, but that was one of the first things he did after the buyout.

viscanti 4y ago
So did Elon look up every private message in company chat that had the word Elon in it? Then he's sharing some of the juicy ones on twitter?
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  Now I'm genuinely curious if that constitutes a violation of GDPR (if Twitter was European) or CA's regulations (but Twitter is in CA, so maybe?)
  - adventured 4y ago
    Corporate communication is corporate property and fully accessible as it pertains to investigations of corporate wrong-doing. You can be certain Twitter's new legal team is looking at everything. The issue is whether the persons in question were communicating in the capacity of working for Twitter. It's very clear that they were, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if the clown show at Twitter did all manner of unethical things in conflicting with Musk.
    - viscanti 4y ago
      > Corporate communication is corporate property and fully accessible as it pertains to investigations of corporate wrong-doing. I guess it depends on your definition of corporate wrong-doing. If Elon just looked for all posts that include his name and he's firing everyone who was critical of him, that might stretch the definition for most people. That could even cross over into creepy big-brother like oversight and might dissuade people from working at Elon led companies (or maybe attracts people who want him searching their private messages for references to him).

padheyam 4y ago

Agree re: the less sinister explanation. I think only this particular tweet has been removed and the other tweets referred in the article are still up.

ehfeng 4y ago
Hanlon's razor except s/stupidity/corporate policy/g.
smcl 4y ago
This one's still up: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lupire 4y ago
  Is that Elon publicly accusing one of his own execs, who still works at Twiqtter, of fraud? I can only imagine how much collateral the banks demanded to fund Musk's boondoggle.

tshaddox 4y ago

> It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). It's not surprising or controversial, but it's in direct opposition to the idea that Twitter should allow all legal speech.

blueprint 4y ago
But is it what you're calling "legal" speech to disclose confidential info? If so, is it not just like they issued themselves a takedown notice and immediately executed on it?
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Yes, it's legal. Twitter can always sue the person that tweeted it to have them remove it, let a judge decide.
  - throwaway858 4y ago
    This isn't how it works. If a website is hosting content that infringes on some NDA, then you are supposed to sue the website (and not the person who posted it to the website -- who are often anonymous and can't be directly sued). So Twitter would need to sue itself to demand that it take down the content. And the judge would reject the suit and scold Twitter for wasting the courts time, and tell Twitter that if it wants something removed from its own website then it should just remove it.
    - ytpete 4y ago
      I don't believe that's true. For copyrighted work, you can issue a takedown notice to the website - but copyright is federal law. NDAs are just private contracts. If you could sue someone for hosting/posting NDA content, then any leaks or whistleblower content could be hidden from the public just by suing the all the news websites. Generally I think you can only sue the person who violated the NDA, not anyone further down the chain who posted the material. The same is even true for classified info in most cases - the NY Times won a famous Supreme Court cases about that over publishing the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era. Same principle that protected publishing the Snowden leaks, etc.

tomhallett 4y ago

I think the question is - did the twitter employee delete their own tweet, regardless of their reasoning, or was the tweet deleted in the backend by a different twitter employee?

sjm 4y ago

Is Twitter going to remove all screenshots/leaks of any company's internal comms? If not, this is not a good look.

zdragnar 4y ago
Any company can request that Twitter take down screenshots of their own internal communications. Both before and after Elon, I imagine Twitter would comply if the request went through the legal channels (i.e. lawyers sending letters).

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

I can't remember the details now, but I remember a couple years back the New York Times published a big exposé on a screwup in the Middle East perpetuated by... The New York Times. My understanding is that this type of thing isn't even so uncommon.