Twitter Directs Employees to ‘Refrain’ From Posting About Elon Musk’s Deal. Here’s Why

After Elon Musk decided to pull out from the $44 million Twitter deal, the microblogging site issued an internal memo asking its employees to not make any public comments on the same.

San Francisco: After Elon Musk officially tried to pull out of his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, the microblogging site’s general counsel has directed its employees to not publicly make any comments about the deal. In an internal memo to Twitter employees sent on Friday and obtained by The Verge, the company’s general counsel, Sean Edgett, told employees to “refrain from Tweeting, Slacking, or sharing any commentary about the merger”, and that management would be “very limited on what we can share”.

Recently few of the employees, reportedly, had tweeted some hilarious tweets about Musk pulling out from the deal.

“I know this is an uncertain time, and we appreciate your patience and ongoing commitment to the important work we have underway,” Edgett wrote. As per the website, the notice cites the fact that the merger is an ongoing legal matter.

The letter, as published and obtained by The Verge.

Team,

Today we received a notice of purported termination from Elon Musk, and the Twitter Board issued the following statement in response (see our Chairman Bret Taylor’s Tweet here):

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Given that this is an ongoing legal matter, you should refrain from Tweeting, Slacking, or sharing any commentary about the merger agreement. We will continue to share information when we are able, but please know we are going to be very limited on what we can share in the meantime.

I know this is an uncertain time, and we appreciate your patience and ongoing commitment to the important work we have underway.

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” Edgett said.

Even, Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor tweeted the same about the deal.

The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

— Bret Taylor (@btaylor) July 8, 2022

What is the deal?

In a surprising move, Musk’s legal team said in a US Securities and Exchange (SEC) filing that he is terminating the deal because Twitter was in “material breach” of their agreement and had made “false and misleading” statements during negotiations.

Meanwhile, Twitter, in response, said that it was going to sue Musk for terminating the $44 billion takeover deal.

Musk had put the deal on hold over the actual number of spammy/fake accounts and bots on the platform, and sought a reply from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. On Thursday, Twitter claimed it is suspending more than 1 million spam accounts a day.

In a bid to make Twitter a more democratic space and better facilitate freedom of speech, Musk started investing significantly in Twitter stocks which eventually lead to a deal to acquire the microblogging site completely. On finalizing the deal in April 2022, he tweeted, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means.”

In addition to this, another one of his central ideas in making the deal was to remove spambots on which he sought out data from the social media platform. Now, he cites the lack of such information as the deal-breaker.

Last month, Musk hinted that he might walk out if Twitter fails to provide data on spam and fake accounts.

(With inputs from IANS)