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Elon Musk, who has promised to turn Twitter into a free speech free-for-all if he ever actually buys the thing, is clearly not a fan of open letters.

I can understand that – open letters like the 505th ‘Dear Mr Ramaphosa’ are just a waste of everyone’s time. Then again, if you want to champion yourself as the free speech guy, it’s bound to grab headlines when your company sacks employees who write an open letter critical of your leadership.

Musk’s behaviour was described by the now-former employees as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us” in the letter.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell described it as “overreaching activism”.

The Verge below:

Said the letter writers: “As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”

“SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand”.

The letter was first shared last Wednesday in an internal SpaceX Microsoft Teams channel with around 2 600 employees.

It goes on to say:

SpaceX should “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior”; the company should “hold all leadership equally accountable” for bad behavior; and SpaceX needs to “clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s ‘no-asshole’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies and enforce them consistently.”

In less than a day, more than 400 employees signed the letter to express their agreement with what was said. Others were said to have reached out privately to show support for the letter but feared publicly doing so.

32 hours after being posted, the letter was removed and a number of the letter’s drafters were fired.

This was confirmed in an email sent by Shotwell:

In the email, Shotwell said SpaceX had “terminated a number of employees involved” in crafting the letter. “The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views,” wrote Shotwell.

Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images

“We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism.”

Plans to distribute physical copies of the letter around SpaceX headquarters were dropped once news of the firings began to spread.

One of the people who had a hand in drafting the letter called Shotwell’s email “tone deaf” and said the open letter was written over a month-long period which involved soliciting feedback from employees.

It’s definitely not a good look when SpaceX is alleged to have paid a flight attendant $250 000 in 2018 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Musk.

A flight attendant who worked as a member of the cabin crew on a contract basis for SpaceX’s corporate jet fleet claims Musk exposed his erect penis to her and rubbed her leg without consent. He then offered to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.

You can read the open letter in full here.

[source:verge]