Elon Musk’s ongoing battle with the media since his $44 billion takeover of Twitter last year seems to have taken a foul turn.
The Twitter owner took to his platform on Sunday morning to share that all press inquiries sent to Twitter would receive an automated reply of a rather undignified emoji of poop.
Entrepreneur decided to test this theory by sending Twitter a message asking for confirmation if Musk was being serious or full of … well, you get it.
Related: ‘It’s a Long Story’: Elon Musk Publicly Apologizes to Disabled Employee After Squabble on Twitter
It turns out that Musk wasn’t bluffing.
Lovely.
Musk is also no fan of having a PR department. In 2020, he fired the entire PR department at Tesla, where he also serves as CEO, which made contacting with the electric car company impossible, and left journalists to scavenge for whatever information was released during shareholder and town hall meetings.
Related: Report: Steve Davis Will Replace Elon Musk As Twitter CEO
After Musk took over Twitter, the communications team was hit hard by layoffs and dissolved almost entirely. Several high-level team members like Brian Poliakoff (global head of corporate and customer communications) and Julie Steele (director and head of global internal communication) were axed last fall.
Since then, those who have contacted Twitter via the press@Twitter.com email address have received no response.
Musk’s latest poop emoji antics come after a public battle with a former employee, Haraldur “Halli” Þorleifsson, who claimed that he could not confirm with Twitter’s HR department whether or not he had been fired once he was locked out of Twitter’s internal computer system.
Dear @elonmusk
9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You’ve not answered my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023
Twitter’s latest layoffs chopped an estimated 200 employees (around 10% of remaining staff), bringing the workforce to less than 2,000.
