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The billionaire, racked with paranoia, had convinced himself that not all of Twitter’s employees were real. His fears that Twitter couldn’t discern between its human and bot users had mutated into the notion that the company also couldn’t keep track of its employees. In meetings, he fretted about what he called “ghost employees” who might be collecting paychecks from the company without earning them. Before Twitter sent out any payments, it needed to conduct an audit to ensure all its employees were real. When Pacini introduced the idea on the noon call, several executives burst out laughing
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At Tesla and SpaceX, engineers often joked that the only laws they respected were those of physics and Musk’s own demands. At Twitter, the Blue team got a crash course. In the same meeting, Musk wanted to review the descriptions of Twitter Blue that would be used online and in the Apple App store. “It should be: ‘Rocket to the top of replies, mentions, search, and topics,’ ” he said, reading through some of that copy. “Remove the comma before ‘and.’ I find it troubling.” Crawford, a fan of the Oxford comma, tried to defend it. “I find the opposite with commas,” she said with a smile. Some in
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“If I’m looking at my Twitter feed right now, the worst shit I’m seeing is from legacy verified,” he said, looking for a response from the room. Grant sensed an opportunity. “What do you mean by worst?” he asked. “Like…the most annoying replies. Like replies I don’t want to see,” Musk replied, stumbling for a rationale. “Not from the new ones, but from the legacy douchebags.” Musk had been hoping to kneecap the reporters, celebrities, and news outlets that he found useless and annoying. “I fucking hate legacy verified,” Musk blurted out. Grant just stared at him.
