NLPC FLASHBACK: Clean-Up of Twitter Mess ‘Can’t Come Soon Enough’

UPDATE: Twitter Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde, considered the company’s primary censorship advocate, has been terminated by Elon Musk, in addition to CEO Parag Agrawal.

ORIGINAL POST: As multi-billionaire Elon Musk prepares to take over social media giant Twitter with promises to restore it as a free-speech platform, NLPC is remembering back to May of this year, when Corporate Integrity Project director Paul Chesser confronted executives and the board of directors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

[Pictured above: Twitter Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde]

At the time Musk had committed to buy the company and take it private, but had not yet tried to back out of the commitment, triggering a summer-long legal fight with the company, which wanted to force him to go through with the transaction. Weeks ago Musk relented and said he would move forward with the purchase.

In anticipation of the deal, Chesser criticized the corporate leaders over Twitter’s censorship practices, its lobbying priorities, and its financial losses for shareholders.

“Twitter wasted more than $1.7 million dollars in 2021 on advocacy lobbying, tripling what it spent six years earlier,” Chesser said in his remarks at the annual meeting. “As was exposed in an undercover video last week, Twitter is all about ideology, not free speech or profit.

“It’s no wonder so many Twitter employees are terrified that Elon Musk is buying the company and plans to turn their lying, progressive playground into a true free-speech platform. Cleaning up this mess can’t come soon enough.”

Read the text of NLPC’s shareholder resolution for Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting here.

Audio of Chesser’s delivered remarks in support of the resolution can be heard here, and a transcript is posted here.