Twitter boss Elon Musk has backtracked after publicly mocking an employee on the social media platform.
Twitter Worker Haraldur Thorleifsson was unsure if he had been fired by the company after being locked out of his work computer, along with 200 other people.
Unable to get a clear answer as to whether he was still employed, he scored Musk in his tweet.
“Your HR manager is unable to confirm if I’m an employee or not. You haven’t replied to my emails. Maybe if enough people retweet me, you’ll respond to me here?” he wrote.
A surreal Twitter exchange with Musk ensued, as the Twitter boss quizzed him about his job and questioned his disability and need for accommodation (Mr Thorleifsson has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair rolling).
Musk said Mr Thorleifsson “claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, but was simultaneously tweeting a storm”.
Mr Thorleifsson said he is able to write for an hour or two and tweet on his phone as he can type with one finger.
He also said that as Senior Director, his role was strategic and managerial, and that hosting hadn’t been an issue in “Twitter 1.0” (before Musk’s takeover).
Musk also tweeted that Mr Thorleifsson has an “active and prominent Twitter account and is rich” and that “the reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout”.
During the exchange, Mr Thorleifsson, nicknamed Halli, said he received an email telling him he was no longer employed.
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Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter began with massive layoffs
However, on Tuesday, Musk changed his mind.
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of her situation,” he tweeted.
“It was based on things I had been told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not significant.”
Musk hinted that Mr Thorleifsson might not leave the company after all, saying he was “planning to stay at Twitter”.
Mr Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, has around 151,000 Twitter followers.
He joined Twitter in 2021, when the company acquired his start-up Ueno.
