A Twitter Inc. employee trying to gain clarity as to whether he was fired was mocked by Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk who chatted openly about the worker’s disability status to other people on Twitter.
(Bloomberg) — A Twitter Inc. employee trying to gain clarity as to whether he was fired was mocked by Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk who chatted openly about the worker’s disability status to other people on Twitter.
Ueno founder Halli Thorleifsson tweeted at Musk on Tuesday, saying that his access to a work computer had been revoked, and he wasn’t able to receive an answer from human resources as to whether he still worked at the company. Musk replied by asking what kind of work he would have been doing, and the two had a public conversation about Thorleifsson’s workload at Twitter. In a later tweet, Thorleifsson said HR ultimately reached out to him and confirmed he was no longer a Twitter employee.
In a separate tweet sent after the confirmation, Musk discussed Thorleifsson’s disability with a third party. The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates that employers keep their employees’ disability status confidential.
“The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm,” Musk wrote. “Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.” He also suggested that Thorleifsson only tweeted at him for “a big payout.”
Thorleifsson later detailed the limitations of his muscular dystrophy with followers, adding that he was able to write threads on Twitter through his phone, given that it allows him to type with one finger. His limitation, he added, wasn’t a major issue in the pre-Elon era of Twitter.
“I was a senior director and my job was mostly to help teams move forward, give them strategic and tactical guidance,” he said. “But as I told HR (I’m assuming that’s the confidential health information you are sharing) I can’t work as a hands-on designer for the reasons outlined above.”
Such disclosures fall under the ADA, which was signed in 1990. The law requires companies with 15 or more workers to provide “reasonable accommodation” to employees so they can do their jobs to the best of their ability. Those accommodations can vary based on a person’s disability and needs.
Thorleifsson founded the creative agency Ueno bought by Twitter in 2021, and didn’t respond to questions posed via email by publication time. Twitter, which disbanded its communications team following Musk’s purchase, also couldn’t be reached for comment.
Musk has a long history of punching down. He famously called a British caver who helped rescue a trapped Thai soccer team a “pedo guy” in July 2018. The man, Vernon Unsworth, unsuccessfully sued Musk for defamation in Los Angeles.
In December, Musk publicly attacked Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former safety head. Musk posted excerpts of Roth’s doctoral dissertation that suggested the former Twitter executive was an advocate for child sexualization — a baseless trope that opened up Roth to online abuse and caused him to leave, and then sell, his home.
–With assistance from Dana Hull.
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