San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection has launched an investigation into Twitter, following a lawsuit filed by six former employees against co-owner Elon Musk’s leadership team. The lawsuit filed in May, accused Musk and Twitter of fraud, contract violations, and a breach of labour laws, including failure to pay severance. The former employees also claimed that Musk had converted some office space into bedrooms, with plans to create the so-called “Twitter hotel” to lodge workers who worked late to transform the social media platform. The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection ordered Twitter to correctly designate the bedrooms as sleeping areas following the conversion.
The lawsuit also revealed that Joseph Killian, a former employee who was Twitter’s global head of construction design, had quit after raising concerns with Twitter’s leadership team about the dangers posed by fitting locks that were in violation of California’s building codes. He argued that the locks risked lives in the event of a fire and could jeopardize San Francisco’s strict planning laws.
The investigation is not the first time San Francisco has clashed with Musk, who bought Twitter for $44bn in 2021. In December, the city launched its first investigation into the company after beds were discovered in the conference rooms, giving a two-week deadline to Twitter’s construction contractor to submit a corrected building use permit if it planned to keep using the office space as bedrooms.
Musk, who co-founded PayPal and Tesla, and runs SpaceX, had announced at a recent TED conference that he plans to buy Twitter and to rid the platform of spam and to abide by the “laws of the country” it operates in while remaining an “inclusive arena for free speech”. He sees the acquisition as a way to make Twitter a better platform by creating a “sort of collective superintelligence” through an improved version of the social media site.
His $43bn bid for the site is his best and final offer, according to an SEC filing. However, the offer has been met with skepticism, as running the platform as a private company will be no easy task, and Musk has yet to offer a long-term business plan for the site. It remains to be seen whether Twitter’s board will agree to his offer.
Musk is no stranger to controversies and clashes with regulators, given his legacy of turbulent and, at times, legally-challenged achievements. His numerous ventures range from electric car manufacturing to brain implant development via Neuralink and space exploration via SpaceX. Tesla, of which Musk served as CEO after becoming its largest shareholder, is now valued at over $1 trillion. SpaceX, which aims to make space travel faster and cheaper, became the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station. However, his brain implant startup Neuralink has faced criticism for making promises that may be hard to keep and attracted controversy over animal testing. Likewise, his Boring Company, which is pursuing a hyperloop project connecting major US cities, has raised $675m in a recent funding round.
Twitter’s acquisition by Musk would certainly signal an important move in his ambitious bid to expand his technological empire further. Coupled with the allegations of workers being pressured to convert the social media giant’s headquarters into a “Twitter hotel,” it raises important questions on the conduct of the company and what Musk’s intentions could be.
The San Francisco investigation into Twitter’s alleged rule-breaking will likely continue to unfold, and with the outcome of Musk’s Twitter bid, the company’s future remains uncertain yet intriguing.
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