Elon Musk now goes after Vijaya Gadde, Twitter trolls attack her with curry and India insults 

Just a day after getting into an agreement to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk publicly attacked Twitter’s policy and legal head Vijaya Gadde. In a tweet Musk said that she was wrong in fighting off misinformation around a news story related to Hunter Biden, son of American President Joe Biden, and that Twitter shouldn’t have restricted a NYPost’s account and reach. With Musk taking a potshot at her, Gadde was facing abusive comments from Twitter trolls who made racist slurs at her India connection using words like “curry”.

Incidentally, Musk made his public attack on Gadde by replying to a tweet from a conservative commentator who was describing how distraught Gadde was when she learnt about the sale of Twitter.

It all started with a news story that described a distraught Gadde talking to her colleagues in a virtual office meeting. According to the news report, during the conversation Gadde was so distraught at Musk acquiring Twitter that she was crying. Politico, a news website in the US, reports that in the meeting Gadde was explaining how Twitter might change with Musk leading it and it was during these exchanges that she became emotional.

The story was quote tweeted by Saagar Enjeti, a conservative commentator. He said, “Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan’s podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the @elonmusk takeover.”

To this Musk replied, “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”

In his tweet, Musk was referring to NYPost, a conservative daily tabloid that published a news story about a controversial laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, son of then US Presidential candidate Joe Biden. The story at that time seemed dodgy. It still does. It also had the involvement of several people who were part of Donald Trump’s team and most mainstream media publications believed the story to be a part of a misinformation campaign aimed at hurting Biden’s chances in US polls.

Both Twitter and Facebook had restricted the story on its platform. Twitter also took limited action to restrict the NYPost Twitter account.

Vijaya Gadde, who is considered a confidante of founder and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, is one of the key Twitter employees. She is the legal head at the company and essentially weighs heavily on Twitter’s policies around what to allow on the website and what to restrict and block. A direct and public attack on her from the new owner of Twitter means that she might leave Twitter soon.

Trolls throw racist slurs at Gadde

Elon Musk is followed by a number of fawning fans on Twitter who believe his words to be almost like a gospel. With Musk attacking Gadde, a number of Twitter users too were tweeting against her and Gadde’s timeline is currently full of racial insults thrown at her, including words like curry and dirty Indian streets. Along with tagging Gadde, some of the abusers also used the opportunity to tag Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in the same tweet because he too has India connection.

Here are some of the abuses that she is receiving:

Musk’s attack on Gadde came just hours after he made his tweet defining free speech. He said, “By free speech, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”