Twitter’s Top Lawyer Vijaya Gadde, Key Player In Trump Ban, Reportedly Cried Over Musk Acquisition

A top lawyer at Twitter who played a major role in banning former President Donald Trump and influenced content moderation decisions at the company reportedly cried during a virtual meeting with the legal and policy teams. The meeting was reportedly held shortly after SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased the company for $44 billion Monday.

Politico reported quoting three unnamed sources familiar with the meeting that Vijaya Gadde cried as she expressed concerns about changes that will be implemented on Twitter now that it is under Musk’s leadership. Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy said Gadde, who leads Twitter’s policy and safety team, was emotional while talking about her team’s influence and impact on the social media platform.

The sources told Politico that Gadde took time to reassure her team and encouraged them to keep doing well at the company. She also reportedly told her team that she took pride in the work they’re contributed to the company over the years.

Gadde and her policy and legal team have done significant work in ensuring that Twitter’s online speech rules are followed. The team established rules against hate speech, political advertising and disinformation. She also played a major role in pushing for Trump’s permanent suspension from the platform following the Capitol Hill riot last year that claimed five lives.

Gadde was also at the center of Twitter's fight with the government in India, its third-largest usage market and second-largest internet market in the world. She said at the time that Twitter had declined the number of orders by the Indian government that it disagreed with.

The Indian government had asked why Twitter, which "chose to take suo-moto action against those users who it considered as perpetrators of violence" during the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill, refused to take similar prompt action to block content that sought to invite violence following the "unlawful incidents on Red Fort in Delhi" just days later, on Jan. 26.

During the fracas, Twitter temporarily blocked the account of Ravi Shankar Prasad, the then minister for information technology in India, over alleged Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations, and issued statements about freedom of speech, infuriating New Delhi.

Twitter finally backed down after the Delhi High Court ruled it was in "total non-compliance" with India's information technology rules and gave it a "last opportunity" to show compliance.

Meanwhile, Musk responded to “Breaking Points” podcast co-host Saagar Enjeti regarding the latter’s post that stated Gadde “censored the Hunter-Biden laptop story.” Musk tweeted in response that “suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”

The tweets were related to Twitter’s decision in 2020 to block a story by the New York Post that revealed alleged details about Hunter Biden’s laptop data.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that according to a new securities filing related to Musk’s Twitter takeover, the Neuralink founder still has to be careful of what he tweets in relation to the deal. The filing noted that the “equity investor shall be permitted to issue tweets about the merger or the transactions contemplated hereby so long as such tweets do not disparage the company or any of its representatives.”

It is unclear how the legal and policy team will be run moving forward but Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal told employees Monday that there were no layoffs planned just yet.