How one former Twitter employee could beat Elon Musk in court
In her first interview, former engineer Yao Yue discusses being fired over a tweet — and her success in getting the NLRB to file its first formal complaint against X
On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board issued its first complaint against Elon Musk’s X Corp. The board accused X of illegally firing Yao Yue, a widely respected principal engineer at the company, for pushing back on Musk’s return-to-office policy, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Platformer.
Specifically, it accused X of violating a federal law that prevents employers from retaliating against workers for discussing their working conditions and organizing with colleagues.
In her first interview about the case, Yue told Platformer that she hoped the case would draw attention to the mistreatment of workers at the former Twitter — and discourage Musk from impulsively firing other employees in the future.
“People often choose to accept illegal actions taken by people with more resources and better legal representation because they have no choice,” Yue told me. “When I did have a choice, I wanted to hold him accountable for myself and for people in similar situations.”
The complaint represents one of the first legal wins to date for former Tweeps, who have collectively filed 2,000 arbitration claims against the company since Musk took it over nearly a year ago. While Yue’s case won’t go to trial until January, the complaint suggests that Musk at times acted illegally during his purge of three-quarters of Twitter’s workforce in the months after buying the company.
Yue joined Twitter in 2010 as employee number 300. One of her first jobs was building out Twitter’s distributed caching system, which helped serve tweets efficiently from Twitter’s data centers. Seven years later, after returning to Twitter from maternity leave, she was itching to take on a new challenge. She decided to create a new function called performance engineering. Over the next five years, she later wrote, the division undertook projects that saved the company more than $100 million. (“And we had fun,” she added.)
The beginning of the end for Yue came two weeks after Musk acquired Twitter. In one of his first addresses to the employee base, Musk declared the end of Twitter’s commitment to remote work, as Platformer reported at the time.
“Let me be crystal clear,” he said. “If people do not return to the office when they are able to return to the office, they cannot remain at the company. End of story… Basically, if you can show up in an office and you do not show up at the office, resignation accepted. End of story.”
The mandate had no immediate practical effect on Yue, who went into the office almost every day. But it didn’t sit right with her that people who’d moved away from the Bay Area on the promise that they could keep their jobs were expected to suddenly uproot their entire lives, and their families’ lives, and return.
Musk’s return-to-office mandate sparked disbelief and outrage in the company’s still vibrant Slack channels. In the #social-watercooler channel, messages from employees alternated between shock and gallows humor.
The messages, which have not previously been reported, included:
This meeting would be a top post on r/cringe
Sets platform on fire hhOw dO wE mAkE thE pRodUct bEtTeR
Given that everything is on fire, what are you going to do to keep everyone who;s left to stay in the burning building and help put it out instead of exiting orderly via the fire exit?
He’s trying for a second appearance on SNL with that joke
How is this real?
HOW ARE WE GOING TO COMPLY WITH THE FTC?
At least Big Brother had a plan
Can’t scam a site that is down
Or when we lose all existing revenue when all the advertisers leave
This can’t be real
I have just exclaimed “WHAT THE FUCK” so loudly that my cat has woken up. And she’s basically deaf.
Remember when we had moderators?
He still doesn’t know that our teams are distributed
He has no plan
BE HARDCORE
Just be hardcore
BE IN OFFICE, BE HARDCORE
Being hardcore in the office will TOTALLY offset attrition
RIP
Twitter was a good website
To this litany of messages, Yue added one: “Don’t resign, be fired. Seriously.” She posted a similar message publicly on Twitter.
“I actually worked from the office — it wasn’t about that,” Yue told me. “It was for my colleagues. I was acting in the spirit of the old company values, doing what I thought was right.”
At the time, one of Twitter’s core company values was “communicate fearlessly to build trust.” And while Musk styles himself as a fearless communicator, he does not share his predecessor’s belief that the company would run better if employees were free to speak their minds. In the days that followed, Musk went on to ruthlessly fire those who had criticized him — or whom he simply suspected of disloyalty.
Yue was in bed around 5 AM last November 15 when she learned she no longer had a job. “After 12 amazing years and 3 weeks of chaos, I’m officially fired by Twitter,” she tweeted. “Never expected I would have stayed this long, and never expected I would be this relieved to be gone. I have a lot of stories to tell. But to my fellow (ex-)tweeps- #LoveWhereYouWorked 🫡”
Yue filed a charge with the NLRB against the company in March. Musk’s decisions regarding the November 4 layoffs, the end of remote work, and her own firing had crossed a line, she said.
“None of the firings or layoffs right after the merger were done properly, and one could argue much of that was illegal in terms of severance and cause,” she explains.
In the complaint, a regional director of the NLRB wrote that Yue had “engaged in concerted activities with other employees for the purposes of mutual aid and protection.”
Yue said she had been willing to settle if X would pay her an amount roughly equal to the wages she’d lost since mid-November. When X refused to negotiate, Yue decided to take further action. Her hearing is scheduled for January 30.
There is a deep (and already much-remarked-upon) irony in the fact that Yue and other employees were fired for criticizing Musk on Twitter when just months later he would promise to cover the legal costs of anyone “unfairly treated” by their employer for “posting or liking something on this platform.”
That protection does not, it seems, extend to anyone who works for Musk. (It’s also not clear that Musk has actually covered the legal fees of anyone fired for tweeting.)
In the meantime, though, Yue isn’t the only former employee to have gotten traction in her legal case against X. Last month, the company finally entered settlement talks with the thousands of ex-Tweeps seeking back pay and bonuses related to their departures.
“After 10 months of pressing them in every direction we have succeeded in getting Twitter to the table,” wrote Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents many of the former workers, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg. “Twitter wants to mediate with us in a global attempt to settle all claims we have filed.”
If Yue wins her case, she could receive back pay for the months since she lost her job. The NLRB could also force X to offer Yue her job back.
Yue says she has no intention of returning, though. She recently launched a startup with other former Twitter employees that helps companies measure and improve their engineering systems.
Yue’s real goal is to make it clear that employment laws apply to everyone, Elon Musk included.
“Obviously I'm not going to take the job back,” she says. “What matters to me is that the NLRB thinks I have a case. There are people who will say ‘it’s at-will employment, the company can do whatever it wants. But it can’t.”
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Governing
After a long regulatory battle, the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision deal is now closed, with gaming franchises Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Diablo soon coming to Xbox. (Tom Warren / The Verge)
Microsoft’s path to victory included private deals with rivals, and concessions to persuade the FTC, the European Commission, and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to let the deal through. (Karen Weise, Kellen Browning and David McCabe / The New York Times)
A key figure in the closing: Microsoft President Brad Smith, who drove the company’s legal strategy and presented a diplomatic front to regulators. (Richard Waters and Arjun Neil Alim / The Financial Times)
It’s the biggest in a string of major deals by CEO Satya Nadella, which have moved Microsoft into new territories including AI, social media, and cloud computing. (Tom Dotan and Sarah E. Needleman / The Wall Street Journal)
Ubisoft will now have cloud streaming rights to Activision games for the next 15 years, a concession Microsoft made to appease UK regulators. (Tom Warren / The Verge)
The FTC will still appeal the decision, though, and maintains its stance that the deal represents a blow to competition. (Diane Bartz / Reuters)
The successful acquisition sends a message to other Big Tech companies that they can still grow through large purchases, if they’re clever enough. (Cecilia Kang and David McCabe / The New York Times)
The New York Times filed a motion to open up the courtroom in Google’s secretive antitrust trial, arguing the current state of affairs “undermines the public’s faith in the justice system.” (Nilay Patel / The Verge)
The No Fakes Act, a bipartisan bill that seeks to create a federal law to protect actors and performers against unauthorized AI replicas, was introduced in the US Senate. (Emilia David / The Verge)
More than a dozen AI fellows backed by Open Philanthropy, an organization funded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, are advancing AI legislation and policy in Washington. (Brendan Bordelon / POLITICO)
SEC chair Gary Gensler says it’s “nearly unavoidable” that AI will trigger a financial crisis within the next 10 years. (Stefania Palma and Patrick Jenkins / The Financial Times)
The Biden 2024 reelection campaign joined Trump’s Truth Social as @BidenHQ in an effort to reach conservative voters and correct misinformation. The campaign’s explanation is that they thought it would be funny. Which it is! (Makenna Kelly / The Verge)
A California judge will allow lawsuits against Meta alleging social media is addictive for kids to move forward based on a negligence claim. But the judge dismissed most of the other claims. (Joel Rosenblatt / Bloomberg)
Meta created a new operations center with experts fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, in response to a letter from European commissioner Thierry Breton about misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. (Sarah Fielding / Engadget)
Users are accusing Meta of suppressing pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook and Instagram even if the posts fall within the platform’s guidelines. Meta said that it enacted measures to temporarily suppress and suspend posts while it sifts through them. (Mike Isaac / The New York Times)
Social media has made the Israel-Hamas conflict harder to understand as a flood of unverifiable information has been posted within days of the Gaza strip attack, mostly originating from the region. (Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post)
Internet access in Gaza has been obliterated after airstrikes and electrical shortages made access extremely difficult, putting more civilians at risk. (Sam Biddle / The Intercept)
An AI image detector is mislabeling real photos from the Israel-Hamas conflict as AI-generated, contributing to concerns about misinformation. (Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media)
A group of academic computer scientists found that guardrails preventing large language AI models like GPT-3.5 Turbo and Llama 2 from generating harmful content are fragile and easy to bypass. (Thomas Claburn / The Register)
Meta board member Marc Andreessen said AI regulations represent “a form of murder” in his latest effort at troll baiting. He also calls trust and safety teams his enemy. For someone who claims to be a techno-optimist, Andreessen clearly believes that the world is teetering on the brink of collapse. (Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media)
TikTok filed an appeal in Europe, challenging a data privacy fine it previously got for failing to protect its (often young) users’ private data. (Stephanie Bodoni / Bloomberg)
The Australian government is fining X about $384,000 for not providing information regarding its efforts to prevent child sexual abuse material. (Kate Conger / The New York Times)
Adobe’s proposed acquisition of Figma is stalling because of legal challenges — and the company is now pivoting its focus to AI, with minimal mention of Figma at its latest conference. (Brody Ford / Bloomberg)
Industry
LinkedIn laid off almost 700 employees after seeing slow revenue growth for eight consecutive quarters. You can stop writing your “LinkedIn is cool now, actually” posts. (Jordan Novet / CNBC)
A new breed of influencer is here — on LinkedIn. Hey, what did I just say?? (Hannah Murphy / The Financial Times)
Sharing children’s faces online may be riskier than ever. With advancements in of facial recognition technology, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to permanently remove images once posted. (Kashmir Hill / The New York Times)
X is turning to political advertisers ahead of the 2024 elections to boost its sliding ad revenue, pitching itself as a platform with more politically engaged users. They love posting deepfakes, for example. (Patrick Coffee / The Wall Street Journal)
Opening links pointing to Patreon, WhatsApp, and Messenger are reportedly being delayed on X, and creators are saying it’s affecting their livelihood and crowdfunding abilities. (Jon Keegan and Dan Phiffer / The Markup)
X appears to be curbing nudity, with a number of sex workers who promote OnlyFans work reporting that their engagement has dropped in recent days. (Miles Klee / Rolling Stone
YouTube is using AI to identify popular videos that relate to specific cultural events, then targeting ads that reference those events. (Sarah Perez / TechCrunch)
A carbonized scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, which was illegible due to the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii, is now readable with an AI trained by a computer science student. (Jo Marchant / Nature)
GPT-4V lets users upload images as part of conversations, but it also creates vulnerabilities for prompt injection attacks through visuals. (Simon Willison)
Riot Games’s Valorant has become a Gen Z hit thanks to gaming creators and influencers. (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg)
A new Gallup survey found that teenagers spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on social media, with YouTube and TikTok topping the list. (Jonathan Rothwell / Gallup)
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Thank you Zoe. "Content Regulation" is a hot 🔥 issue these difficult times.
Good to see a Federal agency take on the bird on the Labor law wire