Musk Does Rare 180, Apologizes for 'Surreal' Twitter Feud

Elon Musk found himself apologizing to a (possibly now former) Twitter employee after a bizarre exchange between the two on the social network went viral. It started when Haraldur "Halli" Thorleifsson mentioned Musk in a tweet, asking him to weigh in on Thorleifsson's employment status. "9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees. However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails," he tweeted Monday. That started the back-and-forth, which the Guardian calls "surreal." Among other things, Musk repeatedly questioned Thorleifsson about his work at Twitter (and implied he wasn't doing any), and said Thorleifsson "claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing." Mashable has a good roundup of the entire exchange.

Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, replied to that last piece by explaining that he has muscular dystrophy, which has impacted his ability to type for long periods of time, but that hadn't been a problem in the pre-Musk Twitter since his job "was mostly to help teams move forward, give them strategic and tactical guidance." Thorleifsson is the founder of the creative design agency Ueno, which was acquired by Twitter prior to Musk's takeover; he and other founders of acquired companies had previously been on a "do not fire" list due to Musk not wanting to pay out their exit package compensation, but some of those other founders were also recently laid off.

Amid the lengthy exchange, which included Musk at one point referring to Thorleifsson as "the worst" in a since-deleted tweet (the BBC has a screenshot), many came to Thorleifsson's defense and wondered why Musk was hassling someone so well-liked and respected. That's apparently what ultimately led to the rare 180 and apology from Musk: "Based on your comment, I just did a videocall with Halli to figure out what’s real vs what I was told. It’s a long story," he said with regard to one of the tweets supporting Thorleifsson. "I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful. He is considering remaining at Twitter." (Twitter recently learned one engineer is not enough for a major project.)