Twitter is not in business to make a profit or to give people free speech, but to do “something that’s good for the planet,” a company employee can be heard saying in a secretly recorded video.
The new undercover footage from Project Veritas features Lead Client Partner Alex Martinez discussing the company’s authoritarian views on speech, and denigrating Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a “loony toon” with “special needs.”
Martinez told a Project Veritas undercover reporter that Twitter wants to be “as fair, and transparent, and accurate as possible,” but noted that a “level of censorship” was required to keep the information on the platform accurate.
“Right now, we don’t make profit,” he noted, explaining that the company’s liberal ideology “led us into not being profitable.”
“The rest of us who have been here believe in something that’s good for the planet and not to give people free speech,” he declared.
Martinez explained that Twitter employees view censorship as a way to correct people who “don’t know how to make a rational decision.”
“People don’t know how to make a rational decision if you don’t put out—correct things that are supposed to be out in the public, right?” he said.
The conversation was released Tuesday night as billionaire Elon Musk was still reevaluating his plan to take over the platform. Twitter’s board last month agreed to sell the company to Musk for $44 billion, but the Tesla CEO has since put the deal is on hold while he studies the number of spam and bot accounts on the platform.
Martinez admitted that Musk’s desire to return Twitter to its roots as “a platform for free speech” could lead the company to make a profit again, but didn’t seem pleased about the prospect.
“If we’re implementing all these rules…and Elon wants to dismantle them, then technically our ideology has led us to not making money because we’re not making money, and Elon wants to turn it the other way so that we can make money,” Martinez said, suggesting that the company would be more virtuous if it were not profitable.
He went on to slam his potential new boss: “Elon Musk as a person is whatever. I don’t—like, he’s a loony toon. He has—he has Asperger’s. So he’s special. We all know that. And that’s fine. So here, no wonder he’s going to say some f—ing crazy sh-t because he’s special.”
A year ago, Musk revealed while he was hosting Saturday Night Live, that he was the first person to host the show with Asperger’s Syndrome.
Martinez seized on that revelation to denigrate one of the richest men in the world—as a “special needs” case.
“I’m like—you’re special needs. You’re literally special needs. Literally though, you really are. So I can’t even take what you’re saying seriously. ‘Cause you’re special,” he snarked.
On Twitter, Tuesday night, Musk responded to the clip with a sad emoji.
😔
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022
“Twitter exec trashing free speech & mocking people with Asperger’s …” Musk wrote in a subsequent “pinned tweet.”
At the end of the clip, Martinez shared with the Project Veritas undercover reporter an internal company memo warning that media outlets like Project Veritas “are active right now” and “targeting Tweeps to obtain company information and insights.”
“It’s [Project Veritas] like some group that’s just trying to out the employees. Like, they’re trying to go on dates with them, like this, and record them,” he said, adding with a laugh, “you’re lucky you met me organically because I would be questioning everything about you.”