Platform X again made its way into the headlines due to its CEO, Elon Musk. Another defamation case is to be lodged against Musk in Ireland by one of its former employees, Aaron Rodericks.
Rodericks is a lawyer who stayed on with Twitter after it was acquired by Musk and later renamed X. Earlier, Rodericks lead Twitter’s threat disruption team, which aimed to tackle misinformation on the platform.
However, last fall, he, along with other trust and safety workers, lost their jobs. This was part of a series of layoffs over several months where Musk implemented extensive cost-cutting measures, leading to the departure of several thousand Twitter employees.
Currently, Rodericks is suspended from the job. Rodericks took legal action against X and won in Ireland, which stopped him from being immediately fired. In this case, he argued that the attempt to fire him was not genuine and was based on his supposed involvement with tweets criticising Musk.
On 15 January, 2024, the Irish court granted permission to Rodericks to officially notify Musk about defamation claims.
The defamation claims centre around a tweet Musk posted after a round of layoffs that included Rodericks’s team focused on election integrity. Musk’s tweet, commenting on the team’s elimination, said, “Oh, you mean the ‘Election integrity’ team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.”
According to Rodericks’ legal team, this tweet clearly refers to him, as he was one of the remaining employees working on election integrity.
Despite Rodericks asking Musk to remove the tweet and make amends, there was no response. The tweet is still up, and when Rodericks approached Twitter’s Ireland unit, they claimed the tweet didn’t violate rules and denied responsibility.