Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Twitter Employees Who Break Their NDAs

Elon Musk sent out an email to Twitter employees reminding them that violating the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that they signed when they were hired prohibits them from revealing sensitive company information to the media or the public, Fortune has reported.

“As evidenced by the many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information, a few people at our company continue to act in a manner contrary to the company’s interests and in violation of their NDA,” Musk said in an email to employees.

A copy of the email was obtained by Zoe Schiffer, managing editor at Platformer and a senior reporter at The Verge, where she “reports on labor and workplace organizing.” She posted the email’s contents to Twitter on Saturday.

According to Fortune, “Ironically, it appears Schiffer learned of Musk’s latest demands via the very kind of leak he’s addressing, and posted her findings on the platform he now owns.”

“NEW: Elon Musk is threatening to sue Twitter employees who leak confidential information to the press. He’s asking staffers to sign a pledge indicating they’ve understood. Here’s the email,” she posted.

“This will be said only once: If you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when you joined, you accept liability to the full extent of the law & Twitter will immediately seek damages,” the email continues.

NDAs are standard practice in the United States, with an estimated one-third of employees bound by them.

Schiffer said that Musk is “asking staffers to sign a pledge indicating they’ve understood” the consequences of violating their NDA, giving them until 5 pm that day to do so.

“Musk says occasional slip ups are understandable ‘but breaking your word by sending detailed info to the media’ with the intent to harm Twitter ‘will receive the response it deserves’,” Schiffer said.

She opted to only post specific quotes from the email rather than the whole thing, “as it’s clear Twitter is doing everything it can to catch sources.”

Musk has stated before that seemingly identical emails sent out to his employees have been “coded with either one or two spaces between sentences, forming a binary signature that [can identify] the leaker.”

Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in late October, he has posted to the site his commitment to providing free speech on the social media platform and has released formerly-classified information about Twitter’s shady practices that had resulted in a number of prominent conservatives being muzzled in some form or another.

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