Elon Musk is obsessed with the idea that Twitter staff could sabotage the platform, current and former employees reportedly say

• Elon Musk is concerned that the platform could be sabotaged by its staff, sources told Platformer.
• Some workers said they thought they'd been let go for tweets criticizing Musk.
• Platformer reported that Musk had also implemented a near-total freeze on rolling out new code.

Elon Musk is obsessed with the idea that Twitter could be sabotaged by its staff, current and former workers told Platformer.

Shortly after laying off about half the company's workforce, Musk began firing staff who criticized him and his leadership of Twitter. After sacking three workers for criticizing him on Twitter, the new owner then terminated about two dozen more employees on Monday, Insider previously reported.

Some workers said they thought they'd been fired for tweets critical of Musk or his decisions. One employee told Insider the that firings seemed to target many people in an internal Slack channel called Social Watercooler.

Nick Morgan, who had worked as a software engineer at Twitter, tweeted that his Twitter account had been set to private at the time when he was fired "so I can only assume this was for not showing 100% loyalty in slack."

"I've heard the same thing has happened to many others now," Morgan added.

The cull is evidence of growing paranoia within Musk's inner circle, eight current and former employees told Platformer. The fear of sabotage has led to a near-total freeze on writing and rolling out new code, they said.

Workers at Twitter, however, told Platformer that staff were staying on because they felt a responsibility to keep the site running during this period of instability under Musk's ownership.

"We all love Twitter as a service and want to see it succeed," Eric Frohnhoefer, a Twitter engineer who was fired on Sunday after clashing with Musk on Twitter over the app's performance on Android devices, told Platformer. "For me the toxic leadership makes working there extremely difficult."

Frohnhoefer was fired publicly on Twitter, but other workers received a late-night email on Monday saying they had been let go. "Your recent behavior has violated company policy," the email read.

Some members of Twitter's most senior engineers were among those fired, Platformer reported.

When asked about their firings, Frohnhoefer told Platformer: "I don't have any real insight into management's thinking, but I think fear of sabotage is one of the reasons behind lockdown. I think active sabotage is a significant career-limiting move and unlikely."

Since taking control of Twitter on October 27, Musk has pushed ahead with plans to roll out massive changes at the platform, such as charging users for verification and luring content creators over from other sites. He has also touted the possibility of introducing tiers of content moderation, reviving Vine, and offering a high-yield money market account.

But some of his changes could be difficult to roll out with Twitter's much-reduced workforce. As well as laying off staff, he also told remaining workers to return to the office or face dismissal and brought in more than 50 employees from Tesla.

Musk has also had to roll back some of his proposed changes to the site, such as to Twitter Blue, after trying to push them through too quickly.