vijaya gadde: Who is Vijaya Gadde, the Twitter executive in Elon Musk’s crosshairs?

New Delhi: Elon Musk last week criticised Twitter‘s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde in a series of blistering tweets, prompting a former company executive to accuse the billionaire of bullying and directing a harassment campaign against her.

Gadde, 47, has long been a low-key Silicon Valley power player, and had a critical role in the contentious decisions to ban then US President Donald Trump from Twitter and suppress news stories about US President Joe Biden’s son on the platform.

Who is Gadde?

Gadde was born in Hyderabad and grew up in Texas. She is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law. Before joining Twitter in 2011, she was a senior director and associate general counsel, corporate, at Juniper Networks.

At Twitter, Gadde is in charge of overseeing content moderation and the platform’s safety policy with a team of executives. According to Bloomberg, she has the “last word” on Twitter’s disabling of messages and accounts.

She made headlines for major decisions such as prohibiting political ads on the platform in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election. During the Capitol riots in January 2021, she was also the driving force behind the suspension of then US President Donald Trump’s account and limiting far-right influence on Twitter.

Gadde also reportedly approved Twitter’s decision to curb the distribution of a New York Post article based on files recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop just before the 2020 presidential election.

The Twitter account of the New York Post was also suspended for around two weeks.

Musk’s new target

Gadde has been under the spotlight again since Musk took to Twitter shortly to critise her soon after reaching a deal to acquire the social media company for $44 billion.

In response to a tweet by Saagar Enjeti, an Indian-American conservative commentator who called Gadde “the top censorship advocate at Twitter”, Musk termed the suspension of the New York Post account “obviously incredibly inappropriate”.

Musk’s criticism of Twitter sparked a barrage of abusive tweets against the company’s top lawyer. Gadde became the subject of a wave of personal attacks by Twitter users.

Musk also tweeted a meme — using images from her 2019 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast — that painted her as oblivious to the “liberal bias” at Twitter.

Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo critised Musk for posting the meme.

“You’re making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats,” Costolo tweeted. He later added, “Bullying is not leadership.”

Is it the end of the road for Gadde?

According to a New York Post report, Musk
could fire Gadde, who is one of Twitter’s highest-paid executives.

“Gadde, who earned $17 million last year as Twitter’s top legal counsel, could be on the chopping block as Musk is reportedly planning to slash jobs and reduce executive pay as he looks to secure financing for his Twitter bid,” the report said.

If Gadde is fired, she will receive a $12.5 million severance package, which includes the accelerated vesting of a large number of Twitter shares she has amassed,
the New York Post reported.

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