In rare move, Elon Musk meets Twitter employees to give ‘freedom of speech’ address

Elon Musk met directly with employees at Twitter on Thursday for the first time since he reached a deal to acquire the company in April, focusing on "freedom of speech" in an online address.

The billionaire had moved to purchase Twitter for $44bn in April but has since been critical of the company, threatening to put the deal on hold over concerns about bots, or fake accounts, that exist on the app.

"Trust is as trust does. I tend to be extremely literal in what I say ... One does not [need] to read between the lines. One can simply read the lines," Musk said in the meeting, according to a tweet from Nola Weinstein, Twitter's global head of brand experiences and engagement. Weinstein subsequently deleted all her tweets about the meeting and did not respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press.

During the call Musk pushed lofty goals for Twitter, saying he hoped it would be used by 1 billion people globally, according to the New York Times. That figure is nearly four times its current user base.

"I want Twitter to contribute to a better, long-lasting civilization where we better understand the nature of reality," he said, according to the Times, adding that he hoped Twitter could help us to "better understand the nature of the universe, as much as it is possible to understand".

He has also targeted Twitter's work-from home policy, having once called for the company's headquarters to be turned into a "homeless shelter" because, he said, so few employees actually worked there. The comment also served as a thinly veiled jab at San Francisco, which has a large homeless population.

Musk did not do much to assuage fears of layoffs at Twitter, declining to directly answer questions about potential restructuring and saying "right now, costs exceed revenue - that's not a great situation", according to the Times.