In Musks Twitter, an Indian-American lawyer is under fire. Heres why

Elon Musk’s Twitter
takeover has brought an Indian-American lawyer under heavy fire. Vijaya Gadde,
a top counsel for Twitter, has been the social media giant’s backbone for a
while. She was the one driving key decisions such as banning political ads
ahead of the 2020 US elections and removing former President Donald Trump from
the platform. Now, in Musk’s Twitter, she’s having a tough time.

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On Wednesday, Elon
Musk tweeted a meme from an interview between Vijaya Gadde and Joe Rogan, a
controversial American podcaster, which, for Musk exemplified Twitter’s
left-wing bias. Musk’s meme was in response to prominent podcast host Saagar
Enjeti’s tweet who described Gadde as “the top censorship advocate at Twitter.”

Who is Vijaya
Gadde?

Vijaya Gadde heads
Twitter’s Legal, Policy and Trust department, the team that leads content
moderation and the social platform’s safety policy. Born in Hyderabad in the
Indian state of Telangana (then Andhra Pradesh), Gadde and her family moved to
the United States when she was a child. Gadde went on to graduate from Cornell
University and then New York University.

In the eye of
the storm

She joined Twitter
in 2011 and is said to have been the driving force behind restricting a New
York Post story on Hunter Biden, which reportedly claimed that Joe Biden, as
United States Vice-President, had called upon the country’s foreign policy in
Ukraine to help his son’s position at an energy firm.

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The article was
published on October 14, 2020 and Twitter had stated that the article violated
the platform’s “Hacked Materials Policy”. The article also led to a two-week
suspension of New York Post’s Twitter handle. The decision was subsequently
reversed on October 31.

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When the matter
went to the US Federal Election Commission in 2021, it found that blocking the
sharing of the article was “undertaken for commercial reasons and not for the
purpose of influencing an election.”

Elon Musk, on
Tuesday, called Twitter’s decision at the time: inappropriate.

Musk’s targeting of
Vijaya Gadde has Twitter divided. While there are those who believe that Musk
is right and call for Gadde to be fired, there are also those who think that what
the billionaire has done qualifies as “bullying”. “You’re making an executive
at the company you just bought a target of harassment and threats,” said Dick
Costolo, former Twitter CEO, addressing Musk. “Bullying is not leadership,” he wrote.