Twitter employee said on Slack that staff would be subject of HR investigation if they tweeted like Elon Musk, who now owns 9% of the company

aharoun@insider.com (Azmi Haroun,Huileng Tan) - Thursday

Elon Musk 

Twitter plans to host an internal AMA with board member Elon Musk, according to The Washington Post.

Some employees were anxious about Musk's role, according to company messages viewed by The Post.

One staffer asked if board members were held to the same tweeting standards as employees.

A Twitter employee said on the company's Slack channel that staff would be the subject of an HR investigation if they tweeted like Tesla founder Elon Musk, who now owns 9% of the social media company, according to The Washington Post.

"Quick question: If an employee tweeted some of the things Elon tweets, they'd likely be the subject" of an investigation from HR, according to a Slack message viewed by The Post. "Are board members held to the same standard?"

The inquiry came ahead of an internal Twitter AMA, or "ask me anything" question-and-answer session, with Musk, which Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal told employees about on Thursday, according to The Post.

"We can confirm that Elon will join our CEO Parag for an AMA with Twitter employees soon," a spokesperson for Twitter told Business Insider. "We have nothing more to share."

According to messages obtained by The Post, some employees were worried about Musk's new role on the company's board of directors, leaders said that Agrawal was still "the tiebreaker," in terms of company decisions.

Twitter’s newest shareholder

Last month, Musk criticized Twitter for failing to "adhere to free speech principles" and undermining democracy.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Agrawal welcomed Musk to the board. In response, Musk said he was "looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!"

Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

An avid Twitter user, Musk — who is also the CEO of Tesla — is a divisive figure whose outspoken comments on the social-media platform have repeatedly sparked controversy.

In a tweet last month, for example, Musk challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to single combat over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And last year, he said on Twitter he would sell Tesla stock and donate proceeds if the United Nations' World Food Programme could prove that $6 billion from the world's billionaires would solve a hunger crisis.

And in 2018, Musk famously set off a firestorm — and an investigation — when he tweeted he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share, and that he had "funding secured." The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued him for the tweet, alleging he had made "false and misleading statements." Musk and Tesla settled the suit with the SEC for $40 million.