Twitter didn’t address Elon Musk’s takeover during shareholder meeting

Twitter isn’t the only tech giant holding its annual shareholder meeting Wednesday. Facebook and Amazon are as well.

At Amazon’s urging, shareholders voted against proposals that would have pressured the e-commerce giant to reduce surveillance in its warehouses and lessen its reliance on plastic packaging. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Amazon’s new labor issue: What to do with too many workers

One warehouse worker and shareholder, Daniel Olayiwola, submitted a floor proposal calling on Amazon to drop the use of productivity quotas in its facilities, saying they pose safety risks.

“When you’re rushing to make rate or when you’re worried that pausing to catch your breath could lose you your job, you’re forced to prioritize speed over safety,” Olayiwola wrote in his resolution.

Three workers involved in unionizing campaigns at Amazon also presented during the meeting, including one who called on Amazon to produce an independent report on warehouse working conditions. Amazon is facing growing unionizing efforts at its warehouses, and the first Amazon warehouse in the United States voted to join an independent union last month in Staten Island. Amazon is objecting to the results.

Twitter executives speaking at the firm’s annual investor meeting declined to answer questions about the company’s impending sale to Musk, saying that the deal would be addressed at a later meeting.

The annual meeting was supposed to address mundane corporate issues and shareholder proposals about lobbying and nondisclosure agreements. But Musk’s potential takeover hung heavily over the meeting, with multiple shareholders mentioning him in their proposals and anonymous investors asking questions about the deal.

One investor asked what happens to their shares if someone buys the company and takes it private. The company told them they couldn’t address the deal on the call.

Two right-leaning speakers made appeals to Musk to put more constraints on Twitter’s policies and practices regarding misinformation and race.

A representative of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, proposed Twitter audit its discrimination policies, accusing the firm of discriminating against White people and men. The representative directly appealed to Musk, imploring him to shake up the company’s culture, which he felt had become too liberal.

“Let’s cure the DEI mind virus spreading inside Twitter,” the person said, speaking about Twitter’s practices on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Elon Musk, the Twitter deal and his quest to save 'all life on earth'

A second right-leaning speaker from the National Legal and Policy Center appealed to Musk over issues relating to misinformation and free speech. The organization’s official shareholder proposal requests that Twitter provide detailed disclosures about its lobbying activities.

The NLPC speaker described Twitter executives as “master misinformers” and said that it was “no wonder Elon Musk is buying the company” because it had gone too far in censoring people.

“Cleaning up this mess can’t come soon enough,” he said.

Natasha Lamb, from Arjuna Capital, presented a proposal asking the board to nominate someone with civil rights expertise to help the company address the spread of misinformation and other societal harms.

“Shareholders believe Twitter requires expert, board level oversight of civil and human rights issues to assess risk and develop strategy to avoid causing or contributing to widespread violations of human or civil rights, such as voter suppression, disinformation and hate campaigns, or violence,” Arjuna Capital wrote in the proxy statement ahead of the meeting.

Here's where civil rights advocates say Facebook is falling short

Lamb went on to say that Musk’s impending purchase of Twitter is evidence of why the company needs greater civil rights oversight — so that a potential new leader with a pro-free-speech ideology cannot undo the work Twitter has already done on these issues.

Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting has kicked off.

Early in the meeting, Ifeoma Ozoma, an activist for tech workers who spoke on behalf of shareholder Whistle Stop Capital, asked shareholders to vote against Twitter’s use of “concealment clauses” that limits employees’ ability to discuss unlawful acts in the workplace, such as discrimination and harassment.

Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is still up in the air, but the Tesla CEO has already laid out his ideas for changing the social media company.

Everything Musk says has to be taken with a grain of salt. He’s prone to making predictions that don’t come true, or making statements that are meant to inflame and troll people rather than be taken seriously. But if he completes the purchase and becomes the dominant owner of Twitter, he’ll have the ability to shake up the company in a real way.

Here’s what Elon Musk has said about his plans for Twitter

Musk has spoken a lot about free speech and his views that Twitter’s moderation policy is too strict. He’s responded to tweets from right-wing media and political figures who have argued for years the platform is biased against them, while simultaneously using it to reach millions of followers. Musk wants the platform to be “politically neutral,” but it’s not clear what he means by that, and how it could change the company. One thing is clear: he’s said he would allow former president Donald Trump back on the site, though Trump has said he doesn’t intend to return.

Musk says Twitter’s business is also underperforming, and that it should be growing faster. He’s proposed diversifying Twitter’s revenue streams so it’s not as reliant on advertising, something the company has slowly begun doing already. Musk has also floated charging corporate and government users money for using the site.

Elon Musk has said his deal to buy Twitter is “on hold” because he has concerns that the company hasn’t been upfront about how many of its users are fake “bot” accounts.

Twitter doesn’t require users to use their real name and even allows automated accounts on the service. But its rules ban building up armies of bots to manipulate its algorithm and content on the site. It has long maintained that the number of bots among its users is less than 5 percent of the total, but outside groups have argued it’s much higher. Twitter doesn’t share its bot-counting methodology, and Musk is now publicly demanding more information.

Elon Musk’s takeover bid, explained

As a frequent target of Twitter bots himself, Musk would have known all about them when he agreed to buy the company, and he waived his right to look deeper at Twitter’s finances when he signed the deal. Even if Musk finds proof there are more bots than what Twitter has disclosed, it might not be enough to allow him to get out of the deal without paying a hefty fee to the company. Still, his statements could put pressure on Twitter to renegotiate the deal price in his favor.

Musk is under pressure to get Twitter for a cheaper price because of a massive decline in tech stock prices over the past few weeks. Higher interest rates and slower growth rates have prompted investors to ditch social media stocks like Twitter, Facebook and Snap, the maker of the Snapchat app. Twitter is now trading at around $36 per share, much lower than the $54.20 per share Musk has agreed to pay, showing that the market is skeptical the deal will happen. If Musk does back out, Twitter stock could drop even lower.