Elon Musk says Twitter will pay legal fees of any users sued for posting

Elon Musk says he’ll pay the legal fees of anyone who’s been “unfairly treated” by their employer for posting on Twitter, according to a tweet sent late Saturday. The only problem? The billionaire owner of the site hasn’t made clear how people should reach out, let alone define what “unfairly treated” might mean.

“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill. No limit. Please let us know,” Musk tweeted on Saturday night.

Musk, who’s known for making late-night tweets that may or may not materialize into company policy, did not send a follow-up tweet to explain the terms of who’s eligible for legal assistance. But many users were very excited about the idea.

An account called Clown World, which posts right-wing oriented content, simply tweeted “Amazing!” But others were skeptical that it would happen at all.

Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer who had previously been banned from Twitter in 2018 for bigoted comments about Muslims, seemed to be bitter about the idea that others might get their legal fees covered. Loomer regained her account after Musk declared an amnesty for banned accounts at the end of 2022.

“You told me that Twitter couldn’t afford to give me Justice. And now you’re saying there’s no limit to how much you will pay when it comes to other people’s legal fees. It’s so wrong on so many levels what Twitter did to me and my campaign,” Loomer claimed in a very long tweet responding to Musk’s announcement.

Management at Twitter, which is technically known as X after Musk recently changed the name, has been a lightning rod of controversy ever since Musk bought the site for $44 billion back in October 2022. Musk’s first decision after taking control of the company was to fire thousands of people and even fired an engineer at the company who delivered bad news, according to a report from Platformer.

Major advertisers fled Twitter after Musk took over the site, adopting a wait-and-see attitude. But in recent months, Musk has admitted the social media platform has lost roughly 50% of its ad revenue. The billionaire has tried to make up that shortfall through subscriptions to Twitter’s “verified” program, but now that anyone can pay $8 to get “verified,” it’s become seen as a mark of shame among many influencers.

In fact, Twitter doesn’t even verify the identity of anyone who pays for the site, which has led to plenty of impersonator accounts. Twitter first adopted the verification program in 2009 after a lawsuit brought by baseball legend Tony La Russa.