A fired Twitter engineer urged remaining employees to 'disobey' Elon Musk, calling it their 'moral duty' to challenge the new billionaire owner

• A former Twitter employee urged those still left at the company to "disobey" Elon Musk.
• The fired employee said Twitter workers had a "moral duty" to keep the site's new owner in check.

A Twitter engineer who was recently fired urged employees left at the company to "disobey" Elon Musk, and said they had a moral obligation to keep the site's new billionaire owner in check.

"Tweeps that are still employed, at this time: If your personal situation allows for it, it is your moral duty to disobey. To strike. To protest. To quote tweet Elon when he lies on Twitter. To keep looking after each other," the former engineer wrote on the social media platform Tuesday morning.

The former employee previously worked as a UK-based senior software engineer.

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According to Platformer's Casey Newton, Twitter fired roughly 20 employees overnight who had publicly and privately challenged and pushed back against Musk since he took over the company in late October.

The former employee did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

This week's firings are the latest to strike the social media giant since Musk completed his takeover, began making sudden product declarations, and taunted critics and politicians.

Since spending billions to own the platform, Musk has laid off thousands of employees, axed content moderation teams, and allowed users to buy blue check verification badges for an $8 per month subscription fee.

The resulting chaos has led advertisers — who are the bulk of Twitter's revenue — to quietly back away, Insider's Beatrice Nolan reported, with companies like Volkswagen, Audi, and Pfizer suspending their ad buys until the dust settles on Twitter's new ownership.