Battle Of The Billionaires

TL;DR: Elon Musk harasses Haraldur Þorleifsson on Twitter and issues an apology after speaking to him.

In an almost comic book-like standoff between superhero and supervillain, entrepreneur and activist Haraldur Þorleifsson – commonly known as Halli – publicly reached out to Elon Musk regarding his status as a Twitter employee.

Halli has rapidly garnered local popularity with his working-class demeanour and philanthropy, increasing wheelchair accessibility in Reykjavík, helping survivors of abuse who have been hit with NDAs, and despite being a man of wealth, actually paying his taxes. He’s almost like Iceland’s own Bruce Wayne. I mean, have you ever seen Batman and Halli in the same room?

A bit of backstory: In 2021, Twitter bought Halli‘s design company, Ueno. The contract that followed stated that Halli was to be a salaried employee of Twitter until the total acquisition price had been reached. At the end of February, Halli’s work communications were cut off along with about 200 other employees. On March 6 Halli reached out to Elon Musk to clarify his status as an employee of Twitter.

Dear @elonmusk 👋

9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.

However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.

Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?

— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023

In a series of tweets to multiple Twitter threads, Elon Musk started questioning Halli‘s role at the company, accusing him of not working, and belittling Halli’s disability (Halli has muscular dystrophy). After digging a sufficiently deep enough hole, Elon tried clawing his way up to save face.

The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm.

Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023

Ultimately, Elon issued a formal apology after speaking with Halli, saying that it was all a big misunderstanding and that in-person communication is better than replying to people on Twitter. Who would’ve thunk?

I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful.

He is considering remaining at Twitter.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023