Tesla Employees Allege Twitter Shadowbanned Their Union's Account
Tesla workers at the company’s Gigafactory in Buffalo, New York, have accused Twitter of hiding a freshly created account for their union from its search bar, VICE News reports(Opens in a new window).
The workers, who announced their intention(Opens in a new window) to form a union called Tesla Workers United on Feb. 14, filed a National Labor Review Board (NLRB) charge on Friday where they claimed their Twitter account had been shadowbanned.
Elon Musk, who is the CEO of both Tesla and Twitter, was named in the NLRB filing which read: “In February 2023, immediately following workers announcing a union campaign at the Tesla Gigafactory 2 facility, the above-named employer, through CEO Elon Musk and/or his agents and representatives, caused the Union's Twitter account (@united_tesla) to be shadow banned from the Twitter platform.”
The filing continued: “The shadow ban caused the Union's account to be less accessible and functionally hidden from workers and the public on Twitter, thereby stopping or discouraging protected concerted and/or union activity.”
PCMag searched for “united_tesla(Opens in a new window)” on Twitter, and as the group says, neither the union’s account nor the tweets posted by the account were visible in the search results. Instead, only results that mention the union or tag them are presented.
The workers who are campaigning for the union are responsible for labeling data from Tesla’s Autopilot technology, Engadget notes(Opens in a new window). Tesla employees at the Buffalo gigafactory further accused the company of monitoring their keystrokes(Opens in a new window) to check how much time they spend on each task, and said Tesla had illegally laid off(Opens in a new window) dozens of employees for
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