Elon Musk got a team to trawl Twitter's internal chat platform and create a list of insubordinate employees, resulting in some firings, report says

• Elon Musk ordered his Twitter team to make a list of insubordinate staff, the New York Times reports.
• The team scanned Twitter's internal chat platform and employees' tweets for criticism of Musk.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk ordered his team to check Twitter's internal chat platforms and make a list of insubordinate employees to be fired, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The team were also instructed to scan employees' tweets for criticism and those who made it onto the list were subsequently fired in emails they received at 1:30 a.m. PT on Tuesday, The Times reported.

"We regret to inform you that your employment is terminated effective immediately. Your recent behavior has violated company policy," the emails read, Insider's Kali Hays previously reported.

Just shy of two dozen employees were fired overnight on Tuesday for criticizing Musk either publicly or internally through Slack.

One of the most notable firings was Eric Frohnhoefer, a staff software engineer at Twitter of eight years, who was fired after clashing with Musk on Twitter over technical issues, on Sunday. Frohnhoefer had responded to Elon Musk's tweet about Twitter being "super slow in many countries" saying that the CEO was "wrong."

After one Twitter user said "you probably don't want this guy on your team," Musk responded in a now-deleted tweet that "he's fired." Frohnhoefer found his company laptop was deactivated hours after Musk's tweet, but said he didn't receive any formal communication about his dismissal calling Musk's team "a bunch of cowards," in an interview with Forbes.

Twitter staff who made mention of Frohnhoefer's firing in internal chats were also cut from the company, The Times reported.

Musk joked about the firings on Twitter saying "I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere."

Musk has been on a firing rampage in the three weeks that he has owned Twitter, first firing the company's CEO Parag Agrawal and COO Ned Sagal among other executives. He then cut 50% of the company's roughly 8,000 employees during his first week as CEO.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.