Scrolling through social media during a work break, Alexandra realized she was going to lose her new job.
An X account with over 500,000 followers had reposted a screenshot of a Facebook post she'd made about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
"You log onto Twitter and you see half a million people following a page, including Elon Musk. They're saying, you better fire this person," said Alexandra. "I knew that they were going to fire me because of the pressure by the mob."
The X account also named Alexandra and her employer. NPR is not naming the X account and also only using Alexandra's middle name because she is concerned about her safety.
Less than three hours after the X post about her, Alexandra's employer fired her via email. There was no conversation, Alexandra said. She had started the cybersecurity job just two weeks before.
And then there were the threats. One user on Facebook asked Alexandra how she liked an Italian restaurant across the street from where she lives in New York City, a sign that someone had tracked down her address and possibly other personal information.
"4.5 out of 5 stars, sounds pretty decent," the post said.
Alexandra left her apartment. "If they can come for me on the Internet, they can definitely come for me in real life."
She first went to a friend's place across town. "I woke up in her kid's princess room in the morning, and then I went to another friend's house in Connecticut for the next three or four days."
Alexandra is among the people who lost their jobs because of their social media posts about Kirk's death. She is not the only one who has expressed concerns about physical safety after naming-and-shaming campaigns online. While such campaigns are not new, both Alexandra and researchers watching them noted how the scrutiny is now sharply focused on employment, and that pressure now comes with the weight from figures with political power.
Guest-hosting the podcast Kirk used to host, Vice President Vance told viewers to call out people for what he called "celebrating Charlie's murder."
"Hell, call their employer," he said. Online, people traded tips to not only make phone calls, but to also leave negative Google reviews and send emails to management. Multiple websites popped up to collect offending social media posts and information about the people who posted them.
Born in the former Soviet Union, Alexandra moved to the U.S. with her family as an infant decades ago. "My entire life, they would tell me that they left to come here for me, you know, with no idea of ever being able to return".
Her family left, she said, so she could grow up with more freedoms — something she now feels is at risk. She understood that her former employer could fire her for any reason, but she feels frustrated that it happened — in her view — because of an online pressure campaign backed by people with political power. "I don't think that was ever what the standard issue response was."
"What's currently happening is state-sponsored censorship," Alexandra said, "While it may not be officially documented sponsored by the state, it is verbally sponsored by the state."
From employed to unemployed in eight hours
Alexandra wrote the Facebook post that got her fired at 10:13 A.M. on Sept 12, two days after Kirk was assassinated.
The post was a riff on Kirk's own words about an attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after a man entered their home in San Francisco and attacked Paul with a hammer shortly before the 2022 midterms. He sustained a fractured skull and other severe injuries.
Days after the attack, Kirk spoke about the attacker on his show, "And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco, or the Bay Area, wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I get his bail is about $30,000 or $40,000. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions."
Alexandra's post mimicked Kirk's words: "They caught the guy (allegedly)..." she wrote after the alleged gunman was named and arrested. "And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in Utah wants to be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail out Tyler Robinson... Bail him out and then go ask him some questions about Charlie."
Alexandra said "it was horrible" the way Kirk died. "I felt as bad for him as I feel for any victim of gun violence, especially in schools."
But she said she was objecting to the way "everybody was making him to be a martyr for free speech and some kind of hero nationally ... a hero, because he was a right-wing Christian nationalist."
In recent years Kirk began to frame his political arguments in explicitly Christian terms, including some tropes and imagery used by activists with anti-democratic aims.
"I don't value those things." Alexandra said, "As an American, I don't think we have to value the same things. We just have to protect each other's ability to say, though."
For the first few hours, Alexandra's post didn't draw much attention. The ire she faced only started after she commented on someone else's friends-only Facebook post. That person was criticizing posts that were what he called an "endorsement of Charlie Kirk's death"
"[W]e are quoting him. If you big mad you mad at him" Alexandra wrote around midday. "I had said that comment and then went back to work," Alexandra said.
She did not see his response until much later.
"You cannot redeem yourself here. Your presence is voluntary, I'm only leaving you for the wolves," wrote her now-former Facebook friend. The two have since blocked each other.
More comments flowed in, focusing on who her employer was. Around three o'clock, another account wrote, "It would be a shame if people started posting this," followed by a screenshot of Alexandra's post that echoed Kirk's words.
"Already submitted, currently going viral on Twitter," a third account wrote. "Have a good day"
Around the same time, the prominent X account with half-a-million followers posted a screenshot of Alexandra's original post. It was sharply critical of what she'd written and gave her full name and the name of her employer. Within minutes, other accounts replied.
"On it," one account wrote, "this time I'm contacting any board/investor contacts as well and leaving the CEO in the dark." Another posted a screenshot of the employer's contact information.
About two-and-a-half hours later, the account that screenshotted the employer contact information followed up with another screenshot that appears to be an email from Alexandra's employer, saying that it was "reviewing the situation internally"
About 20 minutes after the email screenshot, Alexandra was fired by email.
Alexandra's employer confirmed to NPR that a firing was made that day but did not confirm it was her, saying the decision was "based on the employee's failure to adhere to our established company policies."
The reach of large accounts
Unlike the many posts that went viral in the wake of Kirk's assassination, Alexandra's message did not have a particularly broad reach.
It garnered fewer than 100,000 views and before Alexandra's employer fired her, it had under 80 replies.
The dozens of comments or even emails and phone calls probably weren't as big of a concern for an employer as worries about even bigger heavyweight users the post could potentially draw, said Daniel Trottier, a professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, who has studied naming and shaming online campaigns.
Multiple users with much smaller followings tagged Libs of Tik Tok and Laura Loomer, two prominent users who have a history of publicizing other accounts they disagree with. Libs of Tik Tok is an account run by right wing influencer Chaya Raichik, who has a track record of running targeted campaigns against drag queens and children's hospitals that she falsely accused of performing certain kinds of gender-affirming surgery on young children.
Although no one tagged Musk, X's most influential user, he has interacted with the account that shared Alexandra's post multiple times in the past.
"Having Elon Musk as part of this — I can imagine that for the employers in this case, they could see how it could potentially escalate," Trottier said.
Alexandra agreed, "If they did this in real life and I was physically in an office, they [employer] wouldn't be like 'oh, you're fired here.'"
She said, "They wouldn't do that. They would say 'no, you guys are crazy — like, what are you talking about? And why are you here?'"
"They're only worried because of the exposure of that page on Twitter and Elon being part of it," she said.
While busy exposing other people, many of the online activists appeared to have no desire to unmask themselves. The large account that highlighted Alexandra is run anonymously. The account and its followers tried to pressure one employer when, according to a screenshot, the employer asked for the name, business address and phone number of the person writing in to complain before they would provide an update.
"Is this an attempt at intimidation or a threat?" an anonymous sender wrote in the screenshot. The large X account called for more pressure.
The employer, a real estate company, did not respond to NPR's requests for comment. No one associated with the X account that shared Alexandra's post responded to NPR's requests for comment.
Consequences
Although the rapid succession of reports about people being fired for their posts about Kirk's death seems more widespread than in other instances, it's not yet clear exactly how many people have been affected, and how often such campaigns manage to get people fired. At least one of the databases that compiled information about Kirk-related social media posts and their authors is no longer online. Self-proclaimed hackers claimed responsibility for taking the site down though it's not possible to verify their claims.
Employers have responded to campaigns in different ways. In one case NPR was able to verify, a public institution resisted disciplining a staff member despite pressure from multiple branches of local government. The staffer in question is a survivor of a mass shooting and posted a meme critiquing Kirk's support for gun rights. Meanwhile other staff members at other public institutions have been fired for making similar critiques, some of whom had family and friends who survived gun violence.
A review of the timeline of the X account that highlighted Alexandra shows that it targeted at least 150 people for their speech about Charlie Kirk between Sept 10 to Sept 19. It flagged outcomes of their campaigns for just 13 cases, of which NPR was able to verify 12. Ten employers fired their employees, and two — one state legislator and one pet store owner — issued statements standing behind the employee.
In several other cases, employers did not respond even as the X account posted repeatedly, doubling down on its pressure campaign.
The kinds of consequences people should face for making unpopular or distasteful statements has often been ambiguous in previous naming and shaming campaigns, Trottier said. But what's notable this time, he said, was the explicit focus on firing people.
"I don't think there is much controversy in the idea that the notion of proportionality is out the window," Trottier said.
Nine days after Kirk was killed, the large X account stopped calling for people to get fired over their posts about Charlie Kirk. President Trump announced he wanted to hike visa fees on immigrant workers and the account moved onto critiquing the visa system.
Alexandra has not moved on. Having returned to her apartment, she continues to worry about her safety. "There was a guy standing on the roof across the street from my house. And normally there's not usually people there. And normally it wouldn't really, really faze me. But I lowered my shades." She's appealed to X to take down the post about her to no success, and she has been seeking legal help.
Alexandra said she has warned friends about posting online. "I probably was on social media too much. So okay, you win. I'm not going to post more things on the internet." She took down photos of herself, made her Facebook posts non-public and archived the post that got her fired.
But she's worried about the larger chilling effects on speech. "Where does this stop? What if I went to a protest? And what if I made a sign that somebody took a picture of and they didn't like it?"
NPR's Jude Joffe-Block contributed reporting
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