A Twitter engineer deleted his account from the social media platform after sharply rebutting billionaire Elon Musk for claiming the suspension of a story by the New York Post was "incredibly inappropriate".

Saagar Enjeti, co-host of the Breaking Points podcast, shared a Business Insider article in which he pointed out the critical reaction of Twitter's top lawyer Vijaya Gadde to Mr Musk’s takeover.

Responding to the tweet, the tech mogul said: "Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”

He was referring to Twitter's move to ban The New York Post's article on emails found on a laptop belonging to US president Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential elections. According to the Post, the social media giant justified the censorship by labelling the story "content obtained through hacking that contains private information".

The expose was found correct and later reported on by The New York Times and the Washington Post following president Biden's victory to office.

Campbell Connor, an engineer at Twitter, responded to his new boss saying Twitter had a policy about hacked documents, which is applied equally. "The merits of the policy are debatable but it wasn't targeted censorship," he added.

In the following tweet, Mr Connor said he was excited to work with the Tesla founder and that his proposals would be great for the company. "I want this platform [to] be productive for everyone. Including all the folk dragging me," he wrote.

The engineer has now appeared to have deleted his Twitter account, according to screengrabs shared by Mr Enjeti.

After a spree of negotiations, the Twitter board agreed to sell the company to Mr Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, for $44bn (£34.5 bn).

Mr Musk had earlier said that he believes that the micro-blogging platform should be regulated only by the law of the country it operates in, raising concerns about enabling the spread of hate speech.

He claimed his interest in acquiring Twitter stems from the realisation that “having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation”.

In the wake of Mr Musk's deal to buy Twitter, the number of followers of some of the platform's most-followed accounts, including that of former US president Barack Obama, singers Katy Perry and Taylor Swift dropped by thousands.

A Twitter spokesperson told NBC that the accounts which experienced the most drop-offs in follower counts were “high-profile accounts” and "organic" in nature.

Former chief and co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey has touted Mr Musk’s takeover as a “singular solution” he trusts in solving the company’s problems.

“ In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness,” Mr Dorsey wrote.