Elon Musk takes over Twitter, immediately makes sweeping changes
Topics: World News
Featured Image Credit: Twitter/Elon Musk
Topics: World News
Dodgy car salesman Elon Musk has officially completed his $44 billion Twitter takeover, meaning that the social media platform is now his to control.
The billionaire wasted no time in enacting some pretty major changes, too: almost immediately after the takeover was official, he fired Twitter's CEO, CFO, and other high-level execs including head of legal policy, trust, and safety, and its general counsel.
You can see Musk's hilarious entrance into Twitter HQ below. I wonder how many writers it took to come up with that joke.
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Bloomberg reports that the deal means Twitter is now a private company - one that is wholly owned by Musk. In effect, he can pretty much do what he wants with the social media platform now, and I have no doubt he'll waste little time in doing so.
Newly fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal originally took the role in November 2021 after co-founder Jack Dorsey resigned from the position. Agrawal was previously Twitter's CTO, and had been with the company for over a decade. Given that he and Musk have had some fairly public spats over the future of Twitter, it's perhaps no surprise that Agrawal has been given his marching orders.
"You are free to tweet ‘is twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter,” Agrawal told Musk on April 9, as revealed by text messages that were released during the deal. “But it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context.”
"What did you get done this week?" Musk responded before adding, "I'm not joining the board this is a waste of time."
Still, don't feel too bad for Agrawal. He'll be bowing out with 100% of his unvested equity awards, which comes to roughly $42 million. Not a bad redundancy package.
Musk has previously made it clear he plans to make Twitter a "less restrictive platform for free speech", which sounds great on paper but has horrifying implications if you think about it for more than ten seconds.
"Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy," Musk tweeted earlier this year. "What should be done?"
Strap in, Twitter uses: I have a feeling the next few months are going to be interesting.