“Let the good times roll,” billionaire Elon Musk tweeted on Friday, hours after he completed a whopping $44 billion acquisition of Twitter and began as the social media giant’s new owner by firing its top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal. “The bird is free,” Musk tweeted on Friday after completing his takeover of Twitter and firing four of the social media giant’s top executives, including Agrawal, Chief Legal Officer Vijayi Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett. “Warning: spoiler.
Let the good times roll,” Musk, 51, tweeted early Friday morning after closing on the Twitter acquisition Thursday night. “I’m going to be more into it today,” Musk said in response to a tweet by a user named ‘Catturd,’ who tweeted, that he will tweet the message “every day to see if anything changes. As of now, I’m still shadowbanned, ghostbanned, searchbanned, and 1200 followers removed by Twitter today – as usual. Nothing has changed – I’ll report back tomorrow.” Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” criticized Twitter’s leadership and its moderation policy.
“At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office,” according to a report in the New York Times. The closing of the deal removes a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for most of the year, commented. After initially agreeing to buy the company out in April, Musk spent months trying to back out of the deal, first citing concerns about the number of bots on the platform and later allegations made by a company whistleblower. Agrawal, 38, was appointed CEO of Twitter in November last year after the social network’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down.
A graduate of IIT Bombay and Stanford, Agrawal joined Twitter more than a decade ago when the company had fewer than 1,000 employees. “Agrawal, who was named CEO of Twitter last year, has been at loggerheads” with Musk “publicly and privately” over the takeover in recent months, the NYT report said. Musk also “picked on” Gadde, 48, and “criticized her for her role in making content moderation decisions at the company,” he added.
With former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account permanently suspended in January last year, Hyderabad-born Gadde was at the forefront of the dramatic decision taken days after an attempted uprising by pro-Trump supporters at the US Capitol. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone thanked Agrawal, Segal and Gadde for their “massive contribution” to the business. “Thank you @paraga, @vijaya and @nedsegal for the joint post on Twitter.
Tremendous talents, all and all beautiful people!” Stone tweeted. Musk arrived at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday and met with engineers and advertising executives. Musk also updated his Twitter handle to “Chief Twit.” He promised to transform Twitter by loosening the service’s content moderation rules, making its algorithm more transparent and supporting subscriber businesses, as well as laying off employees. In April, Twitter accepted Musk’s proposal to buy the social media service and take its private ownership.
But Musk soon began to cast doubt on his intentions to honor the deal, claiming the company failed to adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the service. When Musk said he was ending the deal, Twitter sued the billionaire, claiming he “refuses to live up to his obligations to Twitter and its shareholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.” In early October, Musk said he wanted to pursue the acquisition of Twitter at the original price of $54.20 per share if the social messaging service dropped its lawsuit. Twitter’s lawyers said that “Tesla’s CEO’s proposal is an invitation to further malpractices and delays.”
A Delaware Chancery Court judge ultimately ruled that Musk has until Oct. 28 to finalize the deal with Twitter or face a lawsuit. On Thursday, Musk wrote a memo to assure advertisers that the social messaging service would not change on a “free-for-all”. a hellscape where anything can be said without consequence!” “The reason I bought Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital square where a wide range of beliefs can be discussed in a healthy way without resorting to violence,” Musk said in a statement.
“There is currently a great danger that social media will split into far-right and far-left echo chambers, generating more hatred and dividing our society.” The New York Stock Exchange said Friday that trading in Twitter’s stock had been suspended, citing the “effective merger” as the reason. Musk’s plans to increase Twitter’s value could include cutting its workforce, something he has previously hinted at. Previous reports suggested he planned to lay off 75 percent of employees, though he reportedly told Twitter employees this week that was not the case.
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