Elon Musk is finally answerable for Twitter, reports suggest tonight. And he’s already fired several top executives.
The controversial $44 billion deal, which in recent months seemed as if it could fall through, closed on Thursday night just ahead of a court-imposed deadline, CNBC’s David Faber said in a tweet.
“Elon Musk is now in charge at Twitter,” Faber wrote, adding that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and chief financial officer Ned Segal had “left the corporate’s HQ” in San Francisco and “is not going to be returning.”
Elon Musk is now in charge at Twitter. I'm told former CEO @paraga and CFO @nedsegal have left the corporate's HQ and is not going to be returning because the Musk era begins.
— David Faber (@davidfaber) October 28, 2022
Hours after Musk showed up at Twitter’s headquarters carrying a sink in a bizarre stunt that he tweeted with the quip, “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in,” the billionaire entrepreneur posted a message to advertisers explaining why he desired to buy the corporate.
“The explanation I acquired Twitter is because it’s important to the long run of civilization to have a typical digital town square, where a wide selection of beliefs will be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” he said. “There may be currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right-wing and much left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.
“Within the relentless pursuit of clicks, much of traditional media has fueled and catered to those polarized extremes, as they consider that’s what brings in the cash, but, in doing so, the chance for dialogue is lost,”
He continued: “That’s the reason I purchased Twitter. I didn’t do it because it might be easy. I didn’t do it to earn more money. I did it to attempt to help humanity, whom I like. And I accomplish that with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our greatest efforts, is a really real possibility.”
Friday’s development brings to an in depth a six-month squabble between Musk and the social media company.
Twitter accepted Musk’s offer to accumulate the corporate in April, but a short time later, Musk appeared to get cold feet, claiming Twitter had didn’t accurately reveal the number of faux, bot, and spam accounts on the platform.
Musk tried to tug out of the deal, prompting Twitter to take legal motion in a bid to force it through.
Now, staff at Twitter might be waiting to find out about any possible job losses that might hit the corporate. Recent reports suggested Musk intended to put off around 75% of its employees, reducing the headcount from 7,500 to simply 2,000, though on Thursday, the brand new owner reportedly said that such a big reduction was not a part of his plan.
Nevertheless it’s not only staff who’re keen to search out out about incoming changes. Twitter’s community of greater than 235 million every day lively users can even be keen to see how the platform changes. For instance, earlier comments by Musk suggest he may reduce content moderation, which many fear will allow more extreme and troublesome content onto the platform.
Nevertheless, in his message to advertisers on Thursday, he acknowledged that Twitter “cannot grow to be a free-for-all hellscape, where anything will be said with no consequences,” suggesting moderation might not be relaxed in spite of everything.
Editors’ Recommendations
