After spending months Tesla founder Elon Musk is seeking to undo the deal he struck and will pay $44 billion to own Twitter, in honor of an agreement struck in April. The news was confirmed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission this morning after a day of drama on Twitter.
late yesterday, The Washington Post reported that several top executives had been fired, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief adviser Sean Edgett and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, who Musk has suggested favored liberal political views. Reuters reported that the executives were escorted from Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Musk changed his bio to read “Chief Twit” and tweeted, “the bird is free.” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone thanked the three executives for their “collective contribution” to the social network. Later, Segal updated his bio to “former CFO and current fan” of Twitter.
The deal completes Musk’s metamorphosis from Twitter superuser, to vocal critic, to owner. The platform and the company behind it seem poised for big changes. The entrepreneur has said he would allow former US President Donald Trump back on the platform and accused Twitter’s moderation policies of creating a perception of liberal bias. In text messages released during his bid to get out of the deal, Musk discussed staff cuts.
Musk first offered to buy Twitter in April after buying some 10 percent of the company’s stock and trying and then refusing to join the board. Twitter’s board initially wanted to resist a takeover, but announced later in the month that it had accepted Musk’s offer to buy the company for $44 billion, in a deal that included a $1 billion termination fee if either party. chooses to run away.
Almost immediately, the company lost some of its top talent. Musk made it clear that he wanted big changes at Twitter, which, despite its cultural influence in politics and media, lags behind other social networks in scale and profitability.
Musk said he was concerned about political bias and wanted Twitter to support “freedom of speech” by limiting only posts that break the law, a policy that would allow hate speech and other content that is currently banned in the US. Activists, company insiders and some minority shareholders began to worry that Twitter under Musk would become a haven for trolls and intimidation.
Gadde, who led Twitter’s work on moderation, was ravaged by online abuse after Musk tweeted a meme with her image implying that she made sure that the platform’s content moderation favored liberal views. (Twitter’s own research has found that the platform actually favors right-wing politicians and media).
Musk’s passion for Twitter waned weeks after the deal was agreed, in the wake of a wide-ranging stock market sell-off. The entrepreneur claimed the deal was “temporarily on hold”, alleging that the company had lied about the number of bots in figures disclosed in financial files.
