Elon Musk has forked out of his pocket a total of U$44Billion to successfully complete purchasing Twitter a social-media firm.
The completion of the deal brings to an end months of legal wrangling but it has prompted questions over the platform’s future direction.
He said he bought twitter because he wanted “civilisation to have a common digital town square” and said he planned to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform as a venue for free speech.
Musk has immediately fired some top executives as he ushers in a completely different direction. A number of top executives, including the boss, Parag Agrawal, have reportedly been fired.
Mr Agrawal and two other executives were escorted out of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Thursday evening.
Chief financial officer Ned Segal, and the firm’s top legal and policy executive, Vijaya Gadde, are leaving alongside Mr Agrawal, according to US media reports.
Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist”, has been critical of Twitter’s management and its moderation policies.
They clashed over the terms of the takeover, with Mr Musk accusing Twitter of providing misleading information about the firm’s user numbers.
He has also said he would reverse bans on suspended users, which could include former US President Donald Trump, who was excluded following the Capitol riot in January 2021.
At the time, Twitter said there was a risk Mr Trump would incite further violence. But Mr Musk has described the ban as “foolish”.
Earlier reports suggested 75% of staff at the social media company were set to lose their jobs but those reports were “inaccurate”, according to Ross Gerber, a shareholder in both Twitter and Mr Musk’s other company Tesla.
“There are a lot of talented people at Twitter, especially on the engineering side and they want to retain as much of that talent as possible,” Mr Gerber told media.
He said apart from cutting management, Musk might look to end projects “that aren’t going anywhere”.
