Elon Musk has completed his takeover of Twitter Inc. and fired several company executives.
After the $44 billion deal was finalized on Thursday, October 27, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal, along with Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top legal counsel and policy executive, and Sean Edgett, its acting general counsel.
Late Thursday night, Musk tweeted, “the bird is freed,” and updated his Twitter bio to read, “Chief Twit.”
A Security and Exchange Commission filing on Friday confirmed that the deal has closed and Twitter is now part of Musk’s X Holdings I, Inc., meaning that the company’s stock will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on November 8.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder documented his arrival at the company’s headquarters on Wednesday, tweeting a video of himself entering the building while carrying a sink along with the caption, “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”
Musk has previously expressed a commitment to freedom of speech, identifying himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
Thus, many people have speculated that Musk’s takeover of the platform would result in significant changes regarding content moderation and reinstating previously banned accounts— particularly former President Donald Trump and Ye, the rapper and fashion mogul previously known as Kanye West, who is a personal friend of Elon Musk.
On Monday, Musk tweeted a meme featuring himself, Trump, and Ye as the three musketeers captioned, “In retrospect, it was inevitable.” However, that tweet has since been deleted.
No major changes are likely to be made any time soon, according to Musk.
“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” he tweeted on Friday morning. “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”
Some confusion was caused by the apparent restoration of Ye’s account, but Musk said, “Ye’s account was restored by Twitter before the acquisition. They did not consult with me or inform me.”
The rapper and entrepreneur’s account was frozen after one of his tweets was flagged for alleged anti-Semitism on October 8.
Donald Trump’s Twitter account received a permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” following the events of January 6, 2021.
Posting on his own social media platform, Truth Social, the former president said, “I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country.”
“Twitter must now work hard to rid itself of all the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly,” Trump continued. “It will be much smaller, but better. I LOVE TRUTH!”
Musk has previously said that Twitter’s suspension of Donald Trump was “a morally bad decision” and “flat-out wrong.”
“I do not think it was correct to ban Donald Trump,” he said while speaking at the Financial Times Future of the Car summit in May. “I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
Musk went on to express a distaste for permanent bans altogether, saying, “If there are tweets that are wrong and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension — a temporary suspension — is appropriate, but not a permanent ban.”
He has also expressed a disdain for Twitter’s dependence on advertising. His recent open letter addressed to advertisers suggests that some changes to the site’s business model, perhaps through paid subscriptions, are on the horizon.
