A few months after he completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, Elon Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal and two other executives, according to reports.
Musk appeared to acknowledge the takeover in a tweet Thursday night saying, “the bird is freed.”
Musk’s takeover, and the immediate firings of some of its top executives, now raise new questions for the future of the social media platform.
In addition to Agrawal, Musk on Thursday fired CFO Ned Segal and policy head Vijaya Gadde.
Musk also fired Sean Edgett, Twitter’s general counsel according to sources.
Musk has said he plans to rethink Twitter’s content moderation policies in service of a more maximalist approach to “free speech.”
The billionaire has also stated that he disagrees with Twitter’s policy of permanently banning users who persistently break its rules, which raises the prospect that several individuals who have already been banned from the site may reappear.
Musk met with staff members at Twitter’s San Francisco offices earlier this week. In an open letter to Twitter advertisers, he reassure them that the platform would adhere “to the laws of the land” and “be welcoming to all”
Musk allegedly told banks that reducing CEO and board stock compensation would bring Twitter closer to industry standards. According to Reuters, he cited the most recent profits of Meta and Pinterest as evidence that Twitter could considerably boost its profit margins.
His plans for monetisation include developing features to grow business revenue, by making use of viral tweets. Among his ideas is charging a fee for third-party websites to quote or embed a tweet by verified accounts.
In his earlier tweets, he had suggested a raft of changes including slashing Twitter blue premium’s subscription service. In another tweet he had deleted, he suggested reducing Twitter’s dependence on advertising for revenue
On Tuesday, Musk indicated that verification will cost $8 a month as part of an overhaul of the platform’s premium service, Twitter Blue.
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