Elon Musk has taken ownership of Twitter with brutal efficiency by firing top executives but providing little clarity over how he will achieve the ambitions he has outlined for the influential social media platform.
Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, two other executives and the general counsel, according to people familiar with the decision.
Also leaving are Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy and trust; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, who joined Twitter in 2017; and Sean Edgett, who has been general counsel at Twitter since 2012.
Elon Musk who became Twitter’s new owner on Thursday, had accused the top executives misleading him and providing little clarity over how he will achieve the lofty ambitions he has outlined for the influential social media platform.
The CEO of electric car maker Tesla has said he wants to “defeat” spam bots on Twitter, make the algorithms that determine how content is presented to its users publicly available, and prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division, even as he limits censorship.
The 51-year-old billionaire had until 28 October, to complete his $44 billion acquisition deal or risk facing a trial in November.
In April, Musk had expressed interest to buy the microblogging site, but later retracted his offer in May.
He then again changed his mind after Twitter took legal action to force Musk to complete the deal.
Musk has been meeting with Twitter employees this week and is expected to address them on Friday.
Meanwhile, the social media platform’s shares have been suspended from trading on Friday, according to the New York Stock Exchange’s website.
Earlier, Musk reasoned that he bought Twitter to help humanity and wanted “civilisation to have a common digital town square.”
“There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” Musk further added.
“In the relentless pursuit of clicks, much of traditional media has fueled and catered to those polarized extremes, as they believe that is what brings in the money, but, in doing so, the opportunity for dialogue is lost,” Musk said.
Earlier this week, the world’s richest man tweeted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco carrying a kitchen sink with the caption: “Let that sink in!”
He also changed his Twitter profile to read “Chief Twit”.