He’s already fired the CEO and top executives.
After months of controversy and rumors the deal would fall through entirely, Elon Musk now owns Twitter.
He announced the $44 billion takeover on the platform, tweeting “the bird is freed”. He’s reportedly fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy head Vijaya Gadde already.
Here’s more on this development and what it could mean for one of the world’s biggest social media platforms.
Dodging a bullet
By completing the deal, Musk is avoiding a trial that had been due to kick off earlier this month. According to court documents, Twitter had said that it was investigating Musk’s “behavior” regarding the transaction. Twitter claimed that Musk’s legal team had failed to deliver draft letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a PowerPoint show to the Federal Trade Commission.
Musk had previously attempted to get out of the deal in July, claiming that Twitter had made “false and misleading statements” by exaggerating the number of spam and false bot accounts on the platform, thus violating the terms of their mutual purchase agreement.
Out with the old
There’s already speculation that Musk’s clear-out of Twitter’s senior executives is a prelude to mass redundancies. Ross Gerber, president and chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, and a shareholder in both Twitter and Tesla (which is also owned by Elon Musk), told the BBC that suggestions 75 percent of staff might be let go are “inaccurate.” He reportedly said that the original figure floated was closer to 50 percent — but that this would still depend on the proficiency of the staff.
“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,” he told the BBC. Gerber added that the cuts were likely to focus on management, starting with senior management, and would probably extend to those working on products that don’t have much of a future.
The company’s shares will be suspended from trading today, according to the New York Stock Exchange.
Rethinking the platform
Musk has made it clear that he has a low opinion of Twitter’s current content moderation policies, and wants to adopt a broader approach to “free speech” (a term he has misappropriated on numerous occasions in the past). He’s also said that he disagrees with permanent bans for users who repeatedly violate Twitter rules — leading to the question of whether he’ll allow past offenders who are currently banned, like former President Trump, back on the platform.
Trump has maintained that he won’t return, and that he’ll remain on his own social media platform, Truth social. The fate of that platform, and other right-wing social media entities like it, which sprung up in response to a perceived left-wing bias on Twitter, will now be called into question. Much of the point of these alternative platforms is to provide a forum to say things that would previously have violated Twitter’s community rules — like when Trump incited violence ahead of the Capitol riots. If those rules are relaxed, the market for them is likely to shrink.
A new forum for free speech?
Musk has repeatedly claimed to champion free speech, but his interpretations of the term have been decidedly shaky — and in regards to the internet, significantly less evolved than those of people who’ve been working in online content moderation for the last couple of decades.
As TechDirt has pointed out, Musk likes to refer to Twitter as the “new town square,” and says that as such, users should be able to speak freely “within the bounds of the law.” In actuality, the Internet itself is more so the town square. Twitter is just one of the establishments represented there, and in order for it to run smoothly, it needs tried-and-tested rules. In order for Twitter to earn and maintain the level of trust that Musk assumes will allow people to say what they want, the platform needs to impose a degree of order.
Musk’s claim that people should be able to speak freely according to the law is also tricky to stand up, given that the law is vastly different depending on the country users tweet from. Unhelpfully, Musk has also demonstrated again and again that he doesn’t understand what “hate speech” actually is.
Even according to his own uncertain principles, Musk is a proven hypocrite, when it comes to allowing people to speak freely. As CNN notes, many Tesla employees have alleged racism, sexism and other abuses, yet what they’re allowed to say about the company is heavily restricted.
Tesla has hidden information about the safety of its vehicles from public view, and Musk has a track record of attempting to control what’s written about himself and his companies. Once, after discovering a blog post that he felt was “rude,” he canceled the author’s Tesla order. When a teenager used publicly-available information to track Musk’s private jet on his Twitter feed, Musk tried to make him delete his account.
Why did Musk even want Twitter in the first place?
In public at least, Musk has claimed that his interest in Twitter is philosophical, rather than financial.
“This is not a way to make money,” Musk said in an interview after making his original purchase offer. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
Speaking to Katie Couric Media in April, Kara Swisher, an American journalist, New York Times op-ed writer, and host of the podcast host, Sway said: “He’s the richest person in the world. He likes it. Plus, he’s a great user of the product, and that’s a great thing. And no matter what, a lot of the board members just didn’t use the product.
He’s going to invest his own money in it. He’s putting his money at Tesla at risk, his stock at Tesla at risk, which is a really big risk because if the stock goes down, he’s going to hurt probably the greatest thing he’s ever done, which is to create Tesla. So, he clearly wants it.”
