Elon Musk Twitter boss, fires Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal, policy chief Vijaya Gadde

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 28

Billionaire Elon Musk finally completed his acquisition of Twitter for a whopping $44 billion and started off as the social media giant’s owner by firing its top executives, including Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.

Musk walked into the Twitter headquarters with a grin, carrying a porcelain sink. He later tweeted: “Let that sink in”. He changed his Twitter profile description to “Chief Twit”.

The owner of spacecraft company SpaceX and automotive major Tesla then proceeded to fire all top executives whom he had accused of misleading him and investors over the number of fake accounts on Twitter.

‘Overpriced’ deal

• Musk buys Twitter for USD 44 bn
• Overpaid 10 times its value: Sources
• Doesn’t have too many active users

Agrawal and Gadde were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. They were escorted out by security guards soon after Musk fired them.

“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences,” he said in an open letter to advertisers, adding Twitter won’t become an echo chamber for hate and division. “The bird is freed,” Musk tweeted after completing the $44 billion acquisition on Thursday. There was little clarity though over how he would achieve the ambitions outlined for Twitter, including fewer limits on content that can be posted, minimising spam bots and making public the algorithms that determine how the content is presented. Elon Musk claimed he bought Twitter to “try to help humanity, whom I love.”

India as well as European regulators were the first to raise the flag. “Our rules and laws for intermediaries remain the same regardless of who owns the platforms,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology.

“The takeover doesn’t change the fact that Twitter must abide by the European Union’s Digital Services Act. In Europe, the bird will fly by our EU rules,” said EU official Thierry Breton.

Some were unhappy over the social media giant falling in the hands of Musk. “Twitter already knows our personalities dangerously well due to its pervasive surveillance,” said European Parliament MP Patrick Breyer who thinks Twitter will become a “super app” for money transfers to ride-hailing.

Twitter’s worry is that despite its popularity with the elite worldwide, it doesn’t have too many active users who can promote business. The few heavy hitters account for less than 10 per cent of users, but generate 90 per cent of tweets and 50 per cent of its revenue.

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