Elon Musk acquires Twitter, fires three execs

The celebrity CEO gained control of Twitter on Thursday night. Then, he fired three of its top executives, according to anonymous sources talking to the Associated Press, Reuters, and CNN. The three removed executives are CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde, according to the sources. While the deal was still in the making, Musk had claimed Twitter’s leaders were misrepresenting the number of fake accounts left on the social media platform. Late Thursday, a Delaware judge gave Musk and Twitter until Friday to seal the $44 billion deal. Musk tweeted, “the bird has been freed,” which many think is a reference to Twitter’s logo.

What’s Musk going to do now? Many investment analysts, such as Altimeter’s Omar Akhtar, expected the staff shakeup at Twitter, but are unsure in what direction Musk will now take the company. Earlier on Thursday, Musk said that he is buying the platform to help humanity and that he doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape.” Beyond that, Musk—who also heads up SpaceX and Tesla—has provided little information about his vision for changing the social media company.

Dig deeper: Read Mary Jackson’s report about how social media leads some teen girls into transgenderism.