After months of negotiating South Africa-born entrepreneur, Elon Musk has now bought Twitter and already ousted three top employees.
According to the Independent, Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Vijaya Gadde, three of the company’s top executives have been fired.
Sources say Vijaya Gadde played a key role in removing Donald Trump from the platform.
To herald in his new deal, the billionaire entrepreneur who is a leading advocate for free speech, updated his bio on the platform to “Chief Twit” and tweeted: “the bird is freed.”
Mr Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist,” has in the past been critical of Twitter’s moderation policies and the news of his takeover is being welcomed by free speech activists across the world.
Musk has said he believes in “absolute free speech” and suggested he would allow previously suspended and often controversial figures, including former US president Donald Trump, to return to the platform.
Mr Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter in January 2021 following the attack by his supporters on the Capitol building in Washington. At the time Twitter said it wanted to “avoid the risk that his tweets would incite further violence.”
However, Mr Trump has said he won’t be reactivating his account – preferring instead to post on his own platform Truth Social.
As part of Musk’s plans for Twitter, he has also spoken of removing all spam and bot accounts from the site, and using Twitter as part of a so-called “everything app” called X, where users will be able to access a range of services in one place.
