Welp, it’s official: after cold feet and a court intervention, Elon Musk has finally acquired Twitter in his controversial AUD$68 billion deal with the platform. In news that will be shocking to no one, hell has already broken loose.
According to Reuters, Musk fired Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde pretty much the moment the deal closed. The New York Times reported general counsel Sean Edgett was also fired.
Why does this feel like a new king has ascended to the throne and replaced the royal council with his own people? Are we in an episode of Game of Thrones?!
Agrawal and Segal were actually in Twitter’s headquarters at the time the deal was closed and were reportedly escorted out by security, which is some weird power trip shit if you ask me. Musk couldn’t have just let them walk out on their own?! I imagine the whole ordeal was awkward for any security guards who actually knew the people they now had to kick out of the building.
In terms of the dark crevices of Twitter itself, edgelords have already begun dropping slurs and posting hate-speech to celebrate Musk’s plans for a less regulated space. Proving his critics right.
Now would be a good time to have a head of trust and safety to manage the influx of nazi trolls coming on to Twitter. Oh right, Elon just fired her. Expect this place to devolve into a cess pit over the coming weeks.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) October 28, 2022
ICYMI, Elon Musk has been pretty open about the fact he plans to transform Twitter’s rules around restricted speech and bullying to be more lax because of “freedom of speech”.
Those of marginalised groups saw right through the freedom of speech BS though and realised this meant they would no longer be safe from bigotry and trolling once Musk took over the platform.
The concerns reached investors and advertises too, who obvs didn’t want their ads displayed next to slurs. I mean, what about brand safety? Which is clearly more important to Musk than, like, human being safety because he tweeted to advertisers specifically on Thursday that the space wasn’t going to become a “free-for-all hellscape”.
Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” he said.
How wrong he was.
The billionaire has enough money to end world poverty three times over but decided to spend it on buying an app instead? It truly is dark times.
