Elon Musk fires top Twitter executives — hours after acquisition
Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla Inc., has sacked three top Twitter executives.
The development is coming less than a day after completing the acquisition of Twitter, and also after Musk promised not to fire 75 percent of Twitter staff.
The top executives sacked include; Parag Agrawal, chief executive officer; Ned Segal, chief financial officer; and Vijaya Gadde, the firm’s top legal and policy executive.
One of the executives, Gadde, was said to have been fired for playing a major role in the ban of Donald Trump, former president of the United States of America, from using Twitter.
In January 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Trump from the platform, following the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
The company had said it decided after the January 6 riot “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
At the time, Trump had more than 80 million followers on the platform.
Responding to the ban, Trump had said he would not return to Twitter even if his account is reinstated but would remain on his own social media platform, Truth Social.
However, in May, the new Twitter owner, Musk said if he successfully acquires Twitter, he would reverse the platform’s ban on Trump.
According to the billionaire, it was a “mistake” for the microblogging platform to permanently ban the former president.
Meanwhile, after closing the deal on Twitter’s buyout, Musk said his decision to acquire the platform was for humanity, adding that most speculations were wrong.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” he had said.
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