Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk officially took over Twitter Inc. on Thursday night, and he has already fired top executives from the company.

It is reported that Musk fired Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. Musk had accused these executives of misleading both himself and other Twitter investors with the number of fake accounts.

Former Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal

Musk will reportedly become Twitter’s interim CEO.

After acquiring the social media company for $44 billion, Musk tweeted, “The bird is freed.”

Right after the deal closed and Musk had ownership of the company, Agrawal and Segal were escorted out of the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Agrawal will leave his position as CEO, which he held for just under a year, with $38.7 million. Gadde was paid $12.5 million for her firing, according to Insider. Segal, who was responsible for banning Donald Trump from the platform, was awarded a whopping $25.4 million, and former CCO Personette is expected to receive $11.2 million.

Overall, not a bad deal for the former executives.

As the new chief of Twitter, or, as Musk referred to himself, the “Chief Twit,” Musk has claimed that he wants to open up the platform to freedom of speech and allow everyone’s voice to be heard without being silenced if the message doesn’t fit a set, pre-established agenda that the Twitter stakeholders agree with.

Musk recently released a statement in which he says that he wants to develop Twitter into a “common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.” He also stated that he chose to buy Twitter to “try and help humanity.”

While he does want to promote the First Amendment of Americans, Musk clarifies that he does not want to allow Twitter to descend into a “free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.” Rather, he wants an inviting space where people are free to have discussions, expand their breadth of knowledge, and choose what content they would like to see as part of their personal experience.

Musk’s next move as Twitter CEO will be to re-institute users who have been given lifetime bans, including President Trump. Whether Trump will take the opportunity to restore his account, though, remains unknown at this point, as he seems to favor the social network platform Truth Social.

 

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