On Friday (October 28), Tesla CEO Elon Musk fired top executives of Twitter Inc. including CEO Parag Agrawal and its legal Head Vijaya Gadde, reported Reuters.
The development came immediately after Musk took over the ownership of the micro-blogging platform on October 28. Besides Agrawal and Gadde, the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ned Segal was also fired for misleading the Tesla CEO and the investors about fake accounts on Twitter.
Citing sources, Reuters reported that Parag Agrawal and Ned Segal were ‘escorted out’ of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco after the $44-billion deal came to fruition. Elon Musk tweeted, “the bird is freed”.
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
Elon Musk had vowed to eliminate spam bots from the micro-blogging site, protect Twitter from becoming an eco chamber for hate and division and make algorithms open-sourced.
In April, it was reported that Gadde was all set to lose her $17 million-a-year job as Musk expressed no confidence in the top management of Twitter. The Tesla CEO had taken potshots at her for censoring the critical ‘Hunter Biden story.’
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
She also played a vital role in terminating ex-President Donald Trump’s account on Twitter. In an article, Politico had reported that Gadde broke down in tears after learning about the possibility of a change in ownership of the micro-blogging platform.
In 2018, Twitter founder ack Dorsey stoked a massive controversy after he was seen holding an anti-Brahmin placard, which read ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy.’ Dorsey was accompanied by Vijaya Gadde along with the poster’s designer, Thenmozhi Soundararajan.
Vijaya Gadde fired from Twitter.
— Adi Arya (@adi__arya) October 28, 2022
She has close ties with Indian Leftists.
Look at her, posing for “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” with Barkha Dutt in Twitter HQ. pic.twitter.com/scvfjZr1py
Following outrage on social media, Vijaya Gadde ‘profusely’ apologised to people for hurting their statements.
Events leading up to the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk
On Thursday (October 27), Elon Musk visited Twitter headquarters, carrying a ceramic sink. He shared a video of his entry with the caption “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
“Let that sink in” is an English phrase used to ask someone to realize the importance of a statement, or event. Musk has also changed his Twitter bio to ‘Chief Twit’, and had added ‘Twitter HQ’ as the location. He had earlier shared that buying Twitter was the first step towards making X, the everything App.
Meeting a lot of cool people at Twitter today!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
In a note addressed to Twitter advertisers, he shared his motivation behind purchasing Twitter and his thoughts about advertisements on social media. Musk said that he bought Twitter to help humanity, not to make money, and not because it was easy.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because 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,” he wrote.
Musk had said that despite his goal of serving the humanity, content moderation on the platform will remain. “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences,” he said.
