The bird is freed.
That was the first tweet sent by Elon Musk since he officially became the company’s new owner at midnight.
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
In his first 24 hours in charge, Musk (as many expected) fired CEO Parag Agrawal along with the company’s chief financial officer, general counsel and its head of legal policy, trust and safety, according to media reports.
Musk also took the step to have Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) employees visit Twitter’s offices to review its code and meet with product managers. Twitter employees were barred from editing any code as of noon PT on Friday.
READ: Elon Musk fires Twitter top executives after closing $44 billion deal - reports
Now that the bird is freed, to burrow Musk’s phrase, where does it go from here? The first potential controversy is already brewing: how many of the company’s 7,500 employees will be let go, and whether those at are will receive compensation.
Twitter’s compensation program vests on Tuesday and employees could be owed a total of more than $100 million, according to reports. Musk agreed to make those payments in cash as part of his deal to buy the company.
However, according to reporting from DealBook, Musk is considering laying off employees en masse before Tuesday in an attempt to get out of making those payments.
Then, there’s the matter of content moderation. It is widely anticipated that Musk will reinstate the account of Donald Trump, but employees warn that the issue is larger than any individual figure.
According to reporting from Reuters, current and former employees fear that Musk will gut the company’s trust and safety team, which they say would lead to an avalanche of hate speech and even illegal content such as child porn.
Musk has called for Twitter to become a “digital public square” as recently as Thursday in an open letter to advertisers, but that potentially puts him at odds with the European Union regulations that require corporations to be aggressive in removing illegal content or face significant fines.
In response to Musk’s inaugural tweet as Twitter’s head man, EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted, "In Europe, the bird flies by our rules."
How we got here
In April, Musk revealed that he held a 9% stake in Twitter and later that month made an offer to buy the company for $54.20 per share ($44 billion). That represented a 38% premium at the time.
Twitter accepted the offer, but in May, Musk raised a stink (albeit in emoji form) over concerns about the number of fake accounts on the platform. By July, he officially wanted out of the deal, arguing that Twitter made "false and misleading representations” about fake accounts on its platform.
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Musk then sued Twitter and Twitter sued back, but as the possibility of deposition drew near earlier this month, Musk blinked and agreed to buy Twitter at the $44 billion price tag.
Now, the bird is freed, with users and shareholders alike along for the ride.
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow him on Twitter @andrew_kessel