By Ben Kerrigan-
Elon Musk has completed his $44bn (£38.1bn) takeover of Twitter, according to a number of media reports. Twitter’s chief executive and finance boss have reportedly left with immediate effect.
Musk’s take over concludes a series of disputes between himself and the giant social media platform to a close a saga that saw Mr Musk offer to buy the firm and then say he wanted to pull out before Twitter took legal action to force the world’s richest man to complete the deal.
Musk had previously said he had changed his mind about purchasing the company, but twitter insisted he was bound by legal obligations to complete the deal. The deadline for a solution before the beginning of a long bitter court battle was to run out today at 5pm. day. Musk had the choice of completing the deal or engaging in a legal battle.
He chose the former, with a little time to spare. And it looks as though Musk has wasted no time in getting started, with reports that several senior executives have already been fired.
Mr Musk said he bought it to help humanity and wanted “civilization to have a common digital town square”.
Earlier this week Mr Musk tweeted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco carrying a kitchen sink with the caption: “let that sink in!””.
Hate speech and misinformation experts will be on the lookout for the return of Donald Trump to the platform, as Elon Musk completes his acquisition of Twitter.
The social media site permanently removed Trump in January 2021, saying the former president’s tweets were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021”.
Musk vowed to reverse that ban earlier this year, calling Twitter “left-biased”, and on Thursday he reportedly sacked the executive responsible.
In April, he was revealed as Twitter’s largest shareholder, and by the end of the month a deal was finally reached to buy the company for $44bn (£38bn).
He said he planned to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform as a venue for free speech.
Musk’s initial change of mind about the deal related to concerns that the number of fake accounts on the platform was higher than Twitter claimed. In early October, Mr Musk revived his takeover plans for the company on the condition that legal proceedings were paused.
Mr Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist” has been critical of Twitter’s moderation policies and the news will be greeted with mixed feelings by Twitter users and employees.
Former US President Donald Trump remains banned from the platform – a decision Mr Musk has previously said was “foolish” and that he would reverse.
Others fear relaxing moderation policies would allow hate-speech to proliferate.
In a tweet addressed to Twitter advertisers Mr Musk said that the platform could not become a “free-for-all hellscape” and must be “warm and welcoming for all”.