Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter yesterday evening as his $44bn deal to take over the firm finally closed.
One of his first moves as owner was to fire several top Twitter executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety.
Sean Edgett, the company's general counsel, is also rumoured to have been pushed out. The top executives were escorted out of the firm's San Francisco headquarters last night.
Musk's first actions signal his intentions to significantly influence Twitter, having previously criticised the company's outgoing management over content moderation and product decisions.
Late last night, Musk tweeted: "the bird is freed".
He plans to hold a companywide town hall later today, as well as officially make Twitter private, dissolving the firm's current board of directors and ending public trading of the stock.
Musk's other plans for the firm include allowing former president Donald Trump back on the platform. Trump had been restricted from Twitter following his incitement of the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January last year.
This position has made many worry that Twitter could see a hard lean towards extremism with Musk at the helm, as he has also expressed support for the Babylon Bee, a far-right satire site that was suspended from Twitter for transphobia.
However, Musk tweeted yesterday: "Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!"
The closure ends a months-long legal saga that saw Musk undertake a hostile takeover of Twitter, only to attempt to pull out of the deal.
