Elon Musk completes Twitter purchase and fires top company executives – BBC News

Musk, the world’s richest person, has said that Twitter needs significant changes.

The closing of the operation ends a saga in which Musk offered to buy the company and then said he wanted to withdraw, before Twitter began legal action to compel the entrepreneur to complete the deal.

Musk tweeted Thursday that his interest in the platform No is by earn money.

The company’s shares they will stop trading on fridayaccording to the New York Stock Exchange website.

Musk maintained that he bought it to help humanity, saying he wanted “civilization to have a digital common square.”

On Wednesday, Musk had tweeted a video of him walking into Twitter headquarters in San Francisco with a kitchen sink with the caption: “Let it sink!” In English, the noun sink and the verb sink, and their conjugation “sink”, are the same word: sink.

He also changed his bio on Twitter and now says “Twit Boss.”

Many analysts argued that the price Musk is now paying for the company is too high given the drop in share prices in tech companies and Twitter’s struggle to attract users and grow.

In a recent conference call with investors, the Tesla founder said that Twitter is “an asset that has languished for a long time, but has incredible potential.”

“Although obviously other investors and I are paying too much for Twitter right now,” he continued.

Musk’s early investments in Twitter initially escaped public attention.

In January he began regular share purchases and by mid-March he had built up a 5% stake in the firm.

Musk said he plans to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform as a place for free speech.

But by mid-May, Musk, a prolific Twitter user, had begun to change his mind about the purchase, citing concerns that the number of fake accounts on the social network was higher than Twitter claimed.

In July, he said he no longer wanted to acquire the company. The previous owners, however, argued that the billionaire was legally bound to buy the company.

Twitter eventually filed a lawsuit to force him to honor the deal.

In early October, Musk revived his takeover plans for the company on the condition that legal proceedings be halted.

Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has criticized Twitter’s moderation policies and the news will be met with mixed feelings by Twitter users and employees.

Some users, particularly those on the US right, argue that conservative voices are censored on the platform, a charge Twitter denies.

Former President of the United States donald trump he remains banned from the platform, a decision Musk previously said was “dumb” and that he would reverse.

But others fear that relaxing moderation policies will allow hate speech to proliferate.

In Thursday’s tweet, directed at Twitter advertisers, Musk said the platform could not become a “free hell for all” and should be “warm and welcoming for all.”

As the owner of Twitter, Musk plans big changes for the staff. Although the billionaire denied that he would cut 75% of the staff in a meeting with employees, as reported by Bloomberg, working at Twitter from now on may become more difficult.

Tesla’s CEO has tweeted in the past that employees should anticipate “extreme” work ethic expectations.

The businessman has also published that among his plans for Twitter is “X, the app for everything“.

Some suggest that this could be something similar to the successful Chinese application WeChat, a kind of “superapp” that incorporates different services including messaging, social networking, payments and food ordering.

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