Elon Musk has formally taken over Twitter, triumphantly posting “the bird is freed” and immediately firing several top executives in what is being seen as his first power move. His next move will be to restore Twitter users who have been handed lifetime bans from the platform – among them former president Donald Trump. The Mail has more.
Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal, the Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and the top lawyer for the firm, Vijaya Gadde, were culled just hours after Musk finalised the $44 billion acquisition.
The platform’s co-founder Biz Stone quickly took to Twitter to thank them for their “collective contribution to Twitter”, adding “Massive talents, all, and beautiful humans each!”
Sean Edgett, the company’s General Counsel, and Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette were also pushed out – as the Tesla CEO set out to make his mark in his new position.
Musk himself will take over as CEO, a source told Bloomberg – although it may only be an interim role.
The fired Twitter executives were hastily shuttled from the building, sources told the Washington Post. Billionaire Musk is set to hold a company-wide town hall meeting on Friday.
Twitter’s engineers could no longer make changes to code as of noon Thursday in San Francisco, part of an effort to ensure that nothing about the product changed ahead of the deal closing,
In a securities filing on April 14th, Musk said he did not have confidence in Twitter’s management and initially vowed to sack 75% of the workforce when he formally bought the tech giant.
Agrawal, who has repeatedly clashed with Musk over the number of users Twitter has, will walk away from his job with $42 million, after being Chief Executive officer for just under a year.
His total compensation for 2021 was $30.4 million – largely in stock awards – after he was handed the top position following Jack Dorsey’s resignation last November. It’s currently unclear who will replace him, although there is speculation that Musk will take on the role as CEO himself.
Twitter’s former top lawyer Gadde, who earned $17 million in 2021, was reportedly in tears in April when Musk’s $44 billion takeover first came to light. She has now been paid out $12.5 million for her troubles, Insider said.
Ex-CFO Segal – who was the man behind Trump’s Twitter ban – also received the handsome sum of $25.4 million after being fired by Musk on Thursday evening.
And former CCO Personette was handed $11.2 million as part of Musk’s house clearance…
In the lead up to the South African’s buyout of the social media firm, the market positively reacted, with share prices visibly improving. They went up by 7.23% in the last five days and were up about 1% at $53.94 in early trading on Thursday. The stock has surged nearly 65% from a four-month low hit in July.
However, after Musk’s purchase, the the New York Stock Exchange’s website showed that Twitter shares would be suspended from trading.
The South African publicly criticised Twitter’s existing leadership team – in particular, attacking their policies on content moderation and censorship. He has also sparred with them over data on how many accounts were bots or spam.
Great news, obviously, giving hope for a freer Twitter that isn’t constantly waging war against whatever views have lately been branded “hate speech” or “disinformation” by the conformist woke set who seem to be in charge everywhere. It will be great to see some of the Covid and narrative dissidents who were consigned to Twitter heaven back on the platform bringing alternative points of view.
But will Musk be defeated by the censorious regulators and corporations who have recently been banding together to suppress whatever is currently blacklisted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the U.S. Democrats or other assorted authoritarian outfits?
His first big challenge may be navigating the EU’s totalitarian Digital Services Act, which requires internet companies operating in the EU to conform their editorial policies with the diktats of the illiberal and undemocratic European Commission. Musk’s hostage video from May, where he pledged loyally to obey the EU’s rules, was a worrying start.
Today @elonmusk and I wanted to share a quick message with you on platform regulation
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) May 9, 2022#DSA pic.twitter.com/nvP5FEXECY
Good luck, Elon.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Right on cue, the EU’s Internal Market Chief Thierry Breton has weighed in with the threat of regulation, tweeting: “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.” The EU clearly is not ashamed of its increasingly totalitarian form as it presumes to set the editorial policy of the internet.
👋 @elonmusk
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 28, 2022
In Europe, the bird will fly by our
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Meanwhile Paypal has quietly reintroduced the ‘erroneously’ instituted $2500 fine for whatever they deem punishable.
https://viewfromthewing.com/paypals-objectionable-terms-are-back-2500-fines-for-content-they-dont-like/
According to Will, they never removed it, just dropped the bit about “misinformation”.
They’d only ever have done this if they felt safe to weather the inevitable backlash. Which means they’re confident that their competition / alternatives (including high street banks) will soon be following suit.
The moron referenced in the stop press perfectly sums up what is wrong with democracy. Some jumped up little authoritarian t*sser, who believes himself to be above others, thinks he has a duty to censor speech and thought. What’s just as infuriating – I’m writing this while, literally, watching the knuckles on my fists turn white – are the 38.4K likes this buffoon has amassed (at the time of writing). These people, who think they are god-like, need to be reminded of their true place in the world – the rat-infested sewers of sh*t.
It sums up the state of public discourse. You have to agree 100%, or disagree 100% with any comment on any issue. But, more than that, you have to agree with everyone on ‘your side’ and hate everyone not on ‘your side.
Most of the ‘likes’, i’d wager, are people who haven’t thought at all about the issues of censorship at all, and whether it is a good thing or not. It is a comment made against Elon Musk, and Musk-man bad, like orange-man bad. The biggest hypocracy of the left (against some stiff competition..) is how they call out ‘hate’ but apparantly cannot see the hate in their own actions.
You mean the face of modern intolerance?
We are fast approaching or are already at the point of a complete breakdown of our legal systems.
Financial services companies decide they will regulate speech and no government will step in and act. Banks are instructed to freeze the bank accounts of perfectly legitimate companies- The Expose for one.
Pharmaceutical companies are now acting wholly outside the law and with government connivance.
Governments have been forcing “vaccine” mandates on populations in a clear breach of Human Rights legislation.
All NPI’s were violations of Human Rights.
The WHO Pandemic Treaty will be “,legally enforceable. Oh no it won’t, it can quite simply be ignored.
If Elon Musk sticks two fingers up to the wholly undemocratic and therefore barely legal EU I say good luck to him.
The true rule of law works both ways. Just because some unelected Orwellian micro buffoon thinks he can dictate does not mean he has to be obeyed.
If governments want to act illegally then the same right passes to the individual. I am not in the business of breaking the law but I have always been of the mind that the law is only what I deem reasonable, which probably explains why I have not complied these last three years.
F. ’em.
Amen.
Thank you.
This in spades.
Thanks.
Good post.
Fuck the lot of them.
Cheers.
Vive la resistance?
And time for a new Radio Luxembourg
This is radio Luxembourg
Well said Sir 👍
Well said, HP!
The Founding Fathers knew exactly what tyranny governments were capable of and thus inter alia the creation of the Second Amendment.
Some of the posts are good: –
Iranian woman ‘Don’t you agree with freedom?’
Reply ‘Freedom doesn’t mean doing and saying anything without any consequences’
Iranian woman ‘We are fighting Islamic Republic in Iran, they started with a similar logic.’
Probably bots…most of them are. I follow a Twitter that exposes bots..you would be amazed how many there are, and they nearly always follow ‘Officials’…for example 90% of Biden’s ‘followers’ are bots…I don’t imagine for a minute thousands of real people follow this dweeb!.?
Has the moron acted this way because he’s an unelected bureaucrat? Authority without accountability is never a pretty sight.
Musk should have retweeted the little fascist stating Twitter will now hold unelected technocrats such as this to account.
How many of those ‘likes’ are bots? It is clear that Twitter has been used as a means to enforce conformity of views, will pile ins orchestrated on those who deviate in any way. Twitter is a toilet – I hope Musk will flush it.
Sadly we have seen what the price of censorship is, the former Twitter managers have walked away with a lot of money and no sanctions for their repulsive behaviour.
We really need to cull these fascists who want to ban or curtail freedom of speech.
They’re extreme authoritarians, I don’t think the label “fascist” is accurate.
It’s a sign of the times and the influences that we are under that we might have something negative to say about this. Actually, it is rather good news, isn’t it?
How so?
Anything that opens up censored channels to the uninformed is welcome.
Who the f**k is Thierry Breton?
These EU technocrats sound ever more like gangsters protecting their turf.
These EU technocrats are just gangsters protecting their turf.
Come the revolution Breton will be the first one up against the wall.
A bpity, the Bretons used to be rather good at resisting tyranny.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586059953311137792
Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.
No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.
Remarkable how many people regard Musk as anything other than just another crook.
People really do yearn for a saviour, don’t they?
Some do, but not all of us. There’s a line in an Eagles song “they end up following the wrong gods home”
Indeed.
There are no saviours. It’s all in the mind of man.
The Bird is only as free as the dictators in the EU allow it to be free.
The solution seems straightforward enough to me. Simply remove or take actions suggesting that’s what’s afoot to remove all app and data from physical servers under EU jurisdiction. Set up the capacity to handle the bandwidth elsewhere.
Then if EU wants to censor Twitter in whole or in part for EU peeps, they have to do it themselves, like the commies of China do.
That would be delicious.
The DSA threatens massive fines on ‘delinquent’ internet platforms with more than 45-million users. But how does an EU court fine a company established in California? How does the juridictional thing work? Honest question, can someone enlighten me?