The world’s richest person – known for his quirky sense of humour – on Friday confirmed the takeover of one of the biggest global social media platforms without an official statement in his first reaction. “The bird is freed,” wrote Elon Musk on Twitter – the microblogging platform he now owns following a $44 billion deal that has been completed following months of controversy. The developments come after six months of public and legal wrangling.
His takeover follows exits of top executives; and Indian-origin Parag Agrawal – who was the Twitter CEO – is one among them. Even as the deal – the biggest the world of tech has witnessed in the recent times – sees the light of the day, there is little clarity about the course the social media website, which has hundreds of millions of users globally, would now be taking.
Preventing the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division is one of the goals of the Tesla chief. He also aims to “defeat” spam bots on Twitter and make the algorithms that determine how content is presented to its users publicly available, news agency Reuters reported. On Thursday, Musk, 51, had shared a video where he was seen carrying a sink to the Twitter headquarters as he said: “Let that sink in!”. He had changed his bio to “Chief Twit”.
Meanwhile, for the time being, Musk would continue to be the CEO. There is also speculation that he may reverse lifetime bans. He intends to do away with permanent bans on users because he doesn’t believe in lifelong prohibitions, Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter as saying.
