This is for real. After months of legal drama, bad meme, and will-they-or-won't-they-chaos to put your favorite rom-com to shame, Musk has closed his acquisition of Twitter. According to a number of outlets, Musk sealed the deal on Thursday night, taking the company private and ousting a number of executives.
Ned Segal, head of legal, policy, and trust, and Sean Edgett, general counsel, were all fired by Musk on Thursday. It is still an aggressive and abrupt day one move, but it was inevitable given his history with Musk. It was no surprise that Gadde was one of the first to leave. The top policy executive at Musk's company was accused of left wing bias over her role in politically charged decision making, which led to a wave of racist hate and harassment.
It has been a difficult road to take private on the social networking site. When he bought 9.2% of the company in April, Musk was flirting with the idea of owning the entire company. He didn't stop at that point. Less than a week later, the CEO of the two companies declared his intent to buy the social network. Musk pulled out all the stops to get out of the deal and landed the parties in the Delaware Court of Chancery. After enduring some embarrassing pre- trial discovery and facing a fast approaching date for his deposition, Musk decided to follow through.
It is not clear why Musk changed his mind and agreed to buy the social networking site. There is a chance that Musk and his legal team read the tea leaves before the trial. The lawsuit was filed to get Musk to follow through with the deal. The number of automated accounts on the platform is important for advertisers and brands who want human eyeballs on their paid ads.
The Delaware Chancery Court Judge made it clear that she wasn't here to laugh at Musk's crazy antics. The judge only agreed to allow Musk to close the deal if he was able to kill the trial. If he missed the deadline, we would look at a new trial date in November.
It is not clear what direction Musk will take the platform on the first day of ownership. The chaotic and often contradictory billionaire has in the past promised to restore former President Trump's account, rid the platform of all automated bots, and promote it as a neutral ground square.
In reality, it is a platform that is struggling yet incredibly prominent, one where heads of state and hardcore porn frequently intermix, and one that has finally begun to introduce improvements to its products and policies. It's difficult to imagine how he can accomplish any of his goals while potentially decimating the company's workforce, so it's not clear if Musk will turn back the clock on those experiments or see some through. If Musk were to lay off a third or half of the staff, it would still cost thousands of workers their jobs.
Musk wrote a letter to advertisers reassuring them that they would not be affected by the moderation and platform safety efforts that he had talked about. He backpedaled on his promise to make the site a free-for-all hellscape.
We don't know what the future holds for one of the world's biggest social networks but we do know that Musk has accomplished what once was unthinkable, taking control ofTwitter for $44 billion There is a million questions about what the platform is worth, what it is for and what, exactly, he plans to do with it now that the saga is over.
The story is developing.
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