Elon Musk completes $44 billion takeover of Twitter
The world's richest man took control of the social media platform and immediately began sweeping changes, including mass layoffs.
Elon Musk completed his turbulent $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Thursday, taking control of one of the world's most influential social media platforms and setting in motion a rapid and chaotic overhaul.
The deal ended months of drama. Musk had agreed to buy the company in the spring, then spent the summer trying to back out, accusing Twitter of misrepresenting the number of fake accounts on the platform. Twitter sued to force him to honour the agreement, and with a trial looming, Musk relented and closed the purchase at the original price.
He wasted no time asserting control. On his first day in charge he fired the chief executive and other top leaders, and within days he began cutting roughly half of the company's workforce. He declared himself a "free speech absolutist" and signalled plans to loosen content moderation, overhaul the verification system and reinstate previously banned accounts.
The changes alarmed advertisers, many of whom paused their spending amid uncertainty over the platform's direction and worries about a rise in harmful content. Musk, who also led the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX, insisted the platform was essential to public debate and promised to make it profitable.
The takeover concentrated enormous influence over global online discourse in the hands of a single, mercurial billionaire, and the upheaval that followed would keep the company in the headlines for months to come.