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The most expensive dismissal.

 Elon Musk became Twitter’s owner late Thursday as his $44 billion deal to take over the company officially closed, marking a new era for one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. As one of his first moves, he fired several longtime top Twitter executives, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive issues. One of the people said that Sean Edgett, the company’s general counsel, was also pushed out. The top executives were hastily escorted out of the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Musk’s late Thursday moves to signal his intentions to put his stamp on Twitter firmly. Musk has publicly criticized the company’s outgoing management over product decisions and content moderation, as well as saying he would restore former president Donald Trump’s account. Still, «Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!» Musk tweeted Thursday in a post offering assurances to advertisers. He showed up at the company’s offices unexpectedly Wednesday, carrying a sink to suggest that the message that he would become owner needed to «sink in,» according to a photo he posted to his more than 100 million Twitter followers.

Musk has suggested that he wants to loosen standards for policing harmful content such as misinformation and hate speech. Some right-wing influencers celebrated Musk’s ownership on Thursday night and have seen their follower counts balloon since he announced his takeover. Musk has repeatedly criticized the company and supported online attacks against individual executives. Musk represents a different kind of owner than Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey or his now-rival Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook. They generally try to stay politically neutral.

Musk has often styled himself as a moderate throughout his Twitter bid, but he also announced that he would vote Republican in the 2022 midterms. He was leaning toward voting for Republican Florida Gov. Those hopes were quickly dashed with the firings of longtime top executives who had commanded the trust of existing staff. But his relationship with top executives rapidly went south. Agrawal took exception to Musk’s April 9 tweet that asked, «Is Twitter dying?» according to text message exchanges revealed in court documents.

Musk laid out his plan in subsequent messages. Roughly two weeks later, Musk and Twitter struck a deal. Then, in an onstage interview, Musk discussed his plans. Twitter executives were predicting internally that the company would be far off track from revenue targets in 2022, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe proceedings.

Twitter’s board was planning to make «drastic» cuts to staff and other services, including cutting roughly a quarter of the budget for third-party contractors who moderate content for the company, significant amounts to infrastructure and data centres, and firing thousands of people to shave at least $700 million off labour costs, according to the interviews and documents.

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