Elon Musk Moves Swiftly to Put Imprint on Twitter After Taking Control

Mr. Musk’s $44 billion takeover, more than six months in the making, launches a new period of tumult for one of the world’s most influential platforms as he works to remake business and content practices that he has repeatedly criticized. The acquisition teed up a host of questions that could take months or years to answer about how Twitter will change in the hands of the world’s richest man, who has business interests in autos, rockets and other sectors stretching across the globe and who is one of the platform’s most prominent—and sometimes most provocative—users.

The most immediate changes, with the transfer of control late Thursday, came within Twitter itself. Mr. Musk immediately ousted Twitter Chief Executive

Parag Agrawal

and Chief Financial Officer

Ned Segal

after the deal closed, The Wall Street Journal reported. He also fired

Vijaya Gadde,

Twitter’s top legal and policy executive, and

Sean Edgett,

general counsel.

Some of the firings started before the paperwork to close the deal was completed, a person familiar with the matter said. The departures made for a frenetic and destabilizing afternoon, the person said, even as the question of the billionaire’s ownership seemed to be settled. The person said he walked away from the monthslong process like a survivor stumbling off the battlefield.

Representatives for Twitter didn’t comment.

The takeover follows months of uncertainty as Mr. Musk repeatedly changed his mind. The ultimate reversal came Oct. 3, when Mr. Musk said he planned to go through with the deal he had just spent months trying to exit, two weeks before a scheduled trial in Delaware Chancery Court.

Mr. Musk’s options appeared to be narrowing. In the Twitter litigation, legal observers maintained from the beginning that the platform, which sued after Mr. Musk tried to walk away from the merger agreement, had the stronger case. Mr. Musk also was facing a judge who had rebuffed his earlier efforts to delay the trial and rejected some of his discovery requests.

Twitter and Mr. Musk quietly held unsuccessful talks about a possible cut to the price of $44 billion for the social-media platform before Mr. Musk reversed course and said he would return to the original agreement’s price, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

The practicalities of renegotiating the price could have been a hurdle to those talks advancing, according to the person familiar with the matter. Refinancing the agreement made in April would have required the banks to write new commitment letters, the person said, and higher interest rates would have made the debt more expensive. The banks—which had faced potential losses on their loans—would have had the option in that case of putting up less debt to fund the deal, requiring more equity from Mr. Musk, who was already on the hook for roughly $26.5 billion of cash.

In the face all that, Mr. Musk’s decision to go through with the deal enabled him to regain control of the process. On Thursday, hours after Twitter’s leadership was ousted, Mr. Musk tweeted: “the bird is freed,” in a seeming reference to Twitter, which has a blue bird as its logo. A Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday confirmed the deal closed Thursday, and that Twitter is now part of Mr. Musk’s X Holdings I Inc.

Reaction to the takeover from politicians, regulators, business titans and regular users ran the gamut from enthusiasm to alarm.

Marc Benioff,

who runs

Salesforce Inc.

alongside

Bret Taylor,

until Thursday Twitter’s chairman, tweeted, “the bird is fried,” with a picture of a plate of food. A top European Union official warned Mr. Musk about complying with the bloc’s new rules on social-media moderation.

Mr. Musk on Friday tweeted that Twitter would be “forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” He added: “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

In a tweet later on Friday, he wrote: “Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.”

How Mr. Musk will tackle the prevalence of fake and spam accounts—the issue that was poised to derail the deal—still isn’t known.

Former President

Donald Trump

—permanently banned by Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot over tweets that company executives viewed as likely to inspire violence—said, “I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands.” The platform needed to “work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly,” Mr. Trump said on the social-media platform he set up after his Twitter ban. Twitter would be smaller, but better, the former president said.

His former account remained suspended on Twitter as of Friday afternoon.

Mr. Musk has previously said that he disagreed with the ban and would restore Mr. Trump’s account access, though Mr. Trump said at the time that he didn’t intend to return to the platform.

Lack of content moderation has been a cause of concern for some advertisers, politicians and users who would prefer a more moderated platform. Mr. Musk, even before closing the deal for Twitter, on Thursday reached out to advertisers that underpin the bulk of the company’s revenue to assuage them. 

Mr. Musk said he was buying the company to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He said Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”

Mr. Musk said the platform must be “warm and welcoming to all” and suggested Twitter could let people “choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play videogames ranging from all ages to mature.”

He had previously indicated unhappiness with some of the top ranks at Twitter who have now been fired, at one point responding to a tweet from Mr. Agrawal with a poop emoji. He also used the site to mock Ms. Gadde, the top legal boss, tweeting an image overlaid with text that repeated allegations Twitter had a left-wing political bias. Messrs. Agrawal and Segal are walking away with multimillion-dollar pay packages.

It wasn’t immediately clear who would step into the top positions left vacant by Thursday’s exits. Mr. Musk listed himself as “Chief Twit” in his Twitter bio. Whatever role Mr. Musk has at Twitter will be added to his numerous other business responsibilities, including as CEO of

Tesla Inc.

and SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

Mr. Musk became Twitter’s boss by offering in April to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, higher than the company was valued at the time. In the months since the deal was struck, Twitter has faced efforts by Mr. Musk to abandon the deal, a whistleblower complaint in which Twitter’s former head of security accused the company of security and privacy problems, and unsuccessful talks to negotiate a lower price with Mr. Musk. He pivoted again early this month and agreed to see the deal through.

The New York Stock Exchange suspended Twitter shares from trading, starting Friday. The stock closed Thursday at $53.70.

Mr. Musk’s takeover leaves big questions over the future of the platform, including how he might revamp its business model and how he might implement changes he has proposed for the way it polices content. He could return Twitter to public ownership after a few years, the Journal previously reported.

Like other social-media companies, Twitter relies heavily on digital advertising and has faced headwinds in recent months due to broad economic uncertainty. It will also be saddled with billions in debt as a result of the deal, and payments on those loans will add costs for a company that has posted a loss in eight of its past 10 fiscal years.

Also among the challenges that Twitter under Mr. Musk will have to address is wariness among some advertisers and others about the potential for conflicts of interest given his broad business interests. Auto makers have raised concerns about advertising on Twitter under Mr. Musk’s ownership, given his role at electric-vehicle juggernaut Tesla, the Journal has reported.

General Motors Co. said Friday it is pausing its paid advertising on Twitter in the wake of Mr. Musk’s acquisition, saying it wants more information about the site’s direction under its new ownership. The Detroit auto maker, which competes against Tesla, characterized the move as a normal step when a media platform undergoes a significant change.

Some social-media researchers have questioned whether China’s government could leverage Tesla’s large business there to try to sway him on treatment of content about the country. SpaceX, meanwhile, relies heavily on the U.S. government as a client for its rocket-launching business.

Mr. Segal, in a tweet confirming his departure from Twitter, said the company had been working on “building the world’s town square for all of our stakeholders.” He added that “the work isn’t complete, but we made meaningful progress.”

By taking Twitter private, the billionaire entrepreneur likely can take more risks to jump-start the company’s business.

“It’s going to be bumpy,” said

Youssef Squali,

lead internet analyst at Truist Securities. “He can take it away for a couple of years, really kind of re-engineer the whole thing,” Mr. Squali said.

—Meghan Bobrowsky contributed to this article.

Write to Alexa Corse at [email protected]

Mr. Musk’s $44 billion takeover, more than six months in the making, launches a new period of tumult for one of the world’s most influential platforms as he works to remake business and content practices that he has repeatedly criticized. The acquisition teed up a host of questions that could take months or years to answer about how Twitter will change in the hands of the world’s richest man, who has business interests in autos, rockets and other sectors stretching across the globe and who is one of the platform’s most prominent—and sometimes most provocative—users.

The most immediate changes, with the transfer of control late Thursday, came within Twitter itself. Mr. Musk immediately ousted Twitter Chief Executive

Parag Agrawal

and Chief Financial Officer

Ned Segal

after the deal closed, The Wall Street Journal reported. He also fired

Vijaya Gadde,

Twitter’s top legal and policy executive, and

Sean Edgett,

general counsel.

Some of the firings started before the paperwork to close the deal was completed, a person familiar with the matter said. The departures made for a frenetic and destabilizing afternoon, the person said, even as the question of the billionaire’s ownership seemed to be settled. The person said he walked away from the monthslong process like a survivor stumbling off the battlefield.

Representatives for Twitter didn’t comment.

The takeover follows months of uncertainty as Mr. Musk repeatedly changed his mind. The ultimate reversal came Oct. 3, when Mr. Musk said he planned to go through with the deal he had just spent months trying to exit, two weeks before a scheduled trial in Delaware Chancery Court.

Mr. Musk’s options appeared to be narrowing. In the Twitter litigation, legal observers maintained from the beginning that the platform, which sued after Mr. Musk tried to walk away from the merger agreement, had the stronger case. Mr. Musk also was facing a judge who had rebuffed his earlier efforts to delay the trial and rejected some of his discovery requests.

Twitter and Mr. Musk quietly held unsuccessful talks about a possible cut to the price of $44 billion for the social-media platform before Mr. Musk reversed course and said he would return to the original agreement’s price, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

The practicalities of renegotiating the price could have been a hurdle to those talks advancing, according to the person familiar with the matter. Refinancing the agreement made in April would have required the banks to write new commitment letters, the person said, and higher interest rates would have made the debt more expensive. The banks—which had faced potential losses on their loans—would have had the option in that case of putting up less debt to fund the deal, requiring more equity from Mr. Musk, who was already on the hook for roughly $26.5 billion of cash.

In the face all that, Mr. Musk’s decision to go through with the deal enabled him to regain control of the process. On Thursday, hours after Twitter’s leadership was ousted, Mr. Musk tweeted: “the bird is freed,” in a seeming reference to Twitter, which has a blue bird as its logo. A Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday confirmed the deal closed Thursday, and that Twitter is now part of Mr. Musk’s X Holdings I Inc.

Reaction to the takeover from politicians, regulators, business titans and regular users ran the gamut from enthusiasm to alarm.

Marc Benioff,

who runs

Salesforce Inc.

alongside

Bret Taylor,

until Thursday Twitter’s chairman, tweeted, “the bird is fried,” with a picture of a plate of food. A top European Union official warned Mr. Musk about complying with the bloc’s new rules on social-media moderation.

Mr. Musk on Friday tweeted that Twitter would be “forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” He added: “No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

In a tweet later on Friday, he wrote: “Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.”

How Mr. Musk will tackle the prevalence of fake and spam accounts—the issue that was poised to derail the deal—still isn’t known.

Former President

Donald Trump

—permanently banned by Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot over tweets that company executives viewed as likely to inspire violence—said, “I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands.” The platform needed to “work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly,” Mr. Trump said on the social-media platform he set up after his Twitter ban. Twitter would be smaller, but better, the former president said.

His former account remained suspended on Twitter as of Friday afternoon.

Mr. Musk has previously said that he disagreed with the ban and would restore Mr. Trump’s account access, though Mr. Trump said at the time that he didn’t intend to return to the platform.

Lack of content moderation has been a cause of concern for some advertisers, politicians and users who would prefer a more moderated platform. Mr. Musk, even before closing the deal for Twitter, on Thursday reached out to advertisers that underpin the bulk of the company’s revenue to assuage them. 

Mr. Musk said he was buying the company to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He said Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”

Mr. Musk said the platform must be “warm and welcoming to all” and suggested Twitter could let people “choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play videogames ranging from all ages to mature.”

He had previously indicated unhappiness with some of the top ranks at Twitter who have now been fired, at one point responding to a tweet from Mr. Agrawal with a poop emoji. He also used the site to mock Ms. Gadde, the top legal boss, tweeting an image overlaid with text that repeated allegations Twitter had a left-wing political bias. Messrs. Agrawal and Segal are walking away with multimillion-dollar pay packages.

It wasn’t immediately clear who would step into the top positions left vacant by Thursday’s exits. Mr. Musk listed himself as “Chief Twit” in his Twitter bio. Whatever role Mr. Musk has at Twitter will be added to his numerous other business responsibilities, including as CEO of

Tesla Inc.

and SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

Mr. Musk became Twitter’s boss by offering in April to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, higher than the company was valued at the time. In the months since the deal was struck, Twitter has faced efforts by Mr. Musk to abandon the deal, a whistleblower complaint in which Twitter’s former head of security accused the company of security and privacy problems, and unsuccessful talks to negotiate a lower price with Mr. Musk. He pivoted again early this month and agreed to see the deal through.

The New York Stock Exchange suspended Twitter shares from trading, starting Friday. The stock closed Thursday at $53.70.

Mr. Musk’s takeover leaves big questions over the future of the platform, including how he might revamp its business model and how he might implement changes he has proposed for the way it polices content. He could return Twitter to public ownership after a few years, the Journal previously reported.

Like other social-media companies, Twitter relies heavily on digital advertising and has faced headwinds in recent months due to broad economic uncertainty. It will also be saddled with billions in debt as a result of the deal, and payments on those loans will add costs for a company that has posted a loss in eight of its past 10 fiscal years.

Also among the challenges that Twitter under Mr. Musk will have to address is wariness among some advertisers and others about the potential for conflicts of interest given his broad business interests. Auto makers have raised concerns about advertising on Twitter under Mr. Musk’s ownership, given his role at electric-vehicle juggernaut Tesla, the Journal has reported.

General Motors Co. said Friday it is pausing its paid advertising on Twitter in the wake of Mr. Musk’s acquisition, saying it wants more information about the site’s direction under its new ownership. The Detroit auto maker, which competes against Tesla, characterized the move as a normal step when a media platform undergoes a significant change.

Some social-media researchers have questioned whether China’s government could leverage Tesla’s large business there to try to sway him on treatment of content about the country. SpaceX, meanwhile, relies heavily on the U.S. government as a client for its rocket-launching business.

Mr. Segal, in a tweet confirming his departure from Twitter, said the company had been working on “building the world’s town square for all of our stakeholders.” He added that “the work isn’t complete, but we made meaningful progress.”

By taking Twitter private, the billionaire entrepreneur likely can take more risks to jump-start the company’s business.

“It’s going to be bumpy,” said

Youssef Squali,

lead internet analyst at Truist Securities. “He can take it away for a couple of years, really kind of re-engineer the whole thing,” Mr. Squali said.

—Meghan Bobrowsky contributed to this article.

Write to Alexa Corse at [email protected]