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The Morning After: Elon Musk now owns Twitter

And Twitter’s CEO is out.

The Morning After: Elon Musk now owns Twitter

After a months-long legal battle that has engulfed Twitter since Elon Musk first offered to buy the company for $44 billion in April, the deal is done, and Musk is already ringing in the changes. Musk, who has criticized Twitter's leadership, fired CEO Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, as well as several more top executives. He’s also likely to let more staff go, though he has told employees the cuts won't be as high as 75 percent.

Musk spent time in Twitter's San Francisco headquarters this week, where he met with employees. Bloomberg reported that he brought in some Tesla engineers to help "assess" Twitter's code. The new owner wants to loosen moderation rules and even make the social network “open source” so users can better understand what Twitter is recommending. Longer term, Musk has mentioned turning Twitter into “the everything app” akin to WeChat in China, and even the possibility of charging companies for tweet embeds.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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