According to people familiar with the matter, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is among the executives who plan to step down as Elon Musk closes his $1.3 billion deal to take over the social network.
Vijaya Gadde also leaves; CFO Ned Segal, who joined Twitter in 2017; and Sean Edgett, who has been Twitter’s general counsel since 2012, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to be named because the information is not public.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Agrawal stepped into the CEO role in November after co-founder Jack Dorsey unexpectedly resigned. Agrawal worked at Twitter for nearly a decade, most recently as CTO, but his tenure as CEO was quickly cut short as Musk became a major shareholder and an increasingly vocal opponent of its current leadership.
After the release of Musk, it became clear that Agrawal was unlikely to be able to keep his job. “I don’t trust management,” Musk said in an early filing for the deal, and the two executives exchanged public swipes. In May, Musk responded to Agrawal’s Twitter thread defending the company’s user figures by tweeting a poop emoticon.
The text messages released during the trial show the two men had a controversial exchange early on when Musk asked followers if Twitter was “dying.” Agrawal confronted him via SMS. “Bent tweeting ‘is Twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter,” he wrote on April 9, “but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not going to help me improve Twitter as it is.” “What have you been up to this week?” And then: “I’m not joining the board; it’s a waste of time.”
The following week, Musk and a friend in their positions mocked Agrawal for vacationing in Hawaii during contract negotiations. “Shouldn’t he be in the war room now?!?” Investor Jason Calacanis sent a message to Musk. “Is it worth making random Zoom calls while drinking fruity cocktails at the Four Seasons?” Musk replied.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s efforts to reconcile Dorsey’s longtime friend Musk with Agrawal after the deal was announced also ended badly. “At least it became clear that you could not work together,” Dorsey wrote to Musk after the group call. “That clears it up.”
Agrawal is not leaving empty-handed. As part of the deal, the CEO will donate 100% of his non-vested stock awards, according to the statement. According to the research company Equilar, he will earn about 2 million dollars, reports Reuters.
As head of legal and policy at Twitter, Gadde oversaw the creation and enforcement of rules for hundreds of millions of Internet users, including prominent users, who are subject to more lenient content restrictions based on exceptions for the company’s newsworthy messages or communications. of the world’s leaders . In buying Twitter, Musk promised to transform it into a platform that is less restrictive of free speech, which he says is “essential to a functioning democracy.”
Gadde came under fire earlier this year when Musk publicly criticized content decisions on Twitter. The company permanently banned former US President Donald Trump’s January 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Musk’s comments, which led to his purchase of the social media company, led many to expect the billionaire to restore Trump’s account and reinstate other users who were blocked for violating rules on offensive or dangerous content.
Source:Reuters
