Elon Musk to take Twitter CEO role for the first few months

By Anita George May 5, 2022

Surprising no one, Elon Musk is reportedly the next Twitter CEO, at least on a temporary basis, that is.

On Thursday, it was reported that sources told CNBC’s David Faber that Musk is expected to take over as Twitter CEO “for a few months” after the acquisition concludes.

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The current CEO of Twitter is Parag Agrawal and he’s only been in the position since late November of 2021. Agrawal hadn’t even been CEO for six months before Twitter accepted Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid in April. With Musk buying the company and now expected to take over as CEO, it’s becoming more likely that Twitter will take a different direction.

It is also likely, that given Musk’s views on free speech, we’ll see less content moderation on the bird app than we’ve experienced under an Agrawal-led Twitter. Only time will tell if that ends up being a good thing and it largely depends on which of Twitter’s current content moderation policies gets rolled back. But with Musk reportedly helming Twitter for the first few months after the acquisition completes, a reduction in content moderation seems certain now.

And the acquisition itself also seems to be on more solid footing these days. Another SEC filing (filed on Thursday), stated that Musk had secured over $7 billion in funding from investors for his acquisition. The filing also mentioned Jack Dorsey, the former CEO and co-founder of Twitter, and said that Musk was discussing with Dorsey the “possibility of contributing” his shares “at or immediately prior to the closing of the merger.” CNBC’s Faber has said that Dorsey may back the acquisition.

If so, that would align with Dorsey’s recently tweeted support of Musk’s takeover. And it would make Musk’s hinted changes to the social media platform that much more likely.

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