Elon Musk fires Twitter board, becomes sole director

Elon Musk has fired Twitter’s board of directors and given himself unfettered control of the company.

According to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, Musk has become the “sole director” of Twitter.

The world’s richest man bought the social media company for a whopping $44 billion through a combination of his own wealth, investment funds and bank loans.

Twitter board fired

The documents state that the “consummation of the merger” occurred on 27 October, at which point “Mr. Musk became the sole director of Twitter,” while the entire board, including CEO Parag Agrawal, were let go.

South Africa-born Musk first offered to buy the company in April at $54.20 a share, shortly after becoming the company’s largest shareholder, but said in July he would pull out of the deal over concerns about the number of bots on the platform.

Blue tick verification

Meanwhile, after changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit”, Musk also worked over the weekend with software engineers from Tesla, which has reportedly been attempting to monetise Twitter’s identity verification feature, according to AFP. This feature gives certain users a prized blue check mark next to their profile.

ALSO READ: New Twitter boss Elon Musk wants you to pay for your blue tick

Musk wants verified Twitter users to pay $20 (R365) per month, or lose their Blue Tick verification status.

While the official details about the new verification process remain unclear, The Verge reported the company will soon charge users for the blue tick.

Users would have to subscribe to Twitter Blue at $4.99 (R91) a month or lose their “verified” badges if the project moves forward, according to the report.

Currently only available in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Twitter Blue’s launch has struggled with niche appeal and limited features.

Horror story

Not many were happy about paying for the notorious blue tick, including best-selling author Stephen King.

“$20 a month to keep my blue check? F**k that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron,” tweeted King.

However, Elon Musk offered to give King a discount.

“We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8? I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots and trolls,” Musk tweeted.

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