Elon Musk reportedly appointed himself to the CEO role at Twitter and is expected to reverse lifelong bans on users—including the ban imposed on former President Donald Trump.
As reported last night, Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter and immediately fired CEO Parag Agrawal and several other high-ranking executives. Bloomberg reported today that Musk appointed himself CEO but cited an anonymous source as saying that Musk “may eventually cede the Twitter CEO role in the longer term.” Musk is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
Bloomberg’s source provided details on Musk’s plan to reverse lifelong bans:
Musk also intends to do away with permanent bans on users because he doesn’t believe in lifelong prohibitions, the person said. That means people previously booted off the platform may be allowed to return, a category that would include former president Donald Trump, the person said. It’s unclear however if Trump would be allowed back on Twitter in the near term.
This isn’t much of a surprise. In May, Musk said Twitter’s decision to ban Trump was “morally wrong and flat-out stupid,” and that he would reverse the ban if he completed his pending acquisition of Twitter. “If there are tweets that are wrong, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a temporary suspension is appropriate, but not a permanent ban,” Musk said at the time, speaking at a conference.
Musk also said that “permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots or spam, scam accounts, where there’s no legitimacy to the account at all. I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump.”
Twitter’s leadership page hadn’t been updated as of this writing, as it still lists Agrawal as CEO. Bloomberg’s report that Musk named himself Twitter CEO doesn’t seem to have been confirmed by any other major news organizations yet. But with Agrawal out, Musk is clearly in charge whether he’s just the owner or both the owner and CEO. A CNBC report in May said that “Musk is expected to serve as a temporary CEO of Twitter for a few months” after he completes the deal.
