Elon Musk says he is only ‘temporarily’ the sole director of Twitter

Elon Musk will eventually appoint a new chief executive and board to change the direction of the company

Musk Twitter ((c) dpa-Zentralbild POOL)

Elon Musk has become the sole director of Twitter’s board, but has said the change is only temporary.

Mr Musk took over Twitter last Thursday and immediately fired a number of top executives: chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.

Bret Taylor, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou, who were previously on Twitter’s board, have also left.

Mr Musk said on the day that while his “title is Chief Twit” he had “no idea who the CEO is.” In fact, Mr Musk was the chief executive, having submitted a document to the US Securities and Exchanges Commission.

While Mr Musk is temporarily the head of the company, it is expected he will appoint a new chief executive and board of directors.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey had rolled his stake of 18m shares, worth almost $978m, into the new private company.

Technology investor Jason Calacanis who changed his Twitter bio to “chief meme officer”, said he was “hanging out at Twitter a bit ... during the transition”. Mr Calacanis texted Mr Musk in April that being head of Twitter was his “dream job”.

It is expected at least 25 per cent of Twitter’s staff could be fired in a first round of job cuts. Mr Musk reportedly has employees working 12-hour shifts to implement features by the end of the week, or face being fired.

Mr Musk is also apparently planning to appoint a new “content moderation council” and that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

Mr Musk had previously tweeted that “the bird is freed”, but Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for internal market, quote-tweeted that it will “fly by our rules”.

Mr Breton also tweeted a video from Mr Musk six months ago in which the two men apparently agreed about the Digital Services Act legislation that would monitor online posts.