Musk sacks the Twitter board. Everything is totally normal

New Twitter owner Elon Musk has fired the entire board of Twitter and appointed himself sole director. What could possibly go wrong?

Not content with marching CEO Parag Agrawal, CGO Ned Segal and regulatory Vijaya Gadde out the door (and trying to shaft them on the way out by denying their contractual payouts), Musk announced the move in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the filing, "On October 27, 2022, and as a result of the consummation of the Merger, Mr Musk became the sole director of Twitter.

"In accordance with the terms of the Merger Agreement, effective as of the effective time of the Merger, the following persons, who were directors of Twitter prior to the effective time of the Merger, are no longer directors of Twitter: Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou."

Purple haze

In between posting homophobic and untrue conspiracy theories (subsequently deleted) about what appears to be the attempted assassination of US Speaker Nancy Pelosi (her husband is now in a hospital ICU unit with a fractured skull), the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur — and apropos of nothing, famous marijuana imbiber— has been floating all kinds of thought bubbles about the future of the microblogging site.

He has suggested charging Twitter's community of Blue Tick users a fee to maintain their cherished status, and potentially creating tiers of engagement, similar to the movie rating systems.

Meanwhile, his decision to raise funds from Saudi Arabia which has a history of imprisoning people who tweet criticisms of the regime might also be about to trigger an investigation with Democratic US Senator Chris Murphy saying Monday he wants a US national security review of Saudi Arabia's stake in Twitter according to Reuters. That needs to be tempered by the fact that the company already had some long-term Saudi money on the register.

There are also early hints that advertisers may not share Musk's personal predilection for allowing nazis, white supremacists and sundry other crazy crackers licence to spread hatred in the name of free speech.

In a statement, General Motors said it was pausing advertising on the site. "We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is the normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue."

All the while, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's founder who left in 2021 is said to be close to launching a new social media app, Bluesky, and is already accepting beta users.

Musk bought the company on Friday (AEST), it's only Tuesday.

Buckle up.