Text messages Elon Musk sent to the former Twitter CEO before taking over have revealed the moment their relationship broke down.
The texts have been published in a court filing and it details how in April 2022, the richest man on the planet was invited onto the board of Twitter by its former boss, Parag Agrawal. The Tesla owner subsequently began asking users what they thought of the social media platform by simply tweeting from his account.
This is how it all went down.
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On March 27 of that year, Agrawal - who like Musk is also a billionaire - reaches out to the SpaceX founder, asking for a chat and they do so that night.
Four days later they meet alongside Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the platform, and a few days later it is announced that Musk is on the board of execs at Twitter.
Joe Rogan then texts Musk: "Are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob?"
He replies: "I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow."
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On April 7, Musk text's Parag: "I have a ton of ideas, but Imk if I'm pushing too hard. I just want Twitter to be maximum amazing."
"I want to hear all the ideas - and l'll tell you which ones i'll make progress on vs. not. And why," the former CEO replies.
"And in this phase - just good to spend as much time with you. + have my Product and Eng team talk to you to ingest information on both sides."
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The pair then begin to talk about their coding credentials before Musk texts Agrawal: "Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don't think anyone should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems."
"You got it!" replies Agrawal, but I don't think he got the message.
Musk then proceeds to tweet a list of the top 10 most followed accounts, writing: "Most of these 'top' accounts tweet rarely and post very little content.
"Is Twitter dying?"
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Annoyed that one of the most powerful men in the world questions his platform, Agrawal texts him a stern message: "You are free to tweet 'is Twitter dying?' or anything else about Twitter - but it's my responsibility to tell you that it's not helping me make Twitter better in the current context.
"Next time we speak, l'd like to have you provide your perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it [is] hurting our ability to do work.
"I hope the AMA will help people get to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you - and l'd like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don't get distracted, but we aren't there right now."
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This enraged Musk, who snapped back: "What did you get done this week?
"I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time.
"Will make an offer to take Twitter private."
He then proceeded to buy Twitter out for a staggering $44 billion and laid off Agrawal.
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Taking to social media to react, one user wrote: "Elon is savage."
While another added: "'What did you get done this week?' is so hard."
Yeah, apparently the richest man on the planet doesn't like being told what he can or can't say.
Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, Business, Social Media
Joe Yates