Elon Musk’s finish line: “Chief Twit” visits Twitter HQ, carries a sink

CEO of Tesla Elon Musk visited Twitter’s headquarters carrying a sink – to indicate that the reality of him buying the social network should “sink in.”

Even though the whole process was messy and took several weeks, it seems that the world’s richest man is finally about to close the deal and buy Twitter for $44 billion by the end of Friday.

During his visit to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, Musk not only posed for a short video of him carrying a sink into the building but also met with the company’s executivs. He also changed his bio on Twitter to “Chief Twit”.

All this signals that the deal will most probably cross the finish line this week and be finalized, in keeping with an October 28 deadline earlier imposed by a Delaware court after a stormy process during which the billionaire and Twitter argued bitterly in a difficult legal battle.

The Tesla founder tried to back out of his Twitter takeover deal, citing alleged problems with spamk, fake accounts, and bots.

Musk also claimed he was worried about cybersecurity when he cited Peiter Zatko, a Twitter infosecurity worker-turned-whistleblower, who testified in the US Senate in September that the company is prioritizing “profits over security” and does not properly protect data.

Yet, when Twitter sued Musk in order to force him to go through with the deal, Musk reversed course. With a November trial looming, he confirmed on a video call with his advisers that he intended to close the deal, according to Financial Times.

On Wednesday, Musk took it to his Twitter account to praise the platform’s potential to enable “citizen journalism” and once again mentioned one of his favorite topics, a supposed “establishment bias.”

In another message, he made fun of The New York Times and said local news organizations “should get way more prominence” on the site.

In an internal leaked memo, Twitter’s Chief Marketing Officer and Head of People Leslie Berland told staff they would hear directly from Musk on Friday when he plans to address personnel. She urged workers to say hi to the billionaire.

According to The Washington Post, Twitter employees posted videos of Musk walking around the office on internal Slack channels,

“This is a sweet office,” he said in one clip described. Musk later posted on his account that he met “cool people.” In another clip, about 25 people gathered around him and asked questions, including whether he really planned to fire 75% of the staff.

Musk allegedly told investors last week that he wanted to cut Twitter’s workforce by almost 75% – down to approximately 2000 employees, who then responded in a coordinated letter to Musk and Twitter’s board. It was published in full on Monday.

“Elon Musk’s plan to lay off 75% of Twitter workers will hurt Twitter’s ability to serve the public conversation,” the letter reads. “A threat of this magnitude is reckless, undermines our users’ and customers’ trust in our platform, and is a transparent act of worker intimidation.”

However, Sheila Dang, a media reporter at Reuters, soon claimed that Twitter’s Chief Privacy Officer warned employees in an email that the open letter may have been written by someone outside the company.

Per email, the author is unknown, and the letter was not created in Twitter's Google Workspace, "indicating it may have been written by a third party."