The Twitter chief executive, Parag Agrawal, attempted to reassure staff during an all-hands meeting on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the case, that the company was not being “kept hostage” by reports of Elon Musk’s approach to acquire the company.
According to a source who did not want to be identified because they were not authorised to speak publicly on the matter, as Agrawal answered questions from employees who had posted them on the company’s Slack messaging service, he encouraged them to remain focused and told them that “we as employees control what happens.”
The meeting took place shortly after it was revealed that the chief executive officer of Tesla had made an offer to purchase the social networking business for $43 billion dollars.
Agrawal informed workers that the board of directors was still reviewing Musk’s offer, but that he was restricted in what he could discuss with them.
When the question and answer session came to a close, one employee inquired as to how the corporation arrived at the decision to grant Musk a position on the board.
It was heard during a segment of the discussion that “Are we simply going to start inviting any and all billionaires to the board?” the group asked.
As a response, Agrawal said that the board was acting in the best interests of the shareholders.
The query came from an anonymous Twitter employee who wanted to know how Agrawal saw Elon Musk’s idea of freedom of expression as well as whether or not it was consistent with how Twitter approached the issue.
When asked about the subject, Agrawal did not explicitly respond, instead stating that most of the company’s effort is focused on consistently enhancing “the health of discourse” on Twitter.
Earlier in the Q&A, Agrawal expressed his belief that “Twitter stands for lot more than one person, any human,” adding that “Twitter stands for way more than one human, any human.”
In response to a request for comment, a Twitter spokeswoman refused to do so on the meeting.
