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Sounak Mukhopadhyay

Elon Musk’s Indian friend defends Tesla CEO after Parag Agrawal gets sacked

Elon Musk and his ‘Twitter friend’ Pranay Pathole

“Elon is one of the greatest engineers of this generation. The man is solving climate change, reusable rockets, existential risk with AI, traffic, & free speech. He's an inspiration," he wrote.

The world’s richest man has been in regular contact with the Indian software developer since 2018 and has answered to Pathole in hundreds of tweets and private messages with newsworthy corporate developments and even life advice. Pathole had the opportunity to meet Musk in person when he had his first trip abroad. In the US, he is preparing to begin a master's programme in business analytics.

Soon after Musk’s takeover of Twitter, CEO Parag Agrawal - among a few other top executives - was fired. The decision has not been taken well by several people.

Also Read: What if Elon Musk's Indian ‘friend’ settles down on Mars? His parents comment

SpaceX boss Elon Musk said he would serve as chief executive of Twitter, the social media company he just bought for $44 billion, a move that Wall Street analysts have said could stretch the billionaire thin.

Musk claimed that adding a fee was the only way to stop trolls and automated accounts on the network and that Twitter could not just rely on advertising to cover its costs. Stephen King earlier tweeted he would not be willing to pay $20 per month to maintain the Twitter verified badge. He asked: "How about $8?"

Also Read: Elon Musk has to pay Parag Agrawal this massive amount upon termination

Musk criticised Twitter for months for being reluctant to deploy product updates or remove spam accounts, but since the takeover, which ended last week, Musk has moved rapidly to impose his mark on the social media platform.

According to two people with knowledge of the situation, his teams started having meetings with some employees to look at the software code of Twitter and learn how various components of the site operated.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sounak Mukhopadhyay

Sounak Mukhopadhyay, who also goes by the name Sounak Mukherjee, has been producing digital news since 2012. He's worked for the International Business Times, The Inquisitr, and Moneycontrol in the past. He's also contributed to Free Press Journal and TheRichest with feature articles. He covers news for a wide range of subjects including business, finance, economy, politics and social media. Before working with digital news publications, he worked as a freelance content writer.
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