During an all-hands meeting on Thursday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal sought to reassure staff that the company was not being “kept hostage” by reports of Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The source, who did not want to be identified because they were not authorised to talk publicly on the topic, claimed that when Agrawal answered queries posed on the company’s Slack messaging programme, he encouraged employees to stay focused and told them that “we as employees decide what happens.”

The meeting took place after it was revealed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had proposed to buy Facebook for $43 billion.

Agrawal told employees that the board was still considering Musk’s offer, but that he was limited in what he could tell them.

One employee inquired during the question and answer session about how the business came to the decision to offer Musk a board position.

“Are we just going to start inviting any and all billionaires to the board?” according to a section of the meeting as reported in the media.

The board, according to Agrawal, was acting in the best interests of shareholders.

“I have a strong point of view that people who are critical of our service, their voice is something that we must emphasize so that we can learn and get better,” he said.

Another employee posed a question to Agrawal, asking him to comment on Musk’s understanding of free speech and whether it agreed with Twitter’s policy.

Agrawal did not directly respond to the issue, instead stating that a large part of the company’s work is focused on enhancing “the health of discourse” on Twitter.

“Twitter speaks for lot more than one individual, any human,” Agrawal stated earlier in the Q&A.

A representative for Twitter declined to comment on the meeting.

(Adapted from OutLook.com)