Héloïse Goy, with Alexis Patri
modified to
6:53 p.m., April 12, 2022
Having become a surprise main shareholder of Twitter, the billionaire Elon Musk is forced to slow down in his race to take control of the social network Twitter. He finally gives up sitting on the board of directors of the platform. He continues to maintain vagueness about his ambitions for Twitter.
The soap opera between Elon Musk and Twitter continues. Last week, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and Space X became Twitter’s largest shareholder by buying back $2.9 billion worth of stock, or 9% of the company. On Monday, after a week of uncertainty, the general manager of the social network Parag Agrawal announced in a message to staff, which he later shared on Twitter, that Elon Musk was finally giving up his seat on the platform’s board of directors. .
“I believe it’s for the best,” Parag Agrawal commented. The managing director, however, clarified that the board of directors was still open to the participation of the billionaire. The billionaire remains very mysterious and even seems to blur the tracks on his objectives within Twitter: just after this announcement, Elon Musk reacted by tweeting an emoji crying with laughter, without further comment. A tweet that he finally deleted later.
Provocative messages, posted then deleted
Elon Musk is a very active user of this social network. His account is among the ten most followed in the world. The entrepreneur has repeatedly criticized Twitter in his own tweets, considering that the platform went too far in moderating content.
On Sunday, the billionaire offered his subscribers two rather surprising new polls. The first was “Should we remove the w in Twitter?”, with the choice of answers “yes” and “of course”. In the second poll, he asked whether to “convert Twitter headquarters in San Francisco into a shelter for the homeless since no one is going there anyway.” Two tweets that are no longer visible on his account. It is therefore still very difficult to determine the wishes of Elon Musk in this company of which he is now the main shareholder.