After a week of hesitation, Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk has resigned from sitting on Twitter’s board of directors, Parag Agrawal, the social network’s general manager, announced on Monday, April 11. “Elon’s arrival on the board was to officially take effect on April 9, but Elon announced this morning that he was no longer on the board.”he explained in a message to Twitter employees, which he shared on the platform. “I think it’s for the best”he added. “We have valued and will always appreciate the participation of our shareholders, whether they are on our board of directors or not. Elon is our largest shareholder and we remain open to his participation”Mr. Agrawal continued.
Elon has decided not to join our board. I have sent a short note to the company and shared it with you here. https://t.co/lfrXACavvk
Immediately after this announcement, Elon Musk tweeted an emoji that giggle, without any accompanying text. The richest man in the world announced in early April that he had taken a 9.2% stake in the capital of Twitter, making him the largest shareholder. He first specified in the document sent to the stock exchange supervisor that this participation was “passive”, that is, he had no intention of influencing important strategic decisions. He had also committed not to increase his stake beyond 14.9%.
But the subsequent announcement of his joining Twitter’s board of directors was welcomed by the markets. Investors took it as a sign that the billionaire was finally planning to get involved in the group’s strategy.
Values not aligned with Twitter
Elon Musk is a very active user of the social network, on which he has 80.5 million subscribers. He speaks there almost daily about his companies, from Tesla (electric cars) to SpaceX (aerospace), via Neuralink (brain implants), and is not afraid to joke or provoke controversy.
He also uses his account a lot to poll internet users about his Tesla stock sale or, more recently, to find out whether they think Twitter respects free speech, a question to which a majority answered. ” no “† The entrepreneur has repeatedly criticized the platform on this topic, because he felt it went too far in the moderation of content.
Since announcing his entry into the capital, Elon Musk has multiplied the provocations. Specifically, he conducted a survey to ask if Twitter users wanted a button ” To process “, to correct a tweet after posting. Nearly 4.4 million people voted and about 73.6% responded ” Yes “† The platform then announced that it was testing this feature, which many users have been asking for for years.
Do you want an edit button?
“Priorities unchanged”
On Saturday, Elon Musk wondered if the social network… † dying †indicating highly followed but not very active accounts. “Most of these ‘super’ accounts rarely tweet and post little content”, he wrote, on a list of the 10 profiles with the most subscribers. In particular, he noted that the second-placed singer Justin Bieber had only tweeted once this year.
On Sunday, he made two more suggestions: † Remove the w in Twitter? † (with answer choice ” Yes “ True ” secure “) and † Converting the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco into a shelter for the homeless, since no one is going there anyway †† More than 90% of the 1.9 million voters said: ” Yes “† He then proposed changes to the paid subscription formula to the social network, Twitter Blue†
“There will be distractions in the future, but our goals and priorities remain unchanged. The decisions we make and how we execute them are in our hands, and nobody else’s.said Parag Agrawal in his message to employees.
According to Washington PostSeveral Twitter employees had expressed concern, particularly given that the world’s richest man’s values did not align with the social network’s corporate culture.
