Elon Musk Makes His Move on Twitter — But Toward What?
First he said he would, then he didn’t.
Less than a week after the announcement that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had become Twitter’s largest shareholder and would be joining the company’s board, Twitter announced over the weekend that, well, not quite.
Musk, the world’s richest man, remains the largest shareholder of Twitter after purchasing 9.2% of the social media giant’s stock, but he won’t be joining the board, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced Sunday. No explanation was offered for the reversal.
Joining the board probably would not have given Musk the freedom to do what he wants, although what he wants remains to be seen. Either way, news of his growing power already has ruffled more feathers in tech circles than a fox in a chicken coop.
“For those of us who care about equity and accountability,” former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, putting Musk on the board is “highly disconcerting — a slap in the face, even.”
But staunchly libertarian and self-described “free speech zealot” Musk has stirred just as much support on the other political side.
Political conservatives, for example, flooded social media to call on Musk to return Donald Trump to Twitter. Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the violent Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
As Trump’s supporters argue, a small group of elite tech executives deprived the president of his most influential megaphones to deliver his message to the public.
Maybe. But to have access to such tools, you have to follow the rules — as laid down by the social network’s owners and operators.
Trump persistently violated those rules, according to then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. After the Twitter and Facebook bans, Snapchat followed suit, and YouTube suspended the president for at least a week.
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