The CEO of the social network announced on Sunday night that Tesla and SpaceX billionaire boss Elon Musk is stepping down from Twitter’s board of directors, of which he is the main shareholder.

“Elon has decided not to join our board of directors,” said Parag Agrawal.

“Elon’s arrival on the board was due to become official on April 9, but Elon announced this morning that he would not be joining the board,” he said. excitement, who shared on the platform. “I think it’s the best”.

“We appreciate and will always continue to appreciate the participation of our shareholders, whether they sit on our board of directors or not. “Elon is our largest shareholder and we will be open to his participation.”

Musk, the world’s richest man, announced in early April that he had bought 9.2% of Twitter, making himself its largest shareholder.

Agrawal said on Tuesday that Musk will join the board, describing him as “a passionate believer and an intense critic of service, just what we need.”

Musk tweeted that he “looks forward to working with Parag and the Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in the coming months.”

But in his announcement Sunday, Agrawal shared a note to Twitter, saying that Musk’s appointment to the board will be subject to a background check and once named he must act in the best interests of the company.

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In a clear reaction to the news, Musk tweeted a smiley emoji without further comment.

Before entering the company’s capital, Musk was an active user of the social network, where he has 80.5 million followers and often mixed provocative statements with whimsical or commercial comments.

• Twitter’s largest shareholder Elon Musk wonders if the social network is “dying”

It has also repeatedly clashed with federal securities regulators, which cracked down on social media use after an alleged failed attempt to sell Tesla to the public in 2018.

In fact, Musk stated in the document submitted to the stock market regulator that his involvement with Twitter would be “passive,” meaning he did not plan to influence major strategic decisions.

But the provocations continued to multiply. Among other things, he conducted a poll on his profile to ask Twitter users if they’d like to add a feature to “replace” tweets after they’ve been posted. About 4.4 million people voted and about 73% said yes.

The platform later announced that it wanted to test this functionality, which has been requested by many users for years.

On Saturday, Musk also wondered if the social network was “dying”, citing accounts that were inactive despite having many followers, like singer Justin Bieber.

According to that Washington PostSeveral Twitter employees shared their concerns, thinking that the values ​​of the world’s richest man were not in line with the social network’s business culture.