Elon Musk’s Twitter tweetstorm fuels theories about board drama

On Apr 12, 2022

Elon Musk’s sudden decision this weekend to decline a board seat at Twitter coincided with a prolific tweetstorm, providing clues to the dramatic reversal.

At 6:33 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, Musk asked “Is Twitter dying?” And over the course of the next 17 hours, Musk aimed tweets at Twitter’s most popular users, its San Francisco headquarters and its process for authenticating accounts. Before he was done, he made a lewd joke to the company where he is now its largest shareholder.

The erratic string of Saturday tweets was unusual even for a CEO who has earned 80 million followers with controversial 280-character posts that have resulted in lawsuits and Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions.

But it’s the best evidence to parse to help suss out the mysteries of what happened behind the scenes between his agreement a week ago to join Twitter’s board and his decision to decline it Saturday. The board position was attached to Musk becoming the company’s largest shareholder, with a more than 9 percent stake.

“We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input,” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal wrote in a post Sunday night.

The decision to ask Musk to join the board was heralded by conservatives, who expected the Tesla chief executive to champion a relaxing of content policies the company — and maybe even to reverse the ban of former president Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Twitter employees expressed discomfort internally, worrying Musk might undo progress the company has made in policing problematic content online.

Now, Twitter “must deal with a wildcard investor that already owns nine percent of the company and has the resources to buy the remaining 91 percent,” Don Bilson, an analyst with Gordon Haskett Research Advisors, wrote in an email to clients.

It’s unclear what exactly happened to result in the reversal. Agrawal said Musk chose not to join the board at some point that morning, but he did not specify exactly what time that morning, nor did he say which came first: Musk’s decision on the board seat or his tweetstorm.

Musk “liked” a tweet from another user early Monday that posited the theory: “Elon became the largest shareholder for Free Speech. Elon was told to play nice and not speak freely.”

In major reversal, Elon Musk won’t join Twitter board

Twitter declined to comment, and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Agrawal also mentioned that Musk had been subject to a background check. According to a person who has handled background checks for prominent board appointments, this would have probably looked for any information that might cause harm to the company, should it be made public. Musk would have had to cooperate with such a check, this person said.

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