Important news about Twitter and Elon Musk

Important news concerning Twitter and Elon Musk has been coming out in recent days. 

The most important one is the announcement of his resignation as CEO. 

I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022

A few days ago, Musk had asked in a Twitter poll whether he should resign from the leadership of the company. Tens of millions of followers participated in the poll, and the majority (57.5%) were in favor. 

Musk had promised that he would abide by the results of the poll, so now he has announced that he will step down as CEO. 

The problem, however, is that he is apparently struggling to find a suitable replacement, so for now he has only announced that he will step down at some point, when he has found someone “crazy enough to take the job.” 

Once he steps down as CEO, Musk at Twitter will manage only the software and server teams.

Tesla’s stock

In the meantime, Tesla’s stock on the stock market has made new annual lows. 

After a brief rise at the end of November, which had brought the stock price back near $200, as of 5 December it started to fall again, with as much as -8% yesterday alone. 

The current price of $137 is 66% lower than the peak reached in November 2021 at over $414. 

It is possible that this drop is also related precisely to the fortunes of Elon Musk’s new Twitter, since Musk himself has had to sell Tesla shares lately in order to sustain the financial strain he had to endure to buy Twitter. 

It is enough to mention that in mid-September Tesla’s stock price was still well above $300, but when news began to spread that Musk would actually buy Twitter, it fell first to $200 and then even below that. 

It is worth noting that last night during after-hours the price went back up by 1%, even before Musk announced his resignation as CEO of Twitter, so a further rise can be expected in pre-market today as well. 

Twitter news: Elon Musk will no longer be CEO

Musk’s role as CEO of Twitter has been hotly contested, especially from within. 

His brusque ways in which he revolutionized the company in a very short time many did not like, so a replacement for him was actually in the air. 

Of course, he will remain the almost sole owner, and in the absence of a board of directors, he has the de facto power to appoint and fire all CEOs himself. This leads one to believe that the course will not change even with a new CEO, since he will choose him himself presumably in total continuity with his performance to date. 

It is worth noting that Musk is already CEO of other companies, including Tesla itself, so he certainly cannot devote all his time to Twitter. Moreover, Tesla is worth about ten times Twitter, so it is more than obvious that it takes precedence. 

The accusations against the government

Meanwhile, publications of the so-called “Twitter Files,” or internal documents showing how the company before him dealt with the issue of bans, have continued. 

Musk claimed that the US government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor some information from the public. 

Government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public https://t.co/eSEwcZlGjt

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2022

In fact, in the seventh round of publication of the Twitter Files, journalist Michael Shellenberger revealed that the FBI and US intelligence allegedly discredited factual information about the foreign affairs of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. 

This all took place during Biden’s 2020 campaign against Trump, when there were several attempts to cover up the scandal involving Biden’s son. 

Shellenberger speaks of FBI pressure against Twitter, and an intelligence attempt to discredit the source of the information about Hunter Biden. 

He also states that the “payments” referred to by Musk would be compensation for legal proceedings by Twitter specifically regarding the Hunter Biden issue. 

He cites an e-mail from a Twitter employee in which he reported that a reimbursement program had been set up for the company’s response to the legal process by the FBI, and he announced that they had raised more than $3.4 million. 

Shellenberger also stated that the FBI’s influence campaign against the source of the information against Biden may have been aided by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for the time spent by its staff.