Elon Musk Decides Against Joining Twitter Board of Directors After Being Subjected to Background Check

By Adam Barnhardt

Despite having become Twitter's largest shareholder earlier this month, Elon Musk won't be joining the social media empire's board of directors after all. Parag Agrawal, the CEO of the social network, announced the news Sunday evening in a note he posted to his own Twitter account. Without revealing the exact details, Agrawal notified the company on the morning of April 9th that he wouldn't be joining the board. Agrawal also noted the executive was subject to a background check and formal acceptance before he was allowed to serve on the board.

"The Board and I had many discussions about Elon joining the board, and with Elon directly," the executive shared. "We were excited to collaborate and clear about the risks. We also believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward. The board offered him a seat."

After intense backlash from Twitter users, Musk then reversed course and opted to forego joining the company's team.

"Elon's appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board. I believe this is for the best," Agrawal added. "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."

Musk purchased 73.5 million shares of the company earlier this month, making him the company's largest shareholder with a massive 9.2-percent stake in the company. Shortly after the news broke, Musk tweeted a poll asking his followers if t wheyanted an edit button added to the platform. The day after, Twitter officially announced it had an edit tweet feature in development.

"We've been exploring how to build an Edit feature in a safe manner since last year and plan to begin testing it within Twitter Blue Labs in the coming months," said Jay Sullivan, head of consumer product at Twitter. "Sharing a few more insights on how we're thinking about Edit. Edit has been the most requested Twitter feature for many years. People want to be able to fix (sometimes embarrassing) mistakes, typos and hot takes in the moment. They currently work around this by deleting and tweeting again. Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation. Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work. Therefore, it will take time and we will be actively seeking input and adversarial thinking in advance of launching Edit. We will approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness and we will share updates as we go. This is just one feature we are exploring as we work to give people more choice and control over their Twitter experience, foster a healthy conversation, and help people be more comfortable on Twitter. These are the things that motivate us every day."

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