Elon Musk deletes some tweets critical of Twitter – and likes one suggesting he has been ‘told to play nice’

Billionaire highlights posts suggesting ‘Elon was told to play nice and not speak freely’

(AFP via Getty Images)

Elon Musk has deleted some critical tweets about Twitter and seemingly endorsed a post suggesting he should “not speak freely”.

The moves came as it was announced that Mr Musk would no longer be joining Twitter’s board. When the billionaire announced that he had bought almost 10 per cent of Twitter stock last week, he was invited to help lead the company – but it then announced that he had decided not to go ahead.

Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, shared a message sent to Twitter staff that said Mr Musk’s appointment would not be going ahead. He did not give any indication of what had happened between Twitter and Mr Musk, and suggested that there could be more information that was not being publicly shared.

In response to that tweet, one user speculated on the reasons that Mr Musk had opted not to take up his position on the board.

“Elon became largest shareholder for Free Speech,” user @TankTDS wrote. “Elon was told to play nice and not speak freely.”

Mr Musk liked that post soon after. While Twitter’s like feature can be used for a variety of functions – and Mr Musk has expressed no explicit agreement with the post – the feature at the very least means that the post will be more likely to appear in his follower’s feeds.

At the same time, Mr Musk appeared to delete some of his more critical and controversial posts about Twitter. Over the weekend, he had shared a series of jokes about Twitter and negative reviews of some of its features – some of which have since disappeared.

That included posts with a range of proposals for Twitter, including the suggestion that people should be able to pay to have their accounts authenticated, that the company’s headquarters should be used as housing for homeless people given “no one shows up anyway” and that Twitter should delete the “w” from its name.

Mr Musk’s aims for Twitter and his intent in buying such a large stake still appear largely unknown, despite his flurry of tweets. But he has expressed opinions about a variety of features on the site, and suggested that he would use his standing as the company’s biggest shareholder to have them changed.

He had also initially indicated that he was looking forward to using his board seat to do the same. When Mr Agrawal announced his appointment, he said that Mr Musk would “bring great value to our Board”.

Mr Musk had replied to that tweet, saying that he was “looking forward to working with Parag and Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!”