From BZ/dpa
After changeable months as the new Twitter boss and an attempt to radically transform the news service, Elon Musk is (slowly) retiring.
Elon Musk has announced his resignation as CEO of Twitter. A successor has been found and will take over in about six weeks, Musk said in a tweet on Thursday.
Musk did not initially name a name. As CTO, he wants to take care of more specific business areas such as products and software in the future.
Musk had already announced at the end of 2022 that he wanted to give up the top office – but only once the successor had been arranged. He had taken over the top post as part of his approximately $ 44 billion purchase of the Internet platform in October. Musk had always signaled that this was not a permanent solution. He also heads the electric car maker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.
Musk’s half as “Head of Twitter” has been characterized by chaos and controversy. After a series of highly controversial decisions, headwinds mounted. His resignation announcement in December resulted in a self-initiated Twitter poll in which around 57.5 percent of the participants supported his resignation. Musk had previously assured that he would stick to the result of the vote.
Musk’s Twitter purchase raised suspicions from the start. The multi-billionaire justified the takeover as an action to strengthen freedom of speech. However, critics feared a further brutalization of the Internet platform. They worried that the change in ownership could lead to more rampant hate speech, hate speech and disinformation.
So far, Musk has not been able to dispel these concerns. On the contrary: With a wave of layoffs, erratic rule changes and other explosive decisions, he shook the online network and scared off advertising customers – the most important source of income.