- He didn't give a specific reason as to why he was coming off the platform on which he's famously prolific.
- The billionaire's space exploration company SpaceX just successfully launched astronauts into orbit for the first time, and he has his one-month-old baby X A-Xii at home.
- Musk, a prolific tweeter, has threatened to quit the platform entirely before, although he's never quite succeeded.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .
Elon Musk says he's taking a break from Twitter
Elon Musk tweeted he's "off Twitter for a while" on Monday.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, a famously voracious tweeter, announced to his 35 million followers that he's taking a break from the social media site.
"Off Twitter for a while," Musk tweeted late on Monday, without giving any further details.
In the 24 hours before, Musk was tweeting primarily about SpaceX's successful launch of two NASA astronauts to the ISS on Saturday , and expressed his opinion that it was "not right" that three officers involved in the death of George Floyd haven't been charged .
Musk's Twitter usage has got him ino trouble in the past.
In 2018 his tweets about securing funding for Tesla landed him with a $20 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission. As part of the penalty Musk had to let his tweets about Tesla's business be vetted by a lawyer .
Musk has also got into some bizarre feuds over Twitter , including being pulled into a libel suit which he ultimately won after calling a rescue diver "pedo guy."
The billionaire told Bloomberg last month that although in retrospect some of his tweets were "dumb" and he wished he could retract some, he valued being able to communicate with people directly without having to go through the press.
As well as SpaceX having made history by launching astronauts into orbit, Musk also has a newborn baby to look after. Last month Musk and singer Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) announced the birth of their child X A-Xii .
Musk has threatened to quit Twitter entirely before. In late 2019, he stated he was leaving the service only to resume tweeting three days later.
See Also:
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- Trump's executive order calls out YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook but Google's name curiously disappeared from the final version of the order