2022: The year Elon Musk took over Twitter

South African-born tech billionaire Elon Musk has announced that he will step down as Twitter CEO due to the pressure of Tesla stockholders in the latest chapter of Musk's year-long adventure with the social media platform.

Musk, who did a Twitter poll on whether he should resign or not as Twitter CEO, said he would step down as soon he found someone "foolish enough to take the job".

Musk's social media rollercoaster adventure began back in April, when he proposed to buy Twitter for a price that,  according to an official statement, was 38% above the company stock value.

Twitter’s 11-member board had met with the South African-born billionaire and approved on April 25 the Tesla founder’s acquisition of the social media platform.

“Twitter has tremendous potential,” the founder of Tesla declared at the time. “I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” highlighted Musk in an official press release.

Musk stated his desire to make Twitter go private, meaning that the company would no longer take part in the stock market. The billionaire argued this would prevent the social media platform from being at the mercy of its market value.

However, Musk first refused to go on with the buyout, claiming that the social media platform didn't share important data, such as the number of fake accounts on Twitter.

Twitter sued Elon Musk for not fulfilling his 44 billion acquisition on July 12 and accused the South African billionaire of bad faith and hypocrisy.

The Tesla founder retaliates by suing Twitter, accusing the social media company of fraud.

As the date approached what The New York Times dubbed potentially the most dramatic legal battle in Silicon Valley history, Musk relented and accepted to buy Twitter.

Among the first acts of Elon Musk as the owner of Twitter is firing CEO Parag Agrawal, among other key executives.

Musk also let go over half of Twitter employees, including staff who were in charge of managing content and detaining hate speech on the platform.

Image: freestocks / Unsplash

Trump also launches Twitter Blue, charging accounts for having the blue check mark verification. For the next few days, buyers of Twitter Blue were impersonating real-life Twitter profiles of celebrities, politicians, and institutions, throwing the social media platform into chaos.

According to the BBC, Musk has been condemned by the United Nations and the European Union over Twitter's decision to suspend some investigative journalists looking into the social media platform. The UN highlighted that media freedom was "not a toy".

One can't help but wonder if Musk is having something of a buyer's remorse with his latest acquisition.