In a unanimous verdict, the jury in the Oakland, California, federal court said Musk had brought his case too late.

The trial began on April 28. It has widely been seen as a critical moment ​for the future of OpenAI and artificial intelligence generally, both in how it should ​be used and who should benefit from it, including financially.

People use AI for myriad purposes, such as education, facial recognition, financial advice, journalism, legal research, medical diagnosis, and harmful deep-fakes.

Many people express distrust of the technology and worry it could displace people from their jobs.

The verdict followed 11 days of testimony and arguments, during which Musk’s and Altman’s credibility came under repeated attack.

Each side accused the other of being more interested in money than serving the public.

In his closing argument, Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo ​reminded jurors that several witnesses questioned Altman’s candour or branded him a liar, and that Musk ​did not give an unqualified yes when asked during the trial if he was completely trustworthy.

“Sam Altman’s credibility is ‌directly ⁠at issue,” Molo said. “If you don’t believe him, they cannot win.”

Musk accused OpenAI of wrongfully seeking to enrich investors and insiders at the nonprofit’s expense and of failing to prioritise AI’s safety. He also contended that Microsoft knew all along that OpenAI cared more about money than being altruistic.

OpenAI countered that it was Musk who saw dollar signs, and that he waited too long to claim that OpenAI breached its founding agreement to build safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.

“Mr. Musk may have the ​Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI,” William Savitt, a ​lawyer for OpenAI, ⁠said in his closing argument.

OpenAI competes with AI companies such as Anthropic and xAI, and is preparing for a possible initial public offering that could value the business at $1 trillion.

Microsoft has spent more than $100 billion on ⁠its partnership ​with OpenAI, a Microsoft executive testified.

Musk’s xAI is now part of his space and rocket company, SpaceX, which is preparing for an IPO that could exceed OpenAI’s in size.

After two days of deliberations, a jury in San Francisco federal court decided in a unanimous verdict against the tech titan, who was sued by a group of Twitter investors arguing they had relied on his statements.

While testifying in court earlier this month, Musk argued that he did not mislead investors and that people simply read too much into his public comments and tweets.

The jury instead found that certain of his public claims of problems in Twitter’s user metrics, and that he was possibly backing out of the $44bn acquisition deal, were intentionally misleading.

Lawyers for Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did lawyers for the investors, led by Brian Belgrave, a small-business owner from Oregon.

This is not the first time Musk has found himself in legal trouble for his tweets. But he was able to beat a 2023 lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholders claiming the CEO had misled them with posts about the car company.

In Friday’s verdict, the San Francisco jury found that Musk had artificially lowered the price of Twitter’s stock by a range of roughly $8 per share to $3 per share between May and October 2022 because of his public statements.

That could mean each investor in the class is poised to receive thousands of dollars in damages for their losses.

Monte Mann, a trial attorney focused on business litigation at Armstrong Teasdale, said the verdict against Musk “sends a clear message”.

“If you move the market with your words, you own the consequences.”

Musk began around May 2022 to tweet about Twitter’s purported issues with fake accounts, or “bots,” and said the deal was “on hold” before announcing he wanted out of the deal entirely.

Twitter took Musk to court in order to force the multi-billionaire to abide by the deal, and in early October Musk did so, taking over Twitter at the originally agreed upon price. The following year he renamed the social media platform X.

Those months proved to be financially damaging for Twitter investors like Belgrave, who bought and sold shares of the company during that time.

Belgrave told the jury earlier this month that he sold thousands of Twitter shares in July 2022, believing that Musk was no longer going to buy the platform because of his public posts and comments.

Belgrave’s sale price was less than what he’d purchased the shares for a few months earlier, and significantly less than the $54.20 per share Musk eventually paid.

“I got screwed,” Belgrave said. “I got cheated.”

During Musk’s testimony before the jury, he was more combative with lawyers representing the class of investors.

He eventually refused to answer questions with a simple “yes” or “no”, arguing multiple times that the lawyers were trying to mislead the jury.

“If this was a trial on whether I’ve made stupid tweets, I’d say I’m guilty,” Musk conceded at one point.

Musk’s 2018 pay package, once worth $56 billion, was restored by the Delaware Supreme Court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the compensation deal as “unfathomable.”

The Supreme Court said that a 2024 ruling that rescinded Musk’s pay package was improper and inequitable.

Earlier this week, Musk became the first person ever to surpass $600 billion in net worth on the heels of reports that his aerospace startup SpaceX was likely to go public.

In November, Tesla shareholders separately approved a $1 trillion pay plan for Musk, the largest corporate pay package in history, as investors endorsed his vision of morphing the EV maker into an AI and robotics juggernaut.

Musk’s fortune now exceeds that of Google co-founder Larry Page, the world’s second-richest person, by nearly $500 billion, according to Forbes’ billionaires list.

Musk’s second most valuable asset, his estimated 42% stake in SpaceX, is now worth $2 billion less than his Tesla holdings (at an estimated $336 billion), based on a private tender offer launched this month that valued Musk’s rocket maker at $800 billion, up from $400 billion in August.

Still, it could be SpaceX rather than Tesla that makes Musk the world’s first trillionaire, with the rocket maker said to be targeting an IPO in 2026 that could value the company at around $1.5 trillion.

Roughly 70% of these visas – that allow US companies to hire skilled foreign workers – are used by Indian citizens working in sectors like technology and medicine.

In September, US President Donald Trump added a $100,000 (£74,000) fee for applicants to the H-1B visa programme, sparking anxiety among Indian workers and employers.

Musk was speaking to Indian entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath on his podcast, released on Sunday evening, and also touched on a range of other issues from tariffs to immigration.

During the conversation, Musk maintained that America has “long benefitted” from talented Indian migrant workers, but acknowledged concerns about the “misuse” of the H-1B visa programme.

H-1B visas are given out through a lottery, and outsourcing and staffing firms have often been accused of manipulating the system using tactics such as submitting multiple entries for the same worker or using the visa to hire low-cost contract workers rather than for speciality occupations.

“We need to stop the gaming of the system,” Musk said.

“But I’m certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H-1B programme…which some on the Right are. I think they don’t realise that that would actually be very bad.”

According to data released this month by a think tank, H-1B visa approvals for Indian outsourcing companies have fallen to the lowest level in a decade.

In this financial year, the top seven Indian companies had only 4,573 H-1B petitions approved for initial employment, a 70% drop from 2015 and 37% fewer than 2024, according to the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).

Trump’s policies “could lead to higher denial rates and other problems for employers”, the NFAP report warned.

Besides H-1B visas, Musk also spoke about Trump’s decision to use tariffs as a centrepiece of his economic policy during his second term.

Musk said he had “unsuccessfully” tried to dissuade Trump from raising tariffs, which he said, “create distortions in markets”. But “the President has made it clear he loves tariffs”.

Earlier this year, the US imposed 50% tariffs on Indian goods, including a 25% penalty for buying Russian oil.

While several other countries have inked trade deals with the US , Indian goods exports to the US continue to attract some of the steepest levies in the world.

Negotiations for a trade deal between the two countries are under way, with the goal of concluding an agreement by the end of this year.

The tech magnate’s net worth briefly reached $500.1bn on Wednesday afternoon New York time, before dipping slightly to just over $499bn later in the day, the Forbes’ billionaires index reported.

Alongside Tesla, valuations of his other ventures, including the artificial intelligence startup xAI and rocket company SpaceX, have also reportedly climbed in recent months.

The milestone further cements Musk’s status as the world’s richest person, well ahead of rivals in the global tech sector.

According to Forbes’ billionaires index, Oracle founder Larry Ellison is the world’s second richest person, with a fortune of about $350.7bn.

Musk’s huge wealth is closely tied to his more than 12% stake in Tesla, which has seen its shares rise sharply this year.

Tesla shares were more than 3.3% higher at the end of New York trading on Wednesday and have now risen by over 14% this year.

The company’s shares have been making gains in recent months as investors welcome Musk focusing more time on his companies rather than politics.

He faced criticism earlier this year over his work with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the body tasked with reducing US government spending and cutting jobs.

The chair of Tesla’s board, Robyn Denholm, said in September that Musk was now “front and centre” at the carmaker.

Also last month, Musk announced that he had bought about $1bn worth of Tesla shares in what has been seen by some investors as a vote of confidence in the firm.

Tesla has faced a number of challenges in recent years, including tough competition from rival electric car makers such as China’s BYD.

The company is also in the process of transitioning into an artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics business.

Source: BBC

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The parties reported the deal in a court filing on Wednesday, jointly requesting the US appeals court in San Francisco to postpone an upcoming hearing to allow time to settle the paperwork.

Some workers sued the company over their terminations and severance packages, after some 6,000 staff – more than half its workforce – were sacked as part of a cost-cutting measure after Musk took over the company in 2022.

The BBC has contacted X – formerly called Twitter – and the lawyers representing the employees for comment.

“The parties have reached a settlement agreement in principle and began negotiating the terms of a long-form settlement agreement,” according to court documents filed by both sides, seen by the BBC.

Details of the agreement are not yet public and will require the courts’ approval.

The lawsuit, led by former Twitter employee Courtney McMillian, says about 6,000 people were wrongly denied benefits under the company’s severance plan.

They argued that the firm had failed to provide payments as high as six months’ worth of salaries, among other terms.

But Twitter only gave sacked workers at most one month of severance pay, while some did not receive anything, according to the lawsuit.

Musk axed thousands of Twitter staff globally, downsizing the platform’s trust and safety, human rights and media teams.

The Twitter layoffs was among the earliest in a series of retrenchments among tech firms to cut costs. Rank-and-file workers were often first to be laid off.

Many companies had gone on a hiring spree during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when the use of digital tools grew.

Companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft laid off tens of thousands of workers in the years that followed.

Musk, who was appointed for several months to helm President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, made similar moves when he axed thousands of federal workers earlier this year.

The department was tasked with reducing US government spending and cutting jobs.

Source: BBC

Musk’s criticism of Trump’s 940-page “Big, Beautiful Bill“, which proposes tax breaks and sweeping cuts to healthcare and food programmes, has been met with strong criticism from the Democratic Party as well as some members of Trump’s Republican Party.

In early June, Musk, a major campaign donor to Trump and a former key aide, called the bill a “disgusting abomination”, leading to a public falling out with the Republican president.

The two then appeared to cool tensions, with Trump telling reporters that he wished Musk well, while the latter wrote on X that he regretted having gone “too far”.

But as US Senators gathered to vote on amendments to the bill on Monday, Musk ramped up his criticism once again, saying lawmakers who had campaigned on cutting spending but backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame!”

“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk said.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO called for a new political party, saying the bill’s massive spending indicated “that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

“Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people,” he wrote.

Trump hit back at Musk on Tuesday, stating that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – which Musk had previously led – should review the subsidies that Musk’s companies have received, to save the federal government “BIG” money.

The dispute has effectively ended what was once a close partnership, which had seen Musk lead the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency under Trump’s second administration. The breakdown has sparked concerns among investors about the future prospects of Musk’s flagship companies, Tesla and SpaceX.

“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far,” Musk said on the X social media platform.

The clash was sparked by Musk’s denunciation of the Trump administration’s proposed spending bill, a sprawling piece of legislation seen as central to Trump’s domestic agenda during his second term. Musk labelled the bill a “disgusting abomination” and urged political retribution against Republican lawmakers who backed it.

That call did not go unnoticed in the White House.

Speaking to NBC News on Saturday, President Trump responded , warning Musk of “very serious consequences” should the billionaire follow through on funding primary challengers against sitting Republican lawmakers.

The rift between US President Donald Trump and his former adviser Elon Musk has erupted into the open, with each trading insults after the tech billionaire criticised one of Trump’s key domestic policies.

The two billionaires escalated the feud throughout Thursday, lobbing barbs at each other on the social media sites they each own, suggesting a bitter conclusion to their unlikely alliance.

The day began with Trump saying he was “disappointed” with Musk’s criticisms of his administration’s centrepiece tax and spending bill, musing that it may be the end of their “great relationship”.

Musk then accused Trump of “ingratitude”, adding: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election”.

After hours of sparring, Trump appeared to downplay the situation. “Oh it’s okay,” he told news site Politico. “It’s going very well, never done better.” His aides have scheduled a phone call with Musk for Friday, the same news site reported.

In a post on his social media platform X, Musk thanked Trump for the opportunity to help run the Department of Government Efficiency – known as Doge.

He was designated as a “special government employee” – allowing him to work a federal job for 130 days each year. Measured from Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, he would hit that limit towards the end of May.

Musk’s exit comes after he criticised Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill – the legislative centrepiece of the president’s agenda.

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on X.

“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

The BBC understands that the White House will begin “offboarding” Musk as a special government employee on Wednesday night.

Musk’s exit comes after he said he was “disappointed” with Trump’s budget, which proposes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and a boost to defence spending.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss said in an interview with BBC’s US partner CBS that the bill would increase the federal deficit, adding that he thought it “undermines the work” being done at Doge.

The Republican megadonor’s departure caps a tumultuous foray into politics that transformed him into one of Trump’s closest advisers and saw plunging profits at his electric car company.

Tesla recently warned investors that the financial pain could continue, declining to offer a growth forecast while saying “changing political sentiment” could meaningfully hurt demand for the vehicles.

Musk told investors on an earnings call last month that the time he allocates to Doge “will drop significantly” and that he would be “allocating far more of my time to Tesla”.

Source: BBC

Musk wrote on his X account that the deal gives X a valuation of $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk said in a post on X. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Musk didn’t announce any immediate changes to X, although xAI’s Grok chatbot is already integrated into the social media platform. Musk said that the combined platform will “deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences.” He said the value of the combined company was $80 billion.

Musk has made a slew of changes to the platform once known as Twitter since he purchased it in 2022, prompting some major advertisers to flee. He laid off 80% of the company’s staff, upended the platform’s verification system and reinstated suspended accounts of White supremacists within months of the acquisition.

While X’s valuation is lower than what Musk paid for the social outlet, it’s still a reversal of fortunes for the company. Investment firm Fidelity estimated in October that X was worth nearly 80% less than when Musk bought it. By December, X had recovered somewhat but was still worth only around 30% of what Musk paid, according to Fidelity, whose Blue Chip fund holds a stake in X.

Musk has also been working to establish himself as a leader in the AI space, a big focus for both the Trump administration and the tech industry. Earlier this year, he led a group of investors attempting to purchase ChatGPT maker OpenAI for nearly $100 billion, another escalation in the longtime rivalry between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

It’s unclear precisely how the acquisition will benefit Musk’s AI ambitions. But the tighter integration with X could allow xAI to push its latest AI models and features to a broad audience more quickly.

A significant reversal of X’s fortunes

Big advertisers, who had largely abandoned X after hate speech surged on the platform and ads were seen running alongside pro-Nazi content, have begun to return. (X made several pro-Nazi accounts ineligible for ads following advertiser departures.) Amazon and Apple are both reportedly reinvesting in X campaigns again, a remarkable endorsement from two brands with mass appeal.

The brand’s stabilization helped a group of bondholders, who had been deep underwater in their investments, sell billions of dollars in their X debt holdings at 97 cents on the dollar earlier this month — albeit with exceedingly high interest rates — according to several recent reports.

Bloomberg in February reported that X was in talks to raise money that would value the company at $44 billion. It’s not clear what came of those talks and why xAI is valuing X at less than it could reportedly fetch from investors. X needs to pay down its massive debt load, which Musk on Friday said totals $12 billion.

A big part of why X’s valuation has rebounded in recent months is xAI, which X reportedly held a stake in. Last month, xAI was seeking a $75 billion valuation in a funding round, according to Bloomberg.

But the biggest factor in X’s stunning bounce-back is almost certainly Musk himself: Musk’s elevation to a special government employee under President Donald Trump has empowered the world’s richest person with large sway over the operations of the federal government, which he has rapidly sought to reshape.

Investors betting on X are probably making a gamble on its leader, not its business. Last year, Musk turned X into a pro-Trump machine, using the platform to boost the president’s campaign. In posts to his 200 million followers, he pushed racist conspiracy theories about the Biden administration’s immigration policies and obsessed over the “woke mind virus,” a term used by some conservatives to describe progressive causes.

And now, with Trump back in office and Musk working in the executive branch, X has once again become the most important social media platform for following and interacting with the Trump administration. Musk has also used X to broadcast some of his changes with his Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk, who was appointed by US President Donald Trump to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), on Monday branded USAID a “criminal organisation” after security officials reportedly denied members of his cost-cutting task force access to restricted areas of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC.

“Time for it to die,” Musk wrote on his social media platform, X.

USAID’s director of security, John Voorhees, and his deputy, Brian McGill, were placed on leave after denying DOGE personnel entry to secure areas over their lack of security clearances, multiple US media outlets reported, citing unnamed officials.

The representatives of DOGE, which was created by an executive order from Trump but is not a government department, were ultimately able to access areas with classified information following the confrontation, which was first reported by CNN, according to multiple reports.

Steven Cheung, the White House director of communications, denied that DOGE personnel had attempted to gain access to secure areas, calling a PBS report about the incident “fake news” and “not even remotely true at all”.

“This is how unserious and untrustworthy the media is,” Cheung said in a post on X.

However, Katie Miller, who serves in DOGE, appeared to acknowledge the task force’s attempted entry, writing on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”

The incident has added to concerns that Trump, who has placed a freeze on nearly all foreign aid, is planning to radically curtail, or even outright dismantle, USAID.

On Saturday, the USAID website went offline while a barebones page for the agency appeared on the website of the Department of State, fueling speculation it would be subsumed into the government agency tasked with managing foreign policy.

“President Trump spent two weeks harassing and laying off USAID employees, and now his team is trying to gut the agency altogether,” Chris Coons, a Democratic senator for the state of Delaware, said on X.

“These are patriotic Americans who promote our leadership around the world. They make us safer. Trump makes us less safe.”

Jeremy Konyndyk, who served as director of USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance between 2013 and 2017, said that eliminating USAID without an act of Congress would be unlawful and a breach of the separation of powers enshrined in the US Constitution.

“If this gambit succeeds – if Trump (or Elon) can just override Congressional statutes and funding mandates, and Congress acquiesces – it’s a very dark sign … and it won’t stop at USAID,” Konyndyk said on X.

Democratic lawmakers also raised alarm about the scale of Musk’s influence over the government despite him not holding elected office.

Musk’s clash with USAID comes after The New York Times and The Associated Press news agency reported over the weekend that DOGE had gained access to the federal payment system, which holds sensitive personal information about millions of Americans.

“This is a five-alarm fire. The people elected Donald Trump to be President – not Elon Musk,” New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on X.

“Having an unelected billionaire, with his own foreign debts and motives, raiding US classified information is a grave threat to national security. This should not be a partisan issue.”

On Sunday, Trump told reporters that his administration would get the “radical lunatics” out of USAID before making a decision on its future.

Trump later singled out aid to South Africa, pledging to cut off “all future funding” in response to land confiscations and what he said was the poor treatment of “certain classes of people.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week signed a controversial law that allows the confiscation of white farmers’ land without compensation in certain cases.

The US allocated nearly $440 million in assistance to South Africa in 2023, according to US government data.

“The United States won’t stand for it, we will act,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that the funding freeze would stay in place until a “full investigation of this situation has been completed.”

The US is by far the world’s largest source of foreign assistance, although less than 1 percent of its spending goes to aid, and some other countries give more as a proportion of their budgets.

Washington gave out $72 billion in foreign aid across nearly 180 countries in 2023, with more than half of it disbursed through USAID.

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Elon Musk, the world’s richest person who is known for his ownership of social media platform X, has previously been tipped to buy a Premier League club.

Liverpool’s ownership group Fenway Sports Group (FSG), which also owns MLB franchise the Boston Red Sox and NHL side the Pittsburgh Penguins, has been open to outside investment for several years.

In late 2022, reports circulated that FSG wished to sell Liverpool after becoming unpopular with fans over several issues, including the club’s attempt to join the breakaway European Super League the previous year.

Though principal owner John W. Henry has since claimed the Anfield club is not for sale, Elon Musk’s father has said the Tesla chief executive is interested in a takeover bid.

Speaking to Times Radio on the Liverpool links, Errol Musk said: “I can’t comment on that, they’ll raise the price!”

Asked if his son had expressed a desire to buy the club, he added: “Oh yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s buying it.

“He would like to yes, obviously. Anybody would want to, so would I.

“His grandmother was born in Liverpool, and we have relatives in Liverpool, and we were fortunate to know quite a few of the Beatles because they grew up with some of my family. So, we are attached to Liverpool.”

Elon Musk’s net worth has reached $400 billion, according to Bloomberg, making him the first person ever to cross that mark.

Behind his nearly $20 billion jump in wealth was a deal that shot up Musk’s rocket company SpaceX’s valuation to roughly $350 billion, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. SpaceX and its investors agreed to purchase as much as $1.25 billion of insider shares.

CNN has reached out to SpaceX for comment, but the company typically does not respond to media requests.

Since the aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, Musk has enjoyed a huge surge in his personal wealth.

An alliance with President-elect Donald Trump has pushed his ventures to the forefront. Musk is the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the owner of X and CEO of other ventures, including Neuralink, xAI and the Boring Company.

Now, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, he will oversee a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), named after a memecoin.

Tesla shares closed at a record high on Wednesday, hitting $424.77 at market close. Musk, who is Tesla’s largest individual shareholder, has also enjoyed the stock propelling higher in part due to the broader market — NASDAQ topped 20,000 for the first time ever Wednesday.

Since Election Day, the EV maker’s stock has rallied roughly 65% on investors’ belief that Musk’s influence in the Trump administration will usher in an era of deregulation that will benefit the company.

His artificial intelligence startup, xAI, also more than doubled in value in November amid a new funding round, surging to $50 billion from a few months ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The world’s wealthiest man is now roughly $136 billion richer since November 5, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

While the top spots on the billionaires index typically switch around, Musk is racing past his wealthy peers. As of December 10, before his wealth skyrocketed to $400 billion, he was already $140 billion richer than the second-richest man on Earth, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Musk’s record-breaking Tesla-shareholder-approved pay package, which was worth $101 billion, was rejected by a Delaware court last week.

Bloomberg’s calculation still seems to include the pay package, which is now worth as much as $120 billion based on the current value of Tesla shares.

But Musk will still enjoy his riches, with numerous ways to gain significantly more wealth in the coming years.

In a recent post on his X page, Musk provided exciting details about the device’s capabilities.

According to him, the Blindsight device is designed to offer vision restoration even for those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerves, given that their visual cortex is still intact.

“For those who have been blind from birth, this technology could provide the gift of sight for the very first time,” Musk wrote.

Musk tempered expectations by noting that the initial visual experience with the device might be low resolution.

“Initially, the vision provided by the Blindsight device will be akin to Atari graphics,” he said. “However, we anticipate that future advancements could enhance this technology to a level that surpasses natural vision.”

In a bold prediction, Musk suggested that the Blindsight device could eventually allow users to perceive wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum.

“The potential is there for users to see in infrared, ultraviolet, or even radar wavelengths, much like Geordi La Forge from ‘Star Trek,'” Musk stated.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recognized the transformative potential of the Blindsight device.

In response to Musk’s announcement, the FDA expressed enthusiasm about the technology.

“Neuralink’s Blindsight device represents a significant leap forward in assistive visual technologies. We look forward to seeing how this innovation can improve the lives of individuals with visual impairments,” said a spokesperson for the FDA.

The Blindsight device’s development has generated significant interest in the scientific and technological communities, marking a potential breakthrough in the quest to restore vision.

Check out Elon’s tweet below: 

Justice Alexandre Moraes called for the vote after the platform was suspended in the country in the early hours of Saturday.

It came after X failed to appoint a new legal representative in Brazil before a court-imposed deadline.

A feud between Justice Moraes and X’s owner Elon Musk began in April when the the judge ordered the suspension of dozens of X accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.

There are 11 justices in Brazil’s Supreme Court, which is split into two chambers of five members each, excluding the chief justice. The chambers can vote on whether to uphold or reject rulings by any one of its judges.

Justice Moraes is a member of the first chamber that will be reviewing his decision to ban X.

Reacting to the decision to ban X, Mr Musk said: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”

In his ruling, Justice Moraes gave companies, including Apple and Google, a five-day deadline to remove X from its app stores and block its use on iOS and Android devices.

He added that individuals or businesses that are found to still be accessing X by using virtual private networks (VPNs) could be fined R$50,000 (£6,700).

X closed its office in Brazil last month, saying its representative had been threatened with arrest if she did not comply with orders it described as “censorship”, which it described as illegal under Brazilian law.

Justice Moraes had ordered that X accounts accused of spreading disinformation – many of which were supporters of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro – must be blocked while they are under investigation.

Brazil is said to be one of the largest markets for Mr Musk’s social media network.

Source: BBC

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The Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, despite being disqualified from last year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA), after she was reported to have failed gender eligibility tests in 2023.

However, the International Olympic Committee strongly defended Khelif’s right to compete and ruled her to be eligible.

Her lawyer Nabil Boudi told Variety on Tuesday that Musk and Rowling would be named in the lawsuit, following comments they made on social media.

Khelif’s participation was widely discussed online, after Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoned her Olympic bout against her after 46 seconds.

Paris public prosecutor’s office told news agency AFP on Wednesday that they had launched a cyberbullying probe, following a complaint by Khelif.

However, a prominent French legal blogger wrote on X that it is unlikely Mr Musk or Ms Rowling would face prosecution, as French penal law doesn’t apply to acts committed outside of France against foreign nationals.

But prosecutors could press charges against those who sent messages on French soil.

Khelif, along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, was cleared to compete in the women’s boxing in Paris, having been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships for failing to meet eligibility criteria.

But the IOC took a different view, strongly defending the two boxers.

“This is a question of justice: women must be allowed to take part in women’s competitions. And the two are women,” IOC president Thomas Bach said.

X CEO Mr Musk and Harry Potter author Ms Rowling both posted comments about the boxer, with Ms Rowling saying Khelif was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head” following the fight with Carini.

Mr Musk shared a post from swimmer Riley Gaines which said “men don’t belong in women’s sports”.

BBC News has contacted representatives for Mr Musk and Ms Rowling for comment.

Following her win, Khelif said “attacks” over her gender eligibility gave her victory against Chinese world champion Yang Liu a “special taste” after she won Olympic women’s boxing gold, a year after being disqualified from the World Championships.

“I am fully qualified to take part in this competition,” said 25-year-old Khelif. “I am a woman like any other woman.

“I was born a woman. I have lived as a woman. I competed as a woman – there is no doubt about that.”

A day after abandoning her own fight with Khelif, Carini said she “wanted to apologise” to her opponent for how she handled the moments afterwards, when she declined to shake hands with Khelif.

Yang had also been due to face Khelif in the final of last year’s World Championship – a title Yang went on to win – but Khelif was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) before they met.

The IBA said Khelif and Lin “failed to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA regulations”.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed them to compete, raised doubts about the tests and strongly criticised the IBA.

A chaotic news conference held subsequently by the IBA did little to clear the confusion around Khelif and Lin’s bans.

Chief executive Chris Roberts said the pair had “chromosome tests”, while president Umar Kremlev appeared to suggest the tests determined the fighters’ testosterone levels.

The BBC has been unable to determine what the eligibility tests consisted of.

The Russian-led IBA was stripped of its status as amateur boxing’s governing body by the IOC in 2019 because of fears over its governance and regulation.

The California-based company will build a vehicle capable of pushing the 430-tonne orbiting platform into the Pacific Ocean early in the next decade.

A contract for the work, valued at up to $843m (£668m), was announced on Wednesday.

The first elements of the space station were launched in 1998, with continuous crewed operations beginning in 2000.

The station circles the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude just above 400km (250 miles) and has been home to thousands of scientific experiments, investigating all manner of phenomena from the ageing process in humans to the formula for new types of materials.

Mr Musk wants to enable Full Self Driving (FSD) in China and transfer data collected in the country abroad to train its algorithms.

FSD is available in countries including the US but not in China.

The news came after a US report tied Tesla’s autonomous driving modes to at least 13 crashes, involving one death.

During a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Mr Musk was quoted by state media as saying Tesla was willing deep cooperation with China to “achieve more win-win results”.

In response, Mr Li told Mr Musk the Chinese market would “always be open to foreign-funded firms,” according to the reports.

China is Tesla’s second-biggest market. Other carmakers such as Xpeng – headquartered in Guangzhou – have been attempting to compete with Tesla by rolling out similar self-driving functions in their cars.

On Sunday, Mr Musk described Chinese car manufacturers as “the most competitive car companies in the world”.

Tesla has taken previously taken steps to reassure Chinese authorities about the rollout of FSD in the country, including establishing a data centre in Shanghai to process data about Chinese consumers in accordance with local laws.

The trip comes days after the US’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was investigating whether a recall successfully addressed safety concerns relating to Tesla’s driver assistance system.

The NHTSA said that despite requirements that drivers maintain focus on the road and be prepared to take control at a moment’s notice when autonomous driving was enabled, drivers involved in the crashes “were not sufficiently engaged”. The regulator’s analysis was conducted before a recall Tesla said would fix the issue.

Tesla’s software is supposed to make sure that drivers are paying attention and that the feature is only in use in appropriate conditions, such as driving on highways.

Mr Musk has promised that Teslas will be able to act as autonomous “robotaxis” for years. In 2015, he said Teslas would achieve “full autonomy” by 2018. And in 2019, he said the company would have robotaxis operating by the following year.

This month, the Tesla chief executive said he would reveal the company’s robotaxi in August.

Critics accuse Mr Musk of consistently hyping up the prospects of full autonomous driving to prop up the company’s share price, which has fallen on the back of challenges including falling demand for electric vehicles worldwide and competition from cheaper Chinese manufacturers. Mr Musk denies the accusations.

Tesla has been cutting the prices of its cars in China and other markets to drum up demand.

“Tesla prices must change frequently in order to match production with demand,” Mr Musk recently said on X, the microblogging platform previously known as Twitter which the billionaire owns.

Tesla recently reported a 13% fall in automotive sales to $17.3bn (£13.7bn) for the first three months of this year.

Overall sales across Tesla dropped by 9% while its profits fell sharply to $1.13bn compared to $2.51bn for the same period last year.

So far in 2024, its share price has collapsed by 32%.

The electrical vehicle (EV) company is asking shareholders to vote on its chief executive’s record-breaking pay that was set in 2018.

However, the deal was rejected by a US judge in January, who described it as “an unfathomable sum”.

It comes just days after Musk announced plans to cut more than 10% of its global workforce.

In a memo issued to staff Musk said there was nothing he hated more, “but it must be done”.

Now, his remuneration is in the spotlight – although the proposed compensation includes no salary or bonus.

Instead, the 2018 deal set rewards based on Tesla’s market value rising to as much as $650bn over 10 years. Stock in the EV company is now valued at $500.36bn, according to data.

At the time of her ruling Delaware-based Judge Kathaleen McCormick said the pay deal was unfair to shareholders.

She found Tesla directors, who negotiated the deal, were “perhaps starry eyed” due to Mr Musk’s “superstar appeal” and did not fully inform shareholders.

The decision outraged Mr Musk, who subsequently threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from Delaware to Texas.

On Monday, Tesla filed paperwork asking shareholders to approve that move and sign off on the 2018 pay package again.

Board chair Robyn Denholm wrote in a letter included in the regulatory filing: “Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years… That strikes us, and the many stockholders from whom we already have heard, as fundamentally unfair.”

Ms Denholm also maintained the board did not agree with the court’s ruling. “We do not think that what the Delaware Court said is how corporate law should or does work,” she said.

Musk’s compensation for 2023 was $0, the filing showed, as the billionaire does not take a salary from the company and is compensated through stock options.

“If it is legally advisable, we suggest simply subjecting the original 2018 package to a new shareholder vote,” Tesla said, adding that it still planned to appeal the ruling.

The re-vote comes at a tricky time for the company which has seen the fewest deliveries of EVs since 2022. The weak demand comes ahead of its quarterly earnings which are revealed next week.

Musk is also trying to recover his reputation after a turbulent year. Tesla had to recall cars over safety concerns, Mr Musk was caught up in an antisemitic conspiracy row and had repeated problems with X, his social media platform.

But regardless, Bloomberg and Forbes estimated Musk’s net worth to be between $198bn and $220bn in November 2023, making him the richest person in the world.

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Musk detailed his plan to remove legacy blue checks soon after he acquired Twitter in October 2022, trashing the company’s previous account-verification policy as “corrupt and nonsensical.” 

Musk’s new policy went into effect in April 2023 and to keep the checks, users were required to subscribe to Twitter Blue (now called X Premium), which starts at $8 per month.

However, within a few days, Musk restored the verified badges for high-profile celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé to avoid confusion over the authenticity of the accounts.

Now it seems Musk has restored the check marks for what X is calling “influential members of the community.”

He first hinted at this policy in a post on March 27, writing that “going forward, all X accounts with over 2,500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5,000 will get Premium+ for free.”

It appears that the policy went into effect on Wednesday night, as many of these “influential” users took to X to clarify that they did not pay for a Premium subscription in order to restore their blue checks.

“What happened? I didn’t pay for this. I would NEVER pay for this,” Community actor Yvette Nicole Brown wrote on X. “When did the Blue Check mark start getting passed around again?!”

“American Fiction” star and Oscar nominee Jeffrey Wright also lamented the return of his blue check.

He posted a screenshot of the notification of his complimentary subscription, which reads: “As an influential member of the community on X, we’ve given you a complimentary subscription to X Premium subject to X Premium Terms by selecting this notice. X reserves the right to cancel the complimentary subscription at its sole discretion.”

“Translation: Pay $8? Kidding. Help me. But don’t say anything too free speechy about me or my Garbage Tower of Babel shitsite,” Wright wrote.

“The Wire” creator David Simon did not mince words in his reaction to getting his blue check back. “Yo, Elon, take this blue check and scratch your taint with the long end of it,” he wrote. “Does anyone out there know how to turn this fucker off?”

Representatives for X did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.

The Amazon founder’s net worth was $200 billion, while Musk followed at $198 billion. Musk has lost about $31 billion over the past year, while Bezos has gained $23 billion, according to the index.

Tesla shares had tumbled more than 7% on Monday.

Musk had reclaimed the title of world’s richest person in May 2023, edging out LVMH (LVMHF) CEO Bernard Arnault, who runs one of the world’s biggest conglomerates and includes brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Celine.

The three centibillionaires — Musk, Arnault and Bezos — have been in competition with each other for the top spot for months. Arnault had held the title as his wealth climbed due to a boom in luxury goods sales that helped drive up LVMH’s stock price.

Earlier this year, a Delaware state court judge threw out Musk’s 2018 pay package — worth more than $50 billion — that helped to make him one of the richest people in the world. Tesla shares also tumbled about 24% year-to-date.

Of course, the title of the richest person on earth swaps every few months, depending on markets performance.

Musk and Arnault still hold plenty of wealth — since 2020, the net worth of the five wealthiest people on earth has skyrocketed 114% to a total of $869 billion, after taking inflation into account, according to Oxfam’s annual inequality report.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he said “promising” brain activity had been detected after the procedure and the patient was “recovering well”.

The company’s goal is to connect human brains to computers to help tackle complex neurological conditions.

A number of rival firms have already implanted similar devices.

“For any company producing medical devices, the first test in humans is a significant milestone,” said Professor Anne Vanhoestenberghe of King’s College London.

“For the brain computer interface community, we must place this news in the context that whilst there are many companies working on exciting products, there are only a few other companies who have implanted their devices in humans, so Neuralink has joined a rather small group.”

However, she also suggested there needed to be a note of caution as “true success” could only be evaluated in the long-term.

“We know Elon Musk is very adept at generating publicity for his company,” she added.

Among the other companies to make similar advances in the field is the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland, which has successfully enabled a paralysed man to walk just by thinking.

That was achieved by putting electronic implants on his brain and spine, which wirelessly communicate thoughts to his legs and feet.

Details of the breakthrough were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature in May 2023.

There has been no independent verification of Mr Musk’s claims, nor has Neuralink provided any information about the procedure he says has taken place.

BBC News has approached both Neuralink and the US’s medical regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for comment.

Neuralink testing

Neuralink has been criticised in the past, with Reuters reporting in December 2022 that the company engaged in testing which resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,500 animals, including sheep, monkeys and pigs.

In July 2023, the head of the US Department of Agriculture – which investigates animal welfare concerns – said it had not found any violations of animal research rules at the firm.

However, a separate investigation by the agency is ongoing.

Mr Musk’s company was given permission to test the chip on humans by the FDA in May 2023.

That gave the green light for the start of the six-year study during which a robot is being used to surgically place 64 flexible threads, thinner than a human hair, on to a part of the brain that controls “movement intention”, according to Neuralink.

The company says that these threads allow its experimental implant – powered by a battery that can be charged wirelessly – to record and transmit brain signals wirelessly to an app that decodes how the person intends to move.

“[It] has great potential to help people with neurological disorders in future and is an excellent example of how fundamental neuroscience research is being harnessed for medical advances,” said Professor Tara Spires-Jones, president of the British Neuroscience Association.

“However, most of these interfaces require invasive neurosurgery and are still in experimental stages thus it will likely be many years before they are commonly available.”

Telepathy

In another post on X, Mr Musk said Neuralink’s first product would be called Telepathy.

Telepathy, he said, would enable “control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking”.

“Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs,” he continued.

Referring to the late British scientist who had motor neurone disease, he added: “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal.”

While Mr Musk’s involvement raises the profile of Neuralink, some of his rivals have a track record dating back two decades. Utah-based Blackrock Neurotech implanted its first of many brain-computer interfaces in 2004.

Precision Neuroscience, formed by a Neuralink co-founder, also aims to help people with paralysis. And its implant resembles a very thin piece of tape that sits on the surface of the brain and can be implanted via a “cranial micro-slit”, which it says is a much simpler procedure.

Existing devices have also generated results. In two separate recent US scientific studies, implants were used to monitor brain activity when a person tried to speak, which could then be decoded to help them communicate.

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Arnault and his family’s net worth grew to $207.8 billion after a $23.6 billion increase on Friday, passing Musk’s $204.5 billion, according to the Forbes real-time billionaires list.

The news comes as Musk’s Tesla struggled in the stock market Thursday, dropping 13%, with Musk losing more than $18 billion in net worth.

Meanwhile, LVMH shares were soaring Friday, up over 13% as of 11 a.m. on the heels of news of strong sales.

The market cap of LVMH reached $388.8 billion on Friday, compared to Tesla’s $586.14 billion market cap.

In 2021, LVMH acquired Tiffany & Co. for nearly $16 billion—considered the largest luxury brand acquisition ever. Arnault’s holding company Agache backs a venture capital firm called Aglaé Ventures, which Forbes reports invests in businesses like Netflix and ByteDance—the parent company of TikTok.

Arnault, aged 74, initially outpaced Musk in wealth in Decem ..

Users will not need a phone number for the features that will be available on Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and personal computers, Musk said in post on X on Thursday.

He did not give a timeline for the launch.

After rebranding Twitter as X, Musk signaled he would turn the platform into a super app offering a range of services from messaging and social networking to peer-to-peer payments.

The vision brings to mind Tencent’s (0700.HK) WeChat app – a ubiquitous part of daily life in China.

Musk, who continues to spearhead product development at X after appointing a new CEO in May, is also pushing to change how news links appear on the platform in a move that could undermine the reach of news publishers.

In a post on his social media site Threads, the Meta boss said he had offered Mr Musk “a real date” but the rival entrepreneur had made excuses.

Mr Musk had earlier on Sunday suggested on his own messaging site X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was willing to fight as early as Monday.

The billionaires agreed to the bout in June, sparking huge media attention.

But despite egging each other on for months, the rivals have yet to secure a date, raising doubts the fight will ever go ahead.

The war of words was complicated by the launch of Threads in July, with the rival messaging app to X attracting more than 100 million sign-ups in less than a week.

That number has fallen back, and X remains comfortably ahead with around 350 million users – but Mr Musk has threatened to sue Facebook for “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets”.

Meta denies the claims.

Last week, Mr Zuckerberg said he had proposed 26 August for the cage fight. Then in a twist on Friday, Italy’s culture minister said that he had spoken to Mr Musk about hosting the showdown in the country as a charity event.

Mr Musk suggested it would have “an ancient Rome theme”.

On Sunday, however, the Meta boss posted on Threads: “Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead.

“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”

Responding on X, however, Mr Musk called the Meta boss a “chicken”.

Earlier, Mr Musk had posted a text message exchange on the messaging platform purportedly between himself and Mr Zuckerberg.

BREAKING: Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg for a practice match at his house next week. Here's the conversation between the two.

? @WalterIsaacson pic.twitter.com/R8O3uGCQ7m

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 13, 2023

In it he tells the Meta boss that he will be in Palo Alto, home to Meta’s headquarters, on Monday and that the fight could be held in Mr Zuckerberg’s Octagon, which is the eight-sided ring in which cage fights are held.

Mr Musk continued: “I have not been practicing much, apart from a brief bout with Lex Fridman [the computer scientist and podcast host] today.

“While I think it is very unlikely, l given our size difference, perhaps you are a modern-day Bruce Lee and will somehow win.”

Elon Musk, 52, and Mark Zuckerberg, 39 are two of the world’s most high-profile technology billionaires.

The bizarre idea to fight each other started in June, when Mr Musk tweeted that he was “up for a cage fight” with Mr Zuckerberg.

The Meta boss, who already has mixed martial arts (MMA) training and has recently won jiu-jitsu tournaments, simply responded with “send me location”.

The rebrand is another step in the ongoing transformation of Twitter, an online watering hole for hyper-connected people that aspires to become an app that can do “everything,” according to CEO Linda Yaccarino.

“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities,” she said on the platform. “Powered by A.I., X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”

Here’s what the shift means for X as Elon Musk seeks to reinvent Twitter, which he bought in 2022 for $44 billion. 

What will the app do now?

Musk has been vocal about his goal of turning Twitter into a so-called super-app, something akin to China’s WeChat. For now there’s no American equivalent, but industry experts imagine an app that encompasses basically anything a person wants to do online.

“Consumers of the app can do a lot of different things on the platform, whether it’s listen to a podcast, shop, watch videos,” said Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer of marketing firm Tinuiti.

Twitter already lets users engage in live audio conversations, send longer text messages and broadcast video, such as the new show former Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently launched on the platform. If Twitter’s push into paid subscriptions is successful, it could eventually expand into sharing some subscription revenue with users.

“In theory, they can become a more mainstream version of Patreon or other similar platforms,” Ahene said. “Whether they succeed remains to be seen. It’s not the reason people go to Twitter today, so to reposition the company … would take significant investment and time with what’s really a skeleton team.” 

What’s with the letter X?

Musk appears to have a longstanding fixation on the letter X, dubbing his very first startup X.com. (After a merger, the app became PayPal, although Musk reportedly pushed for it to keep the name X, according to biographer Walter Isaacson.) After buying Twitter, Musk reportedly texted Isaacson that he was “very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!”

The letter X surfaces throughout Musk’s other endeavors as well, including his space-exploration venture SpaceX,  his recently launched artificial-intelligence app xAI and the Model X, one of electric car company Tesla’s earliest models. Musk even refers to his son with singer Grimes, by the name X.

“It’s just X, the letter X,” he said on the Joe Rogan Experience recently, explaining how to pronounce  his son X Æ A-XII’s name.

Musk regained ownership of X.com six years ago. He formally changed Twitter’s legal name to X Corp in April. Over the weekend, X.com was redirected to Twitter.com, and on Monday a crane began to remove Twitter’s iconic bird logo from the company’s San Francisco headquarters. However, police stopped the work soon after it began.

What does this mean for Twitter?

For now, the platform’s rebrand is just a name change — no new features have been introduced, staying true to Musk’s apparent preferred product strategy of hype first, delivery much later.

But the name change suggests Musk is likely to keep control of the company for the near future, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. After Musk’s takeover in April of 2022, some observers believed the billionaire could make some changes to Twitter and quickly flip it to a different owner, Singh said.

“That option is off the table now given the name change — I don’t think there’s any other prospective buyer who will take it now,” he said.

What are the roadblocks?

To be sure, there are many ways an “everything app” could fail, from simply confusing its users to struggling to attract enough advertisers. 

“If you look at what Tesla’s done in terms of advertising, which is very little, [Musk’s] belief is that good product sells itself and you don’t need to advertise it. Meanwhile, you have many, many large brands and companies that spend millions of dollars on Twitter and would beg to differ,” said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer for Mediaocean, an advertising partner of Twitter’s. 

Expanding the platform’s reach to include things like shopping and paid subscription content could actually help it flourish in the long term by creating several revenue streams and making it less reliant on large companies’ willingness to spend money, analysts said. 

In the short term, building out those capabilities would require a massive investment in staff and infrastructure. It’s far from clear if a company that slashed about three-quarters of its staff and is now embroiled in multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills can deliver that. 

“The investment is a lot in terms of cloud infrastructure — we’re talking about $40 billion, $50 billion in upfront investments,” Singh said. “Twitter as a standalone app doesn’t have the infrastructure to become an everything app.”

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Complete with a ruler emoji and all, Elon Musk has challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a “d**k-measuring” contest.

“I propose a literal d**k-measuring contest,” Musk tweeted on Sunday night.

Musk sent the tweet as a follow-up to his earlier tweet “Zuck is a cuck” which was in response to claims Muck protects free speech while Zuckerberg protects brand speech.

While Zuckerberg, whose company Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has not yet responded to the tweets, tensions between the two have been on the rise.

A couple of weeks ago the tech titans seemingly agreed to engage in physical combat after a recent war of words that saw Musk lash out at rumoured plans by Meta to launch a text-based social media rival to his Twitter.

In response to a tweet last month from a user about  the app Threads, Musk wrote: “I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options.”

In a follow-up tweet, Musk teased the idea of a “cage match” with Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg fired back in an Instagram story by posting a screenshot of Musk’s tweet overlaid with the caption “Send Me Location”. To which Musk replied “Vegas Octagon”.

On Thursday Meta officially launched a new app called Threads,  an app from Instagram that offers a Twitter-like microblogging experience.

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“Rate Limit Exceeded” and “#TwitterDown” are the two top trending topics on the app in the US, for those who have used it.

The former had over 40,000 tweets as of Saturday noon.

Reports of outages began around 8 am EST, according to DownDetector, and shot up through the morning.

DownDetector showed more than 7,400 outage reports across the website as of noon EST.

Users, including CNN journalists, flagged that their feeds weren’t loading and that they were met with an error message saying, “Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again.” Others reported errors saying the site cannot retrieve tweets.

Musk changes policy

Hours after users began reporting the problems, billionaire owner Elon Musk tweeted that the site had applied temporary limits “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.”

Verified accounts are limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, he tweeted, while unverified accounts are limited to just 600. New unverified accounts are at 300 posts a day.

Musk began offering a blue verification check mark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue subscription service to grow revenue.

Later, Musk posted he will increase the limit “soon” to 8,000 tweets a day for verified users, 800 for unverified and 400 for new unverified accounts.

Many expressed their frustration with the connection problems. Other trending topics in the US included: “Wtf Twitter” and “Thanks Elon.”

Just yesterday, Twitter appeared to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account. It was unclear whether the change was an intentional policy update or a glitch.

Most of the reported problems Saturday were on the website, at 44%, followed by 39% of problems reported on the app.

CNN has reached out to Twitter for comment, but the platform responded with an automated poop emoji.

Twitter users faced similar wide-ranging service disruptions in March, one of the most significant outages since Elon Musk took over. More than 8,000 users reported disruptions in that instance.

Musk is trying to turn around the platform, which faced an exodus of advertisers, with the onboarding of a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino.

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Mr Musk posted a message on his social media platform Twitter that he was “up for a cage fight” with Mr Zuckerberg.

Mr Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, then posted a screenshot of Mr Musk’s tweet with the caption “send me location”.

“The story speaks for itself,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.

Mr Musk then replied to Mr Zuckerberg’s response with: “Vegas Octagon.”

The Octagon is the competition mat and fenced-in area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bouts. The UFC is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mr Musk, who turns 52 later this month, also tweeted: “I have this great move that I call “The Walrus”, where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing.”

He also tweeted: “I almost never work out, except for picking up my kids & throwing them in the air.”

Meanwhile, 39-year-old Mr Zuckerberg has already been training in mixed martial arts (MMA) and has recently won jiu-jitsu tournaments.

Twitter did not provide a statement when contacted by the BBC for comment.

The exchanges have gone viral with social media users debating who would win the bout, while others have posted memes including mocked up posters advertising the fight.

Earlier this month, Meta showed staff plans for a text-based social network designed to compete with Twitter, sources have told the BBC.

It could allow users to follow accounts they already follow on Instagram, Meta’s image-sharing app.

It could potentially allow the company to bring over followers from decentralised platforms such as Mastodon.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that the platform was in development.

The text-based network – which has a working title of P92 – could turn out to be a greater rival to Elon Musk’s Twitter than either BlueSky or Mastodon.

His net worth has soared by $55.3bn (£44.44bn) since January to $192bn (£153.24bn), after a rise in the value of his electric car company Tesla.

Mr Arnault’s fortune has fallen by $24.5bn (£19.55bn) to $187bn (£149bn), per Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

He is followed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates in the third and fourth positions.

Mr Arnault, 74, had overtaken Mr Musk, 51, on the rich list in December when shares in LMVH jumped as demand for luxury goods rebounded.

At the same, shares in Tesla – the company from which Mr Musk derives most of his wealth – fell sharply amid concerns that his takeover of the social media platform Twitter was affecting his leadership.

However, Tesla shares have bounced back by almost 92% since the start of this year as investor nerves have eased and Mr Musk has announced his replacement as Twitter’s chief executive.

His visit to China this week to discuss Tesla has also sparked excitement, while the car firm is benefiting from the recent rise in interest in artificial intelligence.

By contrast, LMVH – which owns brands including Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior – has gone into reverse.

After hitting a record high in April, its shares have fallen sharply and are down 16% since the start of the year.

Mr Arnault, who co-founded the luxury goods giant in 1987, owns a majority stake in the business, which is Europe’s most valuable firm.

In January the Frenchman appointed his daughter Delphine Arnault, 47, as head of his fashion house Dior as part of a shake-up at LMVH.

All five of Mr Arnault’s children hold management positions at brands in the group.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the world’s third richest person with a fortune of $37.3bn. Mr Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, is worth $16.2bn.

The new CEO will assume the role at Twitter Inc., which recently changed its name to X Corp., in the coming weeks, Musk said. He did not provide a name. However, the Wall Street Journal reported — citing sources — that Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, was in talks for the job.

“Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” Musk said in a tweet.

Musk, who has had a chaotic reign as “Chief Twit” since buying the company in October, said he will become Twitter’s executive chair and chief technology officer, overseeing product, software and system operations.

In December, Musk ran a poll on the platform asking users whether he should step back as Twitter’s CEO, which ended with the majority of users voting in the affirmative. Musk said he would abide by the results of the poll but later backtracked, saying he would hand over the role “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” In February, he reiterated that he planned to find a replacement by the end of the year.

Musk has faced criticism for a series of policy changes at Twitter, which often came without clear justification and raised concerns about the impact on Twitter’s users.

He has also been attempting to convince advertisers to rejoin the platform, after many fled over concerns about hateful conduct on the platform, Twitter’s mass layoffs or questions about the company’s future. At the same time, he has been trying to sell users on a new paid subscription platform that includes the ability to pay for a blue verification check mark, but appears to have limited traction so far.

Musk — who runs or is involved in numerous other companies, including Tesla (TSLA) — has also faced criticism from Tesla (TSLA) shareholders concerned that he is distracted by Twitter.

Musk recently said that Twitter is now “trending to breakeven,” after previously saying it was at risk of bankruptcy. Now, the company’s new CEO will be tasked with trying to help turn around the struggling company and help Musk recoup some of the $44 billion spent acquiring the platform.

Even as Musk prepares to step back from the CEO role, he will likely maintain significant control over the future direction of the company. After taking over the company in October, Musk cleared out the C-Suite, dissolved the board and became both the CEO and sole director of the platform.

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Exclusive academic data plus testimony from Twitter users back up their allegations, suggesting hate is thriving under Mr Musk’s leadership, with trolls emboldened, harassment intensifying and a spike in accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.

Current and former employees of the company tell BBC Panorama that features intended to protect Twitter users from trolling and harassment are proving difficult to maintain, amid what they describe as a chaotic working environment in which Mr Musk is shadowed by bodyguards at all times. I’ve spoken to dozens, with several going on the record for the first time.

The former head of content design says everyone on her team – which created safety measures such as nudge buttons – has been sacked. She later resigned. Internal research by Twitter suggests those safety measures reduced trolling by 60%. An engineer working for Twitter told me “nobody’s taking care” of this type of work now, likening the platform to a building that seems fine from the outside, but inside is “on fire”.

Twitter has not replied to the BBC’s request for comment.

My investigation also reveals:

• Concerns that child sexual exploitation is on the rise on Twitter and not being sufficiently raised with law enforcement
• Targeted harassment campaigns aimed at curbing freedom of expression, and foreign influence operations – once removed daily from Twitter – are going “undetected”, according to a recent employee.
• Exclusive data showing how misogynistic online hate targeting me is on the rise since the takeover, and that there has been a 69% increase in new accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.
• Rape survivors have been targeted by accounts that have become more active since the takeover, with indications they’ve been reinstated or newly created.

Abuse on Twitter is nothing new for me – I’m a reporter who shares my coverage of disinformation, conspiracies and hate there. But throughout most of last year I noticed it steadily lessening across all of the social media sites. And then in November I realised it had got worse on Twitter again.

It turns out, I was right. A team from the International Center for Journalists and the University of Sheffield have been tracking the hate I receive, and their data revealed the abuse targeted at me on Twitter had more than tripled since Mr Musk took over, compared with the same period in the year before.

All of the social media sites have been under pressure to tackle online hate and harmful content – but they say they’re taking measures to deal with it. Measures that no longer seem to be top of the agenda at Twitter.

In San Francisco, the home of Twitter’s headquarters, I set out to look for answers. What better place to get them than from an engineer – responsible for the computer code that makes Twitter work. Because he’s still working there, he’s asked us to conceal his identity, so we’re calling him Sam.

“For someone on the inside, it’s like a building where all the pieces are on fire,” he revealed.

“When you look at it from the outside the façade looks fine, but I can see that nothing is working. All the plumbing is broken, all the faucets, everything.”

He says the chaos has been created by the huge disruption in staffing. At least half of Twitter’s workforce have been sacked or chosen to leave since Musk bought it. Now people from other teams are having to shift their focus, he says.

“A totally new person, without the expertise, is doing what used to be done by more than 20 people,” says Sam. “That leaves room for much more risk, many more possibilities of things that can go wrong.”

He says previous features still exist but those who designed and maintained them have left – he thinks they are now left unmanned.

“There are so many things broken and there’s nobody taking care of it, that you see this inconsistent behaviour,” he tells me.

The level of disarray, in his view, is because Mr Musk doesn’t trust Twitter employees. He describes him bringing in engineers from his other company – electric car manufacturer Tesla – and asking them to evaluate engineers’ code over just a few days before deciding who to sack. Code like that would take “months” to understand, he tells me.

He believes this lack of trust is betrayed by the level of security Mr Musk surrounds himself with.

“Wherever he goes in the office, there are at least two bodyguards – very bulky, tall, Hollywood movie-[style] bodyguards. Even when [he goes] to the restroom,” he tells me.

He thinks for Mr Musk it’s about money. He says cleaning and catering staff were all sacked – and that Mr Musk even tried to sell the office plants to employees.

Lisa Jennings Young, Twitter’s former head of content design, was one of the people who specialised in introducing features designed to protect users from hate. Twitter was a hotbed for trolling long before Mr Musk took over, but she says her team had made good headway at limiting this. Internal Twitter research, seen by the BBC, appears to back this up.

“It was not at all perfect. But we were trying, and we were making things better all the time,” she says. It is the first time she’s publicly spoken of her experience since she left after Mr Musk’s takeover.

Ms Jennings Young’s team worked on several new features including safety mode, which can automatically block abusive accounts. They also designed labels applied to misleading tweets, and something called the “harmful reply nudge”. The “nudge” alerts users before they send a tweet in which AI technology has detected trigger words or harmful language.

Twitter’s own research, seen by the BBC, appears to show the “nudge” and other safety tools being effective.

“Overall 60% of users deleted or edited their reply when given a chance through the nudge,” she says. “But what was more interesting, is that after we nudged people once, they composed 11% fewer harmful replies in the future.”

These safety features were being implemented around the time my abuse on Twitter seemed to reduce, according to data collated by the University of Sheffield and International Center for Journalists. It’s impossible to directly correlate the two, but given what the evidence tells us about the efficacy of these measures, it’s possible to draw a link.

But after Mr Musk took over the social media company in late October 2022, Lisa’s entire team was laid off, and she herself chose to leave in late November. I asked Ms Jennings Young what happened to features like the harmful reply nudge.

“There’s no-one there to work on that at this time,” she told me. She has no idea what has happened to the projects she was doing.

So we tried an experiment.

She suggested a tweet that she would have expected to trigger a nudge. “Twitter employees are lazy losers, jump off the Golden Gate bridge and die.” I shared it on a private profile in response to one of her tweets, but to Ms Jennings Young’s surprise, no nudge was sent.

Another tweet with offensive language we shared was picked up – but Lisa says the nudge should have picked up a message wishing death on a user, not just swear words. As Sam had predicted, it didn’t seem to be working as it was designed to.

During this investigation, I’ve had messages from many people who’ve told me how the hate they receive on Twitter has been increasing since Mr Musk took over – sharing examples of racism, antisemitism and misogyny.

Ellie Wilson, who lives in Glasgow, was raped while at university and began posting about that experience on social media last summer. At the time, she received a supportive response on Twitter.

But when she tweeted about her attacker in January after he was sentenced, she was subject to a wave of hateful messages. She received abusive and misogynistic replies – with some even telling her she deserved to be raped.

“[What] I find most difficult [is] the people that say that I wasn’t raped or that this didn’t happen and that I’m lying. It’s sort of like a secondary trauma,” Ms Wilson told me.

Her Twitter following was smaller before the takeover, but when I looked into accounts targeting her with hate this time around, I noticed the trolls’ profiles had become more active since the takeover, suggesting they’d been suspended previously and recently reinstated.

Some of the accounts had even been set up around the time of Mr Musk’s takeover. They appeared to be dedicated to sending out hate, without profile pictures or identifying features.

Several follow and interact with content from popular accounts that have been accused of promoting misogyny and hate – reinstated on Twitter after Musk decided to restore thousands of suspended accounts, including that of controversial influencer Andrew Tate.

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“By allowing those people a platform, you’re empowering them. And you’re saying, ‘This is OK, you can do that.’”

Several of the accounts also targeted other rape survivors she’s in contact with.

Andrew Tate did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

New research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – a UK think tank that investigates disinformation and hate – echoes what I’ve uncovered about the troll accounts targeting Ellie.

It shows that tens of thousands of new accounts have been created since Mr Musk took over, which then immediately followed known abusive and misogynistic profiles – 69% higher than before he was in charge.

The research suggests these abusive networks are now growing – and that Mr Musk’s takeover has created a “permissive environment” for the creation and use of these kinds of accounts.

On Saturday, he stated his decision to block everyone from his Twitter profile and gave out his reason for doing the same.

It was in October last year when the Tesla CEO formally took over Twitter. Since then, the billionaire introduced several erratic policy changes in the company. 

“I have unblocked everyone I blocked, apart from scammers. I recommend others do the same. Negative feedback is a good thing,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.

In the past, Musk has been an ardent supporter of establishing free speech on the social media platform.

However, he has kept a strong stance against the scammers and bots operating on the platform.

Musk’s recent move also came amid the reports that Twitter CEO is frustrated about the fact that he is not getting enough engagement on the social media platform. 

Is the Twitter layoff saga still on?

In November, Musk sat down with his remaining Twitter employees after firing half of the workforce from the company and announced that the lay-off saga is now over.

However, The Verge reported on February 22 that the social media site is still firing people. Last week, dozens of Twitter employees across the sales and engineering departments were laid off.

Some of the employees who were fired were directly reporting to the Tesla CEO.

With this, Twitter had three rounds of lay-offs after Musk promised that the storm is over, the Verge reported. 

Following the Saturday tweet, one Twitter user expressed his concerns about people giving death threats to others on the social media platform.

“True, but people giving death threats and things of that nature are not cool. So these people need to stay blocked,” the user commented on Musk’s Saturday tweet. In response, Musk made it clear that the death threat will result in “immediate account suspension”.

“Death threats should result in immediate account suspension. Lmk if that’s not happening,” Musk responded.

While Musk’s decision to unblock users received a mixed response among netizens, the concerns over the prevalence of death threats and trolling on the much-loved networking site remain.  

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He wrote: “Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video.”

According to him, the new development “shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.”

Musk announced earlier this week that he will step down as CEO of the company once he finds a successor.

In a poll that raised lots of eyebrows, Elon asked followers to vote if they wanted him to remain as CEO or step down.

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A total of 57.5% voted “yes” after Mr Musk asked his 122 million followers whether he should stand down.

Mr Musk, who bought Twitter for $44bn (£36bn), said before the poll closed that he would abide by the result.

The technology tycoon, who also runs Tesla and Space X, has faced much criticism since taking over the site.

Mr Musk is yet to comment since the poll closed. Even if he were to resign as chief executive, he would remain as Twitter’s owner.

About 17.5 million people voted in his poll on Monday.

In the past Mr Musk has obeyed Twitter polls. He’s fond of quoting the phrase “vox populi, vox dei”, a Latin phrase which roughly means “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.

A former Twitter member of staff, who left the company recently, told the BBC that Mr Musk was “showing himself to be the incompetent fool we all knew he was”.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, they added: “His investors are surely looking at this now and questioning whether he was the right horse to back.

“I imagine he’s getting pressure from investors to step down and is using this poll to make it look like he’s following the will of the people instead of the will of those paying his bills.”

Minutes before the polled closed, the founder of crypto exchange Binance replied to Mr Musk saying he should “stay the course” and not step down.

Changpeng Zhao is thought to be one of Twitter’s investors and said in May he had backed Mr Musk taking over by making a $500m investment.

Dan Ives, senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, told the BBC before the poll closed that he believed the vote would “ultimately” lead to the “ending of Musk’s reign as chief executive of Twitter”.

There has been a flurry of controversial changes at Twitter since Mr Musk bought the social media site.

He has fired about half of its staff and attempted a rollout of Twitter’s paid-for verification feature before putting it on pause. The feature was relaunched last week.

He has also been criticised for his approach to content moderation, with some civil liberties groups accusing him of taking steps that will increase hate speech and misinformation.

On Friday, Mr Musk was condemned by the United Nations and European Union over Twitter’s decision to suspend some journalists who cover the social media firm.

The UN tweeted that media freedom is “not a toy”, while the EU threatened Twitter with sanctions.

‘Circus show’

Mr Ives said the last few weeks and months had been a “black eye for Musk and a black eye for Tesla” which he said was the “golden child” because it is where most of the billionaire’s wealth is.

“Twitter right now – it’s a quicksand situation and I think it’s gotten worse since Musk took over Twitter. It’s been a circus show,” he added.

“I think ultimately in the next 24 hours Musk will probably name a new temporary CEO of Twitter.”

After starting the poll, Mr Musk tweeted: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

He added later: “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.”

Mr Ives said he believed Mr Musk had realised he “cannot balance” being the boss of Twitter as well as his electric car company Tesla and space rocket firm SpaceX.

“The biggest problem is the more controversy he creates, advertisers leave and they run for the hills and that’s 90% of revenue for Twitter,” he added.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said investors at Tesla would be “closely watching” Mr Musk’s poll.

“Given how much of a distraction Musk’s tenure at Twitter has become, shareholders in the electric vehicle manufacturer will be breathing a big sigh of relief if he steps back from Twitter and gets back to the day job at Tesla,” he said.

“For someone who sets so much store by work ethic, Musk sure seems to spend a lot of time on social media. With Tesla shares having more than halved year-to-date, Musk needs to roll up his sleeves and get his main business back on the road.”

Musk’s electric car firm has fallen sharply in value, with some saying his obsession with Twitter is destroying the brand.

He received the backing of several investors to help get his purchase of the site over the line.

In May, it was reported the backers included massive firms such as Fidelity, which is known for managing retirement accounts, and Sequoia Capital, which has backed other technology firms Apple, Google and Airbnb.

Others are thought to include Binance chief founder Changpeng Zhao, Oracle co-founder and Mr Musk’s friend, Larry Ellison, sovereign wealth fund Qatar Holding and Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Mr Musk also announced on Twitter that major policy changes would be voted on in the future.

On Sunday, Twitter said it would shut down accounts solely designed to promote other social media platforms, however, the web page detailing the policy appears to no longer exist.

This evening, Musk logged into a Twitter Space to try to explain why, and ran a poll asking when the journalists should be unbanned — in both instances, things didn’t exactly go his way.

The reporters who have been banned all seem to have recently tweeted about Musk’s attempts to crack down on the sharing of the whereabouts of his private jet. Apparently, though, accounts that can’t post can still join a Twitter Spaces live audio chat. In a Space that included Harwell, Binder, and the ElonJet account, Musk eventually tried to explain himself.

In that conversation, Musk accused the journalists of “ban evasion.” Once the ElonJet account had been banned from Twitter, its owner set up accounts on Facebook and Mastodon. By posting links to those accounts, he argued, the journalists were trying to get around his ban.

The Washington Post’s Harwell asked Musk how Musk’s decision to ban accounts sharing the other ElonJet sites — as well as journalists reporting on the incident — was different from Twitter’s earlier treatment of a New York Post story about a laptop containing Hunter Biden’s personal information. In 2020, Twitter made a moderation decision to block links to The New York Post story.

Details on that moderation decision were released on Twitter earlier this month — with Musk’s support. (In April, he tweeted that suspending The New York Post’s account because of the story “was obviously incredibly inappropriate.) Musk even teased the release of the information by saying, “This will be awesome” and tweeting popcorn emoji. In the course of the release, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s email address was revealed.

Musk replied to Harwell by saying, “You dox, you get suspended. End of story, that’s it.” He then left the space.

In an email to The Verge, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, pointed to a policy update the company made yesterday prohibiting the sharing of “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.”

“Without commenting on any specific accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk,” Irwin said in the email. “We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts.”

In a tweet earlier in the evening, Musk said of the bans: “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service” he said. The ElonJet account in the links he objected to automatically shares publicly available information on the flight path for Elon Musk’s private jet. (It does not list the passenger manifest.)

Accounts like ElonJet —and the similarly suspended CelebJet and RUOligarchJets — are frequently used by climate activists to highlight the egregious effect private jets have on the environment. Musk, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, and Taylor Swift have all come under fire this year for using jets when alternative means of transportation could be used with less deleterious effects on the environment.

Musk has long had issue with the location of his private jet being shared in real time. At one point, he went so far as to offer thousands of dollars to the manager of the @ElonJet account to take it offline. On Wednesday, he implied in a tweet that the account had been used by a “crazy stalker” to find and climb on the hood of a car carrying one of his children. (It is unclear how the location of the jet led to a car.) He then tweeted a video of the alleged stalker and his license plate with the caption: “Anyone recognize this person or car?”

That same day, Twitter suspended the @ElonJet account, the account belonging to its owner Jack Sweeney, and other accounts he managed that were tracking the locations of private jets using publically accessible data. Today, the enforcement was ratcheted up to include journalists tweeting about the situation.

Musk also ran a poll asking when he should un-suspend the journalists who tweeted about “ElonJet.” “Now” won with 43 percent of the vote (“Longer” was runner up with 38.1 percent). In response, Musk said he’d redo the poll because the original had too many options. He then posted a second poll, which will run for 24 hours. As of this writing, “now” is still winning.

Musk’s polls supposedly have weight in his moderation decisions. Previously, he has said he unbanned Trump, as well as other previously suspended accounts, based on poll results.

It also appears that Twitter is not letting people post links to some instances of the competing decentralized social network Mastodon.

Specifically, our tests showed an error saying “we can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful” when trying to tweet links to Mastodon.social, Mastodon.lol, Mastodon.xyz, Mastodon.au, Mastodon.ie, Mastodon.scot, Mastodonapp.uk, Mastodon.world, and others. Earlier today, Mastodon’s Twitter account was suspended after it tweeted a link to the ElonJet Mastodon account.

“I have not received any communications from Twitter whatsoever, other than a notice at the top of my feed that I am permanently banned and in read-only mode,” said Rupar, one of the reporters who was suspended, in an email to The Verge. “I have no idea what could have prompted this.”

In a story on his Substack, he said that yesterday he posted a tweet “noting that the ElonJet account that was suspended from Twitter was still active on Facebook, with a link to the Facebook page”

A statement from The New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander echoes the sentiment, saying that “neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

The suspensions don’t appear to be entirely limited to journalists. Commentator Keith Olbermann has been suspended, as has the Twitter account for ADS-B Exchange, which describes itself as “the world’s largest source of open unblocked unfiltered flight data for enthusiasts.” The account recently quote-retweeted someone trying to track Musk’s jet, according to a WayBack Machine archive.

Musk has previously promised to make Twitter a hub for “free speech,” and held up the @ElonJet account as the type of thing he would permit on the platform, even though it could cause him harm. “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk” he tweeted on November 6th.

Update December 15th, 9:40PM ET: Added information that Twitter appears to be blocking links to certain Mastodon instances.

Update December 15th, 9:49PM ET: Added statement from CNN, and additional examples of blocked Mastodon links.

Update December 15, 10:48PM ET: Added Musk’s tweet calling the link of public information sourced by the ElonJet account “assassination coordinates”.

The @ElonJet account, which has more than half a million followers, was suspended on Wednesday.

Its owner Jack Sweeney, 20, used publicly available flight-tracking information to tweet every time Mr Musk’s jet took off and landed.

Mr Musk says legal action is now being taken against Mr Sweeney and others.

“Last night, car carrying [his son] lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving and climbed onto hood,” he tweeted.

He added that any account revealing people’s real-time locations will be suspended “as it is a physical safety violation”.

Mr Sweeney denied the incident was related to his account when asked by the BBC.

It comes after he confirmed on his personal Twitter account on Wednesday that the profile had been suspended.

That evening, Mr Sweeney’s account appeared to have been reactivated. He tweeted: “Yes I am back!” Minutes later it was listed again as suspended. His personal account, @JxckSweeney, has also been frozen.

Mr Sweeney, a college student in the state of Florida, shared a screenshot with CNN of a message from Twitter saying the social media company had conducted a “careful review” and had decided to permanently ban the account for violating Twitter’s rules.

The student is in charge of dozens of other accounts that track the private flights of wealthy Americans, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

Many of those accounts – including one tracking aircraft associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and another monitoring celebrity jets – appeared to be suspended on Twitter as well on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Musk had long taken issue with the @ElonJet account, and once reportedly offered Mr Sweeney $5,000 to delete it.

Mr Sweeney told US media outlets that Mr Musk ultimately told him it did not feel right to pay to have the account shut down.

And a month ago, Mr Musk pledged to keep it running even though it was a “direct personal safety risk”.

But Mr Musk tweeted on Wednesday evening: “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.”

Twitter’s Help Center has tweeted an updated media policy that begins: “You may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.”

Since taking the helm at Twitter, Mr Musk has made a host of changes to its moderation practices.

He has restored a handful of previously banned accounts, including former President Donald Trump’s profile, which was banned following the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.

The Tesla CEO has also slashed the social media company’s staff and has reportedly stopped paying rent for some of Twitter’s offices, including the company’s San Francisco headquarters, according to the New York Times.

Investors have questioned whether his recent takeover of Twitter has diverted his attention from his electric car business.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, he sold another 22 million shares, worth $3.58bn (£2.9bn), in the company.

It brings the total of Tesla stocks sold by Mr Musk over the past year to almost $40bn.

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The Atlas Lions of Morocco has become the first African country to play in the semifinals of the Mundial after Youssef En-Nesyri scored the only goal of the game in their quarterfinal clash on Saturday at Al Thumama Stadium.

Morocco will face either France on Wednesday, December 14 for a spot in the Grand Finale.

Musk, who is the world’s richest man, has appreciated the heroics of Morocco following the win.

The Atlas Lions, also the first Arab team to make the last four, added Portugal to their list of European scalps with a resolute second-half performance. 

Before beating Portugal, the North African side defeated 2010 champions, Spain on penalties to become the fourth African country to play in the quarterfinals of the global showpiece.

The US rapper, who now goes by the name Ye, posted a series of erratic tweets – one of which appeared to show a symbol combining a swastika and a Jewish star.

Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk was asked by one user to “fix Kanye”.

West had “violated our rule against incitement to violence”, Musk tweeted.

“Account will be suspended,” Musk wrote in a Twitter post.

Also on Thursday, during an interview with US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and with his face covered in a mask, West praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and ranted about sin, pornography and the devil.

West has for years caused controversy both on- and offline with anti-Semitic and racist remarks.

West was initially locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts after posting anti-Semitic messages in October. Both platforms removed West’s posts – which accused rapper Diddy of being controlled by Jewish people – saying the star had violated policies on hate speech.

These posts came in response to a backlash against his show at Paris Fashion Week, where he wore a t-shirt carrying the slogan “White Lives Matter”.

The Anti-Defamation League branded his phrase “hate speech” and attributed it to white supremacists, who began using it in 2015 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Earlier this year, West was suspended from Instagram for 24 hours in March after using a racial slur in reference to comedian Trevor Noah.

In 2018, singer Will.i.am led a backlash against West after he claimed the enslavement of African Americans over centuries may have been a “choice” – remarks he later tried to clarify.

His latest Twitter ban comes hours after the right-wing social media platform Parler – which styles itself as a “free speech” alternative to mainstream platforms – said West could no longer buy the firm.

In a statement, Parlement Technologies said: “The company has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale.”

The firm – which runs the much smaller platform, popular with conservatives and the far right – said the decision was made in mid-November.

“Parler will continue to pursue future opportunities for growth and the evolution of the platform for our vibrant community,” the firm said in its statement.

Musk took control over Twitter in October and immediately embarked on a series of radical changes within the social media giant – including lifting the bans on controversial accounts.

He has clarified that he had no role in bringing West back on Twitter, saying the account was restored before he acquired the social media platform.

West was diagnosed with bipolar disorder years ago and has publicly spoken about his challenges with his mental health.

However, medical experts and people who share West’s condition have warned that mental health problems do not go hand-in-hand with anti-Semitism.

The company is developing brain chip interfaces that it says could enable disabled patients to move and communicate again, with Musk adding on Wednesday that it will also target restoring vision.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink has in recent years been conducting tests on animals as it seeks approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin clinical trials in people.

“We want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human,” Musk said during a much-awaited public update on the device.

Speaking to a crowd of select invitees in a presentation at Neuralink headquarters that lasted nearly three hours, Musk emphasized the speed at which the company is developing its device.

“The progress at first, particularly as it applies to humans, will seem perhaps agonizingly slow, but we are doing all of the things to bring it to scale in parallel,” he added.

“So, in theory, progress should be exponential.”

The first two human applications targeted by the Neuralink device will be in restoring vision and enabling movement of muscles in people who cannot do so, Musk said. “Even if someone has never had vision, ever, like they were born blind, we believe we can still restore vision,” he said.

The event was originally planned for Oct. 31 but Musk postponed it just days before without giving a reason.

Neuralink’s last public presentation, more than a year ago, involved a monkey with a brain chip that played a computer game by thinking alone. 

Musk, who also runs electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, rocket firm SpaceX, and social media platform Twitter, is known for lofty goals such as colonizing Mars and saving humanity. His ambitions for Neuralink, which he launched in 2016, are of the same grand scale.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink allegedly subjected monkeys to ‘extreme suffering’

He wants to develop a chip that would allow the brain to control complex electronic devices and eventually allow people with paralysis to regain motor function and treat brain diseases such as Parkinson’s, dementia and Alzheimer’s. He also talks of melding the brain with artificial intelligence.

Neuralink, however, is running behind schedule. Musk said in a 2019 presentation he was aiming to receive regulatory approval by the end of 2020. He then said at a conference in late 2021 that he hoped to start human trials this year.

Neuralink has repeatedly missed internal deadlines to gain FDA approval to start human trials, current and former employees have said. Musk approached competitor Synchron earlier this year about a potential investment after he expressed frustration to Neuralink employees about their slow progress, Reuters reported in August.

Synchron crossed a major milestone in July by implanting its device in a patient in the United States for the first time. It received U.S. regulatory clearance for human trials in 2021 and has completed studies in four people in Australia.

The team has hired a lawyer and sent a letter to the company demanding it complies with the West African nation’s labor laws, provide them with additional severance pay and other relevant benefits, in line with what other Twitter employees will receive.

They have also petitioned the Ghanaian government to compel Twitter to “adhere to the laws of Ghana on redundancy and offer the employees a fair and just negotiation and redundancy pay,” according to a letter to the country’s Chief Labour Officer obtained by CNN.

“It is clear that Twitter, Inc. under Mr Elon Musk is either deliberately or recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana, is operating in bad faith and in a manner that seeks to silence and intimidate former employees into accepting any terms unilaterally thrown at them,” the letter states.

Twitter laid off all but one of the African employees just four days after the company opened a physical office in the capital Accra following Musk’s takeover. But the staff of about a dozen were not offered severance pay, which they say is required by Ghana’s labor laws, based on their employment contracts. They also claim they were not informed about the next steps — unlike employees in the United States and Europe — until a day after CNN reported on their situation.

CNN contacted Twitter for comment but received no response.

In the letter to Twitter Ghana Ltd, obtained by CNN, the African employees rejected a “Ghana Mutual Separation Agreement” from Twitter, which they say was sent to their personal emails offering final pay that the company claims to have been arrived at after a negotiation.

Several members of the team and their lawyer told CNN that there was no such negotiation on severance pay. They claim it was below what is required by law and contradicts what Musk tweeted that departing employees would receive.

“Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk tweeted. Twitter informed the Ghana-based employees in early November that they would be paid until their last day of employment — December 4. And they will continue to receive full pay and benefits during the 30-day notice period.

“It was very vague, did not talk about outstanding leave or paid time off, and just asked us to sign if we agree. I never bothered to go back to the document because it is rubbish and is still in violation of labor laws here,” one former employee told CNN on condition of anonymity.

The Accra-based team accuses Twitter of dealing with them in bad faith, not being transparent, and discriminating against them compared to laid-off employees in other jurisdictions.

“The employees are distressed, humiliated, and intimidated by this turn of events. There are non-Ghanaian employees, some with young families, who moved here to take up jobs and have now been left unceremoniously in the lurch, with no provision for repatriation expenses and no way to communicate with Twitter, Inc. and discuss or plead their case,”the notice to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer says.

Their attorney, Carla Olympio, says the sudden termination of almost the whole team violated Ghanaian employment law because it is considered a “redundancy” which requires three-month notice to authorities and a negotiation on redundancy pay.

“In stark contrast to internal company assurances given to Twitter employees worldwide prior to the takeover, it seems that little attempt was made to comply with Ghana’s labor laws, and the protections enshrined therein for workers in circumstances where companies are undertaking mass layoffs due to a restructuring or reorganization,” she wrote in a statement to CNN.

The employees said in their appeal to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer that Twitter’s formal entry into the continent started with “great fanfare and with the support of the government,”and they expect similar attention to their plight now.

They are demanding 3 months’ gross salary as severance pay, repatriation expenses for non-Ghanaian staff, vesting of stock options provided in their contracts, and other benefits such as healthcare continuation that were offered to staff worldwide.

CNN has reached out to Ghana’s Employment and Labor Relations ministry for comment.

Posting from an iPhone on Sunday, the artiste formerly known as Kanye West first tested that he was still unblocked—his account had been temporarily suspended and restored at the end of October, which Musk said was not his decision—before following up with “Shalom : )”.

Ye’s earlier suspension had been due to an anti-Semitic tweet. The hip hop artiste last month agreed to buy social media platform Parler, embraced by conservatives as an alternative to Twitter.

Musk responded positively to Ye’s initial tweet, tweeting “Don’t kill what ye hate, Save what ye love.”

Twitter’s new leader, who’s also chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, spent the weekend polling his followers on the platform whether to restore the access of Donald Trump, the former U.S. president who was permanently suspended following the January 6 breaching of the US capitol.

Some 52% responded in the affirmative and Trump is now clear to return—though he’s responded saying that he’ll stick to his own social network, Truth Social.

Musk’s latest tweet depicts Twitter as a drug that Trump will be sorely tempted to return to.

The billionaire Twitter owner’s courtship of the network’s controversial figures—beside himself—threatens to further alienate advertisers, who have been wary about associating their brands with the service in recent times.

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“The people have spoken,” tweeted Mr Musk, saying that 51.8% of more than 15 million Twitter users voted for the ban to be lifted.

But the former US president may not return to the platform, earlier saying: “I don’t see any reason for it”.

His account was suspended in 2021 due to the risk of incitement of violence.

Twitter’s previous management acted just days after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January.

Hundreds of rioters entered the complex as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. The ensuing violence led to the deaths of four civilians and a police officer.

Soon after the riots, Donald Trump’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts, which all had tens of millions of followers – were also suspended.

Several months later, he launched his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Earlier this week, the Republican announced that he would once again run for the US presidency in 2024.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, took control of Twitter in October in a $44bn (£37bn) deal.

He immediately embarked on a series of radical changes within the social media giant, amid concerns that he might loosen Twitter’s regulations on hate speech and misinformation.

With just over a week before the US midterm elections on 8 November, he responded to questions about whether he would reinstate Mr Trump’s account by tweeting: “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!”

Earlier this week, he told employees that the company’s office buildings would be temporarily closed, with immediate effect.

The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after Mr Musk called on them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.

Will Trump take his megaphone back?

Donald Trump knew this poll was significant – even though his official position is that he doesn’t want to return to Twitter.

He urged his followers on Truth Social to take part in the poll. “Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special”, he said.

It’s an odd statement. If Mr Trump isn’t thinking of returning, why urge his followers to vote?

Part of Mr Trump’s dilemma is that Truth Social has relatively few users compared with Twitter. In September, app analysts Sensor Tower estimated that just 92,000 people downloaded Truth Social. Nearly 15 million people downloaded Twitter over the same period.

Mr Trump would love to have his megaphone back. Twitter was his favourite app, a platform he used to drum up support, and dominate the news cycle.

But while he would have a far greater reach on Twitter, he has a financial interest in making Truth Social succeed. The app is owned by the Trump Media & Technology Group, and if he were to go back to Twitter, it’s hard to see how Truth Social could continue.

That helps to explain why we are not seeing Donald Trump clamouring to come back to Twitter – yet.

But in the longer term, he will have to weigh up financial decisions with political ones, and with intentions to run for president again – don’t rule him out returning.

“The people have spoken,” tweeted Mr Musk, saying that 51.8% of more than 15 million Twitter users voted for the ban to be lifted.

But the former US president may not return to the platform, earlier saying: “I don’t see any reason for it”.

His account was suspended in 2021 due to the risk of incitement of violence.

Twitter’s previous management acted just days after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January.

Hundreds of rioters entered the complex as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. The ensuing violence led to the deaths of four civilians and a police officer.

Soon after the riots, Donald Trump’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts, which all had tens of millions of followers – were also suspended.

Several months later, he launched his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Earlier this week, the Republican announced that he would once again run for the US presidency in 2024.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, took control of Twitter in October in a $44bn (£37bn) deal.

He immediately embarked on a series of radical changes within the social media giant, amid concerns that he might loosen Twitter’s regulations on hate speech and misinformation.

With just over a week before the US midterm elections on 8 November, he responded to questions about whether he would reinstate Mr Trump’s account by tweeting: “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!”

Earlier this week, he told employees that the company’s office buildings would be temporarily closed, with immediate effect.

The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after Mr Musk called on them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.

Donald Trump knew this poll was significant – even though his official position is that he doesn’t want to return to Twitter.

He urged his followers on Truth Social to take part in the poll. “Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special”, he said.

It’s an odd statement. If Mr Trump isn’t thinking of returning, why urge his followers to vote?

Part of Mr Trump’s dilemma is that Truth Social has relatively few users compared with Twitter. In September, app analysts Sensor Tower estimated that just 92,000 people downloaded Truth Social. Nearly 15 million people downloaded Twitter over the same period.

Mr Trump would love to have his megaphone back. Twitter was his favourite app, a platform he used to drum up support, and dominate the news cycle.

But while he would have a far greater reach on Twitter, he has a financial interest in making Truth Social succeed. The app is owned by the Trump Media & Technology Group, and if he were to go back to Twitter, it’s hard to see how Truth Social could continue.

That helps to explain why we are not seeing Donald Trump clamouring to come back to Twitter – yet.

But in the longer term, he will have to weigh up financial decisions with political ones, and with intentions to run for president again – don’t rule him out returning.

The departures highlight the reluctance of some of Twitter’s 3,000 or so employees to remain at a company where Musk earlier fired half of the workforce including top management, and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and an intense pace.

Musk took to Twitter late on Thursday and said that he was not worried about resignations as “the best people are staying.”

The billionaire owner also added: “We just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage…,” without elaborating.

Musk met some top employees on Thursday to try to convince them to stay, said one current employee and a recently departed employee who is in touch with Twitter colleagues.

The company also notified employees that it will close its offices and cut badge access until Monday, according to two sources. Security officers began kicking some employees out of one office on Thursday evening, one source said.

Over 110 Twitter employees across at least four continents had announced their decision to leave in public Twitter posts reviewed by Reuters, though each resignation could not be independently verified. About 15 employees, many in ad sales, posted their intention to stay at the company.

In Twitter’s internal chat tool, over 500 employees wrote farewell messages on Thursday, a source familiar with the notes said.

A poll on the workplace app Blind, which verifies employees through their work email addresses and allows them to share information anonymously, had showed 42% of 180 respondents opting for “Taking exit option, I’m free!”

A quarter said they had chosen to stay “reluctantly,” and only 7% of the poll participants said they “clicked yes to stay, I’m hardcore.”

The exact number of employees intending to leave the company could not be immediately established.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

PLATFORM STABILITY

The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees.

On Thursday evening, the version of the Twitter app used by employees began slowing down, according to one source familiar with the matter, who estimated that the public version of Twitter was at risk of breaking during the night.

“If it does break, there is no one left to fix things in many areas,” the person said, who declined to be named for fear of retribution.

Reports of Twitter outages rose sharply from less than 50 to about 350 reports on Thursday evening, according to website Downdetector, which tracks website and app outages.

In a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave, according to the former employee.

And in a private Slack group for Twitter’s current and former employees, about 360 people joined a new channel titled “voluntary-layoff,” said a person with knowledge of the Slack group.

A separate poll on Blind asked staffers to estimate what percentage of people would leave Twitter based on their perception. More than half of respondents estimated at least 50% of employees would leave.

Early on Wednesday, Musk had emailed Twitter employees, saying: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore”.

The email asked staff to click “yes” if they wanted to stick around. Those who did not respond by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday would be considered to have quit and given a severance package, the email said.

As the deadline approached, employees scrambled to figure out what to do.

One team within Twitter decided to take the leap together and leave the company, one employee who is leaving told Reuters.

Blue hearts and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its internal chatrooms on Thursday, the second time in two weeks as Twitter employees said their goodbyes.

Notable departures included Tess Rinearson, who was tasked with building a cryptocurrency team at Twitter. Rinearson tweeted the blue heart and salute emojis.

In an apparent jab at Musk’s call for employees to be “hardcore,” the Twitter profile bios of several departing engineers on Thursday described themselves as “softcore engineers” or “ex-hardcore engineers.”

As the resignations rolled in, Musk cracked a joke on Twitter.

“How do you make a small fortune in social media?” he tweeted. “Start out with a large one.”

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The week-long trial in Delaware Court of Chancery will examine the 2018 compensation plan that the automaker’s board of directors created for Musk.

The automaker said at the time it could be worth nearly $56 billion, making it the largest compensation package for anyone on earth from a publicly traded company, and the net value today is $50.9 billion.

Even in the rarified air of CEO pay, Musk’s compensation plan stood apart. Millions upon millions of dollars are often lavished on corporate executives of the biggest companies, but the plan to pay Musk initially totaled in the tens of billions, as long as he met performance goals.

It wasn’t in cash – top executive pay rarely is – but in shares of the company. The higher Tesla went, the more those shares would be valued, the more Musk would be awarded and the more those shares would be worth.

And as Tesla’s stock shot ever upwards, it helped propel him to a net worth of over $300 billion at one point, all while shareholders reaped the potential gains.

But all the while, Musk was sharing his time between his many other endeavors. SpaceX began regularly sending astronauts to the International Space Station.

The Boring Company built a Loop under the Las Vegas Convention Center. And then, of course, he bought Twitter.

Huge CEO Pay

Musk isn’t the only one to benefit from the rise in value of Tesla shares and options, however. So have shareholders. The market value of Tesla has soared more 1,000% since they approved his pay package in March of 2018.

The case could be significant for Tesla, given the serious questions raised about its executive compensation, according to corporate governance experts. Tesla’s board of directors has defended the compensation package.

The trial may also invigorate debate over executive compensation, including large stock grants they receive. S&P 500 CEOs averaged $18.3 million in compensation in 2021, 324 times the median pay at the companies. That disparity has grown in recent years.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, received compensation valued at $212.7 million in 2021. Apple CEO Tim Cook received nearly $100 million last year. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was paid nearly $50 million in 2021.

The plaintiff, Richard J. Tornetta, claims on behalf of Tesla shareholders that Musk exploited his control over the company and its board of directors to secure the huge compensation package in order to “fund his personal ambition to colonize Mars.”

Musk entered March 2018, the month shareholders approved the compensation plan, at No. 41 on the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, due largely to his involvement in Tesla and SpaceX. At the time, Tesla was a promising but troubled automaker.

It had lost nearly $2 billion the year before and struggled to overcome production delays as it manufactured its mass-market Model 3 sedan.

Musk spoke of being in “production hell” as well as “delivery logistics hell” during the year, and joked about going bankrupt.

Many questioned if the company could survive as an independent automaker.

Tesla’s board of directors felt that with proper execution the automaker could become one of the world’s most valuable companies and wanted to encourage Musk to lead it for the long term.

The compensation plan included 12 batches of stock that Musk would receive if milestones were hit, including the market capitalization of Tesla as well as its revenue and adjusted earnings. (Each batch of stock would be earned if Tesla’s market capitalization increased an additional $50 billion above $100 billion. Other milestones included hitting $35 billion in annualized revenue and $3 billion in adjusted earnings.)

The plan, originally set to pay out over the course of a decade, turned out to be wildly lucrative for Musk and in astonishing time. Tesla was the best-performing US stock in 2020 and became America’s most valuable automaker ever. Its small SUV, the Model Y, became the best-selling car in Europe recently.

Musk has reached many of the milestones that trigger the payouts, and he is expected to earn the final batch early next year.

The payment plan helped lead to Musk becoming the world’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of $184 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. 

His true net worth can be challenging to estimate as a significant portion is invested in SpaceX, a private company that does not have to publicly reveal detailed financials that could show a decline or increase in value. Tech stocks and the entire stock market more broadly have fallen sharply this year.

A Duty to Shareholders

Richard Tornetta, who originally filed the lawsuit in June 2018, claims that the Tesla board of directors has breached its fiduciary duties for waste, and Musk has breached his own fiduciary duties for unjust enrichment.

Tornetta argued in his original 2018 complaint that the compensation plan was unnecessary to incentive Musk as he already had a large ownership stake in the automaker.

The lawsuit was certified as a class action case by the court in January 2021. The case has taken years to move through the system due to the drawn-out nature of litigation, including working through a motion from Tesla to dismiss the complaint.

The Tornetta complaint alleges that the board of directors that created Musk’s compensation plan lacked sufficient independence from him. The board included Musk’s brother Kimbal as well as friends Anthony Gracias and Steve Jurvetson. (Jurvetson and Gracias have since left Tesla’s board.)

Carla Hayn, a professor who teaches corporate governance at the UCLA business school, told CNN Business that the case is serious for Tesla as it will be a heavy burden for the automaker to prove the compensation and the process to create it was fair.

“This is a huge package,” Hayn said of the compensation plan. “Did they need to give away this much of the company to Musk to align his interests and keep him as CEO?”

She noted that Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, advisory firms, both recommended in 2018 that Tesla stockholders reject the compensation plan.

Institutional Shareholder Services cautioned that the plan “locks in unprecedented high pay opportunities for the next decade,” and noted that Musk already owned 22% of Tesla, aligning his interests with it. But shareholders did approve the plan, she noted.

Tesla’s Board

Hayn noted that Musk’s close relationships with the board members could be problematic for Tesla in the case.

“Given that entire board is very much under the influence of Musk it’s hard to know that anything that they did would be following proper process,” she said.

Tesla’s board of directors have claimed that it created the plan “after more than six months of careful analysis with a leading independent compensation consultant as well as discussions with Elon.”

“We gave Elon the ability to share in the upside in a way that is commensurate with the difficulty of achieving them,” they said at the time.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment and generally does not engage with the professional news media.

The trial is expected to last a week. Chancery court judges at times rule from the bench, but that’s uncommon. It may take weeks to months before a decision is issued.

Musk has become something of a regular at the Delaware Court of Chancery. Last month his acquisition of Twitter nearly went to trial at the court.

He testified before the court last year in a dispute over Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity. A judge ruled in Musk’s favor this April.

Musk’s unique management style will be a topic of discussion. He leads several ventures outside of Tesla: the aerospace company SpaceX; his tunneling venture The Boring Co.; a brain interface startup, Neuralink; and Twitter. It’s uncommon for executives to hold multiple CEO titles.

A source told the BBC that only one person was left in the almost 20-member team.

“The company is re-organising its operations as a result of a need to reduce costs,” read the email to staff from Fidelma Callaghan, Director of People Services.

Mr Musk promised to make big changes at Twitter including laying off workers worldwide.

The employment termination emails were sent to the Ghana employees personal accounts having been denied access to their work ones.

The termination of employment notice warned staff not to “contact or deal with any customers, clients, authorities, banks, suppliers or other employees of the company and are required to inform the company if contacted”.

“It’s very insulting. The entire thing. From the mail to the lack of next steps to the tone of the letter. Just everything. Ridiculously insulting,” an affected staff told the BBC.

The letter told staff that their last day at work will be 4 December, but warned them against seeking any other employment before the date.

“You must ensure that the company knows where you will be and how you can be contacted during each working day to ensure your availability during the transition of responsibilities,” the notice reads.

Employment law in Ghana requires at least three months’ notice of termination.

It also demands redundancy pay which is to be negotiated between the organisation, and the employee or trade union.

Last year, Twitter announced it was opening its first Africa office, but its commitment to the continent is now in question.

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“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email. The New York Times and Washington Post both reported on the layoffs and cited the internal email.

All employees will receive an email on Friday, the notice said. Those who will keep their jobs will get an email to their work account, those being laid off will receive a notification to their personal email. Employees were reminded not to disclose “confidential company information” on social media or with press.

The layoffs come as Musk was speculated to cut as much as 50% of Twitter’s workforce, just days after becoming the head of the company he purchased for $44bn. That could mean thousands of jobs lost, as the company had more than 7,000 employees at the end of 2021 according to a regulatory filing.

Twitter said in the email to employees that its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended in order “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data”.

Musk already fired several top Twitter executives immediately upon taking control of the company, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal, finance chief, Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.

Musk’s job slashes come as part of a broader effort to make the company profitable after purchasing it for $44bn, a price he admitted constituted “overpaying”. To complete the deal, Musk put forward a combination of his own funding and loans of approximately $13bn, which he is now facing pressure to pay back.

On Thursday, Musk directed Twitter’s teams to free up $1bn in annual infrastructure cost savings by slashing funding for cloud services and servers. He has floated a number of ideas to make profit at Twitter, including a plan to charge for “verified” badges, and creating an “everything app” that would combine several platforms into one.

The Washington Post, citing an internal source, said the pending layoffs were anticipated to impact the company broadly, with cuts in marketing, product, engineering, legal, and trust and safety.

Experts in misinformation and civil rights advocates have warned that cutting Twitter staff just days before midterm elections in the US could have grave consequences, as the platform has already struggled with content moderation and will now have fewer resources.

“With the horrific attack on Paul Pelosi, we only just witnessed how social media conspiracy theories can result in real-world violence, yet Musk is dangerously speed-running through this process,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director at the Tech Oversight Project.

Twitter employees shared messages of support with one another on the platform on Thursday as layoffs loomed, many using the workplace hashtag #OneTeam.

On Thursday evening into Friday morning, Twitter employees began tweeting about being fired – with some saying they’d learned by being locked out of their work email, laptops, or the company’s internal communications app, Slack.

#OneTeam forever. Loved you all so much,” Senior community manager Simon Balmain tweeted. “So sad it had to end this way.”

“Can a heart be full and broken at the same time?” the company’s head of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, James Loduca tweeted before removing references to Twitter from his Twitter bio.

The upheaval wasn’t just limited to Twitter’s US operations. In Australia, the company’s local marketing manager also tweeted on Friday “bye Twitter, it’s been a ride.”

Workplace morale has reportedly been suffering for months as the chaotic saga of whether Musk would purchase Twitter wore on, with employees quitting in droves.

The initial price of $20 which is equivalent to GH₵ 281 (at the time of this story) caused an uproar on the digital platform with many celebrities voicing out against it.

Some have labelled it outrageous and not in line with the company’s core rules, but Elon Musk is certain the new directive will keep the platform active and up the business ladder.

Disclosing what led him to implement the charges he said:

“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullsh*t. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month. Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.”

According to Musk, the charge for the blue badge will give users VIP services in terms of security and easy business flow that regular users can’t have – even with less advertisement distracting their interface.

He tweeted: “You will also get: – Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam – Ability to post long video & audio – Half as many ads.”

Adding that, the charges will help the platform pay for content creators who engage with their followers daily. “And paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us. This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” he said.

Giving more incite into the 8-dollar verification fee, Elon Musk said, “There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.”

Interestingly, after sharing clear-cut objectives, some celebrities are still having a great time dealing with it.

But Elon Musk has asked all complainers to accept it because it has come to stay.

Nonetheless, users will have to wait to see how and when the charges will take effect fully.

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