Elon Musk Wants To Turn Twitter HQ Into Homeless Shelter

Elon Musk, Twitter Inc.’s largest shareholder, proposed turning the social media company’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter because “no one shows up anyway.”

Musk proposed a Twitter poll on Saturday night. Nearly 1.2 million people had responded by Sunday morning, and 91.1% of them voted in favor of the idea.

Musk’s poll comes a week after he purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter’s stock, making him the company’s largest shareholder. Musk has been critical of Twitter’s handling of free speech on the platform and has proposed several tongue-in-cheek changes to the company since his stock purchase.

He tweeted another poll Sunday morning on whether to remove the letter “W” from “Twitter.” The only available responses were “Yes” and “Of course.”

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Musk would join Twitter’s board of directors last week. Musk will also participate in a town hall Q&A session with Twitter employees, some of whom have expressed concern about Musk’s presence at the company, Agrawal announced to employees Thursday.

“We say that Twitter is what’s happening and what people are talking about right now. Often, we at Twitter are what’s happening and what people are talking about. That has certainly been the case this week,” Agrawal wrote Thursday in a company-wide email, according to the Washington Post, “Following our board announcement, many of you have had different types of questions about Elon Musk, and I want to welcome you to ask those questions to him.”

Musk’s purchase comes soon after the billionaire Tesla founder criticized Twitter for a lack of commitment to free speech.

“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” Musk tweeted on March 26. “What should be done?”

“Is a new platform needed?” he tweeted later.

Many of Musk’s nearly 80 million Twitter followers encouraged him at the time to buy Twitter’s platform entirely, or create his own.

Twitter has repeatedly censored conservative viewpoints in recent years. The company locked the conservative satire site The Babylon Bee out of its Twitter account for jokingly awarding Biden administration official Dr. Rachel Levine a “Man of the Year” award. Levine is a transgender woman.

Twitter also blocked the sharing of links to a New York Post article revealing the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. While critics derided the story as Russian disinformation at the time, both the New York Times and Washington Post have since acknowledged that the story was accurate.