Elon Musk says he’s taking a break from Twitter

Elon Musk has announced he is taking a break from social media, despite being one of the platform’s most prolific, high-profile users.

The SpaceX and Tesla founder said he would be “off Twitter for a while” in a post in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The tech entrepreneur recently celebrated a major milestone, as SpaceX became the first private company to send humans into orbit, carrying Nasa astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) over the weekend.

The launch was also the first time Nasa had launched astronauts from US soil in nine years.

Musk did not confirm why he had decided to take time off the social media site.

The billionaire has had a number of controversial moments using his Twitter account.

Last year he was found not liable in a defamation case involving a British cave explorer. Vernon Unsworth had sued the Tesla co-founder after he called him “pedo guy” and “sus” (suspicious) on Twitter in a spat following the July 2018 Thai cave rescue.

Musk has also previously been sanctioned by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over allegations of misleading investors with some of his tweets, including one about taking the company private.

He has said in the past that his Twitter account is “complete nonsense”.

The South Africa-born entrepreneur and his partner, Canadian singer Grimes, made headlines last month when they welcomed their first child together, a boy, giving him the unusual name X Æ A-Xii.