Elon Musk says he's taking a break from Twitter

• Elon Musk on Monday tweeted he's "off Twitter for a while."
• He didn't give a specific reason as to why he was coming off the platform on which he's famously prolific.
• The billionaire's space-exploration company, SpaceX, just successfully launched astronauts into orbit for the first time, and he has his 1-month-old baby, X Æ A-Xii, at home.
• Musk, a prolific tweeter, has threatened to quit the platform before, though he's never quite succeeded.

The tech billionaire Elon Musk, a famously voracious tweeter, has announced to his 35 million followers that he's taking a break from the social-media site.

"Off Twitter for a while," Musk tweeted late Monday without giving any further details.

In the 24 hours before, Musk was tweeting primarily about SpaceX's successful launch of two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on Saturday, and he expressed his opinion that it was "not right" that three police officers involved in the death of George Floyd hadn't been charged.

Musk's Twitter use has gotten him into trouble in the past.

In 2018, his tweets about securing funding for Tesla landed him with a $20 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission. As part of the penalty, Musk had to let his tweets about Tesla's business be vetted by a lawyer.

Musk has also gotten into some bizarre feuds over Twitter, including being pulled into a defamation suit he ultimately won after calling a rescue diver "pedo guy."

The billionaire told Bloomberg last month that while in retrospect some of his tweets were "dumb" and he wished he could retract some, he valued being able to communicate with people directly without having to go through the press.

As well as SpaceX having made history by launching astronauts into orbit, Musk also has a newborn baby to look after. Last month Musk and the singer Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) announced the birth of their child, X Æ A-Xii.

Musk has threatened to quit Twitter before. In late 2019, he said he was leaving the service only to resume tweeting three days later.