Why would Elon Musk abruptly cancel plans to join Twitter's board? He may want to take over the company, or just the freedom to tweet in peace.

• Billionaire Elon Musk spent over $2.6 billion in 2022 to become Twitter's largest single shareholder.
• For this, he was offered a seat on the company's board. After initially accepting, he later declined the role.

Six days ago, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the appointment of billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Twitter's board.

This came just one day after Musk disclosed a nearly 10% stake in Twitter — an over $2.6 billion investment that turned Musk into the social media company's biggest single shareholder.

"Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!" Musk tweeted in response to Agrawal 's announcement.

Less than a week later, Agrawal had another announcement: Musk "has decided not to join our Board," he said.

Notably, Musk had publicly declared his intention to join Twitter's board of directors just minutes after Agrawal's original April 6 tweet. He was scheduled to be appointed to the board on Saturday, April 9, but instead he told Agrawal that morning that he "will no longer be joining the board."

Musk has yet to say why, and he didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Given his substantial investment in Twitter, one consideration could be his flexibility.

"When you go on the board of directors of a company, your degrees of freedom as an investor are substantially restricted," former SEC Chair Jay Clayton told CNBC on Monday morning. "To put a fine point on it, you're in it for the long haul and you're in it along with your other directors and officers — and that does restrict your freedom to operate," he said.

Moreover, being on a board puts you in a position of having access to "confidential information that is material and market moving."

That information would've further restricted Musk's ability to "move in and out of a stock or other security," Clayton said.

As a condition of his appointment to the board, Musk would've had to limit his stake in Twitter to 14.9%. Now, since he isn't joining the board, that restriction no longer exists — which means Musk is now free to potentially buy Twitter outright.

"This now goes from a Cinderella story with Musk joining the Twitter board and keeping his stake under 14.9%, helping move Twitter strategically forward, to likely a 'Game of Thrones' battle between Musk and Twitter," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Insider.

Musk is no stranger to voicing his thoughts on how to change Twitter.

He has criticized the way that Twitter moderates its users, including the permanent ban of former president Donald Trump, in what he sees as an attack on free speech. He has criticized the way that Twitter lacks moderation of spam bots, which he has repeatedly bemoaned as the platform's "single most annoying problem." And he has criticized Twitter's ability to maintain relevance — a criticism that he aired on Saturday morning, the same day that he turned down the board appointment.

This, too, is another possible reason why Musk didn't take the board seat at Twitter: Perhaps he just wants the freedom to scrutinize a service he loves and uses regularly without having to face that company's board.

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