Soon after Mozilla announced on
Thursday that Brendan Eich had decided to step down as CEO of
Mozilla, his Twitter page went dark.
Eich had posted few messages on Twitter
under @BrendanEich in the less than two weeks that it took Eich, the
inventor of Javascript and a co-founder of Mozilla, to make the trip
to the CEO's office and back.
(Related: Brendan
Eich steps down as Mozilla CEO over past support for Proposition 8.)
“Sorry, that page doesn't exist!”
is all that remains of where Eich once connected with his more than
31,000 followers.
Eich's final tweet was a
March 26 link to a blog post in which he discussed his commitment
to diversity. “Inclusiveness at Mozila [sic],” he messaged.
Much of the backlash that Eich faced
took place on social media, where employees openly called for Eich to
resign over his support for Proposition 8, California's former
constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Proposition 8 was
approved in November 2008 and stood until last year, when the Supreme
Court left in place a lower court ruling declaring it invalid.
In an effort to mollify his opponents,
Eich promised to reach out to the LGBT community. But in an
interview with CNET.com, he refused to say where he stood on the
issue of marriage equality.
(Related: Mozilla's
Brendan Eich won't say how he feels about marriage equality.)