Elon Musk Should Step Down as Twitter's CEO, According to His Own Poll
Things have been chaotic at the company since Musk completed his acquisition. More than 57% of 17.5 million accounts said enough's enough.
Elon Musk on Sunday launched a Twitter poll asking users to vote on whether he should step down as the social media platform's chief executive. On Monday morning, more than 57% of 17.5 million accounts who voted gave him an answer: Yes.
"Should I step down as the head of Twitter?" he wrote in the poll's question Sunday, adding that he would "abide by the results." Musk didn't tweet any comments immediately after the 12-hour poll completed.
The move tops off months of chaos at Twitter, after Musk paid $44 billion to buy the social media company in Oct. 27. Musk had said he planned to allow any speech on Twitter that didn't break the law, and that he was philosophically a "free speech absolutist."
Immediately after buying the company, Musk fired senior executives, placing himself in charge as "Chief Twit." He also began a series of sweeping changes that led to about 80% of staff being laid off, fired or leaving as he routinely upended how the website worked.
Most notably, last month the site briefly launched a new "blue check" verification service only to be plagued with trolls and fake "verified" accounts.
He followed that up last week by banning accounts for reporters from publications that had been critically covering his leadership, including The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. Twitter also suspended over two dozen accounts on the site that use publicly available flight information to track the location of private jets. Musk accused the account of providing "assassination coordinates" by tracking his private jet's movements, and linked it to a stalking incident that happened in Los Angeles. The Washington Post reported Sunday that the police had not determined a link.
Following a series of dramatic policy changes, for which Musk appeared to apologize Sunday, he promised there would be a vote for all major changes going forward. The billionaire then put up the poll asking whether he should step down, a majority of accounts voting answered "yes" on Monday.
After paying $44 billion to buy Twitter, Elon Musk asked users whether he should step down as its leader.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Musk has a replacement in mind to lead Twitter. The company, which no longer has a communications department, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.