Elon Musk will step down as Twitter CEO after being defeated in his own disastrous poll.
The Tesla boss, 51, said he would ‘comply’ with the results of the poll he held and promised to respect – where he asked users whether he should resign.
Tonight, he confirmed he will be stepping down from the role for which he paid $44 billion – after he found a replacement ‘stupid enough’ to take over.
The billionaire tweeted: ‘I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone stupid enough to take the job! Then I’ll just run the software team and the server.’
A man of word: Elon Musk says he will step down as CEO after being defeated in his own Twitter poll
The results of his poll were confirmed Monday morning, with a total of 57.5% of the more than 17 million accounts voting for him to resign.
By comparison, 42.5% voted in favor of keeping him head of the site, which equates to nearly 7.5 million users.
After setting up the poll directly, Musk warned: ‘As the saying goes, be careful what you want, because you can get it’.
Typically, a heavy user of these platforms, Musk, who also runs carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, didn’t tweet in the hours immediately following the poll.
His silence was finally broken just before 11:30pm on Monday, when he replied: ‘Interesting’ to an offer from convicted fraudster Kim Dotcom, founder of the sharing website the once-popular file-sharing company Megaupload, that the results of the poll were falsified by fake accounts. .
The billionaire tweeted: ‘I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone stupid enough to take the job! Then I’ll just run the software & server team’
Responding to another user’s suggestion that ‘Blue subscribers should be the only ones able to vote in policy-related polls,’ Musk said: ‘A good point. Twitter will make that change.’
His Twitter stream continued into the early hours of Tuesday morning, linking to the site’s World Cup stats and laughing at a satirical act Bruce Wayne was doing a poll about Batman’s resignation .
Rapper Snoop Dogg jokingly ran a poll of his own, asking his followers whether he should replace Musk by asking the question: ‘Should I run Twitter?’
After ten hours, 81.8% of the one million people who voted in his poll agreed.
In recent days, Musk has suspended the accounts of several journalists after complaining that some had published details about the movements of his private jet, which he said could be endanger his family.
Employees of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post were among those affected in a move that has drawn harsh criticism, including from the European Union and the United Nations.
On Sunday, Twitter users were told that they would no longer be able to promote content from other social networking sites.
But Musk appears to have reversed course a few hours later, writing that the policy would be limited to ‘suspending an account only when its *primary* purpose is to advertise to a competitor. ‘
‘In the future, there will be a vote on major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again,’ he tweeted.
The ban attempt sparked boos, and stunned even Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who has backed Musk’s takeover.
Dorsey questioned the new policy with a single-word tweet: ‘Why?’
In November, he warned employees that the company could go bankrupt.
And he also said on the platform that Twitter has been ‘on the verge of bankruptcy’ since May.
The unpredictable businessman Musk has owned Twitter since October 27.
His Sunday night poll comes after weeks of controversial decisions including laying off half of Twitter’s global staff, bringing far-right metrics back to the platform and trying to Try to charge for previously free services.
Twitter also said it would no longer work to combat misinformation about Covid-19.
Analysts also point out that Tesla’s stock price has fallen by a third since Musk took over. The stock price rallied 3.3% on Monday before dwindling again.
Several online safety groups have accused the billionaire of allowing hate, abuse and misinformation more easily to circulate on the platform because of his free speech principles.
While it remains unclear who could replace Musk if he decides to step down, some commentators have noted that the billionaire will still have the final say on key decisions as an owner. of Twitter.
In recent weeks, Musk has released so-called ‘Twitter files’, revealing how the site interacted with the US Government before he took over.
The first wave involved the Hunter Biden story and the attempt to remove his image from the site.
Musk, pictured at Offshore Northern Seas 2022 in Stavenger, Norway, has been criticized for the way he runs Twitter
In last night’s second release, again posted by journalist Matt Taibi, it was revealed that the FBI asked executives from the social media giant to provide them with information on how they perform. online safety test.
The leaked emails show that former ‘Twitter moderator’ Yoel Roth fears the FBI is breaking the law to help US intelligence engage in domestic operations after receiving a request from agent Elvis Chan.
He replied to Chan saying: ‘Honestly, I am confused by the requests here, they seem more like something we received from a congressional committee than from the Bureau.’
FBI officials even asked Twitter to provide them with the locations from which some accounts were being operated, raising fears that it was an attack on the First Amendment’s right to free speech. best.
The FBI responded to Taibi with a statement, saying: ‘The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to subversive, covert or criminal activities of its actors. foreign influencers have been identified.’
Since taking over the site, Musk has declared it a bastion of free speech and has tried to entice people who were previously banned from accessing the site back to the site.
In November, he made an offer to former president Donald Trump, who was removed from Twitter in January 2021 following the US Capitol uprising.
Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk claimed to have reinstated Trump’s account, which had more than 88.9 million followers at the time of his suspension.
However, Trump turned down his offer, sparking a series of posts from Musk criticizing him for turning it down.
