Elon Musk (centre), with Jared Kushner to his right, at Lusail Stadium in Qatar this Sunday during the World Cup final CARL RECINE (Portal)
Twitter announced this Sunday it would suspend accounts promoting competing social networks, the company acquired by magnate Elon Musk announced this Sunday. The measure sparked such a viral and virulent reaction that hours later it was Tesla’s founder himself who published a poll of his followers and users on the platform asking if he should step down as CEO of Twitter, but without confirming it there is a cause and effect relationship between the two movements. The richest man in the world used Sunday to set the nets on fire again while attending the World Cup final in Qatar.
For many, the survey of his 122 million followers is an explicit realization that he wrongly banned the mention of other social networks on his platform. Musk admits he made a mistake this Sunday by introducing new restrictions on users’ freedom of expression, just three days after the uproar caused by the unilateral closure of the profiles of a dozen American journalists, according to the report the executive still his private life were too intense. In the umpteenth change to its Acceptable Use Policy, Twitter announced early Sunday that its users would no longer be able to link to Facebook or Instagram, which belong to Meta, and to other platforms such as Mastodon or Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social network. .
However, the ban drew so much criticism, including from defenders of the billionaire, that Musk vowed not to make any usage policy changes without first surveying users. While the network he owns aired images of the tycoon in a stands at Lusail Stadium alongside Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, Twitter’s chief arsonist turned the network back on with his apology: “My apologies. It won’t happen again,” Musk tweeted if it was about the prior announcement, before starting a new 12-hour poll asking if he should step down as Twitter boss.
The question is: “Should I keep Twitter? I’ll stick to the results of this poll,” urged the billionaire, who then warned in another tweet, “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, you might end up getting it.” Within 30 minutes by the time the poll began, two million users had voted and 56% supported the resignation, a percentage that was consolidated at 57.5% two and a half hours later after just over 6.5 million people voted. If this trend continues and Musk keeps his promise, Tesla could once again have a CEO who is fully available, a shareholder of the electric vehicle maker commented on the social network. “That would be a sign of relief,” said the investor.
Twitter last week shut down an account tracking Musk’s private jet flights and then the profiles of journalists covering the information on the tycoon for alleged interference in his private life, a decision quickly rectified due to the outpouring of criticism. receive. The blocking of the accounts of 10 professionals even provoked a reaction from the UN and the EU, which threatened sanctions, and from associations defending press freedom. Before Musk reinstated journalists, he launched another poll on the matter, a sort of virtual plebiscite that has been widely repeated since his arrival on Twitter.
The frustrated banning of competing platforms has included mainstream sites like Facebook and Instagram, but also up-and-coming rivals from Twitter like Mastodon, which has seen its user base skyrocket after Musk’s landing on his social network; Trump’s Tribel, Nostr, Post and Truth Social, who by the way was rehabilitated by the tycoon on Twitter and for the time being has not threatened to return as a prodigal son. Twitter didn’t provide an explanation as to why the blacklist targeted these sites and not others like LinkedIn, ultraconservative Forum Parler, or microvideo platform TikTok for serving as a surveillance tool for China.
This Sunday’s picture of Musk at Qatar stadium alongside Trump’s son-in-law also drew streams of ink on Twitter, due to the magnate’s increasingly apparent ties to the former president and a sector of the Republican Party. Twitter has previously taken steps to block links to one of its rivals, Mastodon, after its main Twitter account tweeted about the businessman’s private jet controversy last week. Mastodon has particularly benefited from Twitter users unhappy with its breakneck transformation since Musk bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began restoring accounts that violated the previous Twitter leadership’s anti-hate mail rules have violated.