Millions of Twitter users have called on Elon Musk to step down as Twitter boss in a poll on the platform the billionaire created and promised to follow.
When the poll ended Monday, however, it wasn’t clear if there would be a new head for the social media platform, which under Musk’s leadership has become more chaotic and confusing, with rapidly changing policies being issued, then withdrawn or amended will.
The billionaire Tesla boss Musk took part in the World Cup final on Sunday in Qatar and opened the survey there. After it closed 12 hours later, there was no immediate announcement from Twitter or Musk, who may be heading back to the US early Monday.
More than half of the 17.5 million respondents voted “yes” in Musk’s Twitter poll on whether he should step down as CEO of the company.
Musk has conducted a series of unscientific polls on key issues facing the social media platform, including whether to reinstate journalists he had suspended from Twitter, drawing widespread criticism in and outside of media circles would.
The polls have only added to growing turmoil on Twitter since Musk bought the company for $44 billion in late October, potentially leaving the company’s future direction in the hands of its users.
Among these users are people who were recently reinstated on the platform under Musk, people who were banned for racist and toxic posts, or who had spread misinformation.
Since buying Twitter, Musk has led a dizzying array of changes that have unsettled advertisers and alienated users. He has laid off half the workforce, removed moderators from contract content and dissolved a council of trust and safety advisers. He has stopped enforcing the COVID-19 misinformation rules and has filed criminal charges against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert spearheading the country’s COVID response.
Musk has clashed with some users on multiple fronts and on Sunday he asked Twitter users to decide whether he should remain in charge of the social media platform after admitting he made a mistake in imposing new restrictions had banned mentions of competing social media sites like Twitter.
The results of the unscientific online poll on whether Musk should remain a top executive at Twitter, which lasted 12 hours, showed that 57.5% of voters wanted him to leave, while 42.5% wanted him to say .
The poll just followed the last significant policy change since Musk took over Twitter in October. Twitter had announced that users would no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms, which the company described as “banned.”
That decision prompted immediate backlash, including criticism from previous defenders of Twitter’s new ownership. Musk then vowed that he would not make any major policy changes to Twitter without an online survey of users, including who should run the company.
The action to block competitors was Musk’s latest attempt to crack down on certain statements after he shut down a Twitter account tracking his private jet’s flights last week.
Banned platforms included mainstream websites like Facebook and Instagram, as well as former President Donald Trump’s rising rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and Truth Social.
A growing number of Twitter users have left the Musk platform or made alternate counts on Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr or Post and added those addresses to their Twitter profiles. Twitter didn’t provide an explanation as to why the blacklist included some sites but not others like Parler, TikTok, or LinkedIn.
A test case was prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who had praised Musk in the past but on Sunday told his 1.5million Twitter followers that it was the “last straw” and finding him on Mastodon. His Twitter account was promptly suspended and then restored when Musk reversed the policy put in place just hours earlier.
Graham hasn’t posted to Twitter since saying he was leaving.
Musk’s political decisions have divided users. He has campaigned for free speech, but has suspended journalists and shut down a long-running account that tracked his jet’s whereabouts, calling it a security risk.
But when he changed the policy and then changed it again, a sense of confusion arose on the platform about what is and isn’t allowed.
Musk permanently suspended the @ElonJet account on Wednesday and then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit sharing someone’s current location without their consent. He then targeted journalists who wrote about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, claiming they were “basically sending coordinates of assassinations.”
In doing so, he justified Twitter’s decision last week to suspend the accounts of numerous journalists covering the social media platform and Musk, including reporters working for the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and others publications work. Many of these accounts have been recovered following an online poll conducted by Musk.
Then, over the weekend, Taylor Lorenz was suspended from the Washington Post after requesting an interview with Musk in a tweet tagged Twitter owner.
Washington Post editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee called it an “arbitrary suspension of another Post journalist,” further undermining Musk’s promise to operate Twitter as a platform for free speech.
“Again, the suspension came without warning, trial or explanation – this time our reporter simply solicited comment from Musk for a story,” Buzbee said. By midday Sunday, Lorenz’s account was restored, as was the tweet she believed triggered her suspension.
Musk was questioned in court on Nov. 16 about how he divides his time between Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk was testifying in the Delaware Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potential $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company.
Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, nor did he want to be CEO of any other company, preferring to see himself as an engineer. Musk also said he expects an organizational reorganization of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been over a month since he said that.
In a public banter with Twitter followers on Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must be very fond of pain” to run a company that was “on the fast track to bankruptcy.”
“No one wants the job that can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted.
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AP writer Brian PD Hannon contributed to this report.