After a conspicuous silence that followed his polls on Twitter, Elon Musk has finally spoken. With more than 10 million users voting in favour of him stepping down as head of operations, he has decided to hold his end of the bargain. The billionaire noted that he would abide by the results of the poll – as he had promised to do earlier – and relinquish his role as Twitter’s chief executive officer.
In fact, he is actively looking for potential replacements. In a tweet, he informed that he would step down from the role as soon as he has found someone who is “foolish enough to take the job.” Once he steps down, Musk will be in charge of running (and hopefully not ruining) the software and servers teams at the social media company.
This news is sure to come as a relief to investors, advertisers, and users alike, especially since several of Musk’s decisions and changes made to Twitter’s platform have faced strong criticism from many quarters. His recent actions – which included the surprise suspension and later restoration of the accounts of multiple journalists and prohibiting the sharing of links to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram – have not endeared him to many either.
Ever since Musk completed the acquisition and took over the micro-blogging site, Twitter has witnessed a steady outflow of executives and employees as many refused to commit to Musk’s “hardcore” Twitter 2.0. Many others were fired, while content moderation on the platform took a huge hit.
Musk’s statement closely follows a poll that he had put out on Twitter, asking whether he should step down as Twitter head, and promised to abide by the results of the poll. In an unsurprising move, t backfired spectacularly on the billionaire as over 10 million people – 57.5% of the respondents – voted in favour of Musk stepping down.
Now, it remains to be seen whether Musk follows through with his promise to abide by the results of the poll, and not change his mind at the last moment – which he is rather prone to do.
Soon after the results of the poll were announced, Musk announced that voting on polls that were related to deciding Twitter’s future policies would be restricted to subscribers of Twitter Blue, and later on Tuesday, even hinted that he had doubts about the reliability of the poll that saw millions vote in favour of him stepping down.
It is an understandable statement, considering it’s a bitter (but expected) pill for the billionaire to swallow and have his own poll turned back on him. Musk has often used Twitter polls to take controversial decisions on the platform. These decisions include the restoration of Donald Trump ‘s Twitter account, selling a portion of his shares at Tesla last year, and others.
