“Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,” Musk tweeted early on Monday.
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk may step down from his role as Twitter's Chief Executive Officer after asking users to vote in a poll.
“Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,” Musk tweeted early on Monday.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Over 14.5 million votes have been cast with around four hours remaining, and 57.3 per cent of the participants have chosen yes while 42.7 per cent said no. The billionaire owner of Twitter and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. will abide by the results of the poll, he stated in his tweet.
Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
This decision may be connected to a series of controversies that have followed Musk since he took over the social media platform.
For instance, SaharaReporters reported last Thursday that Musk suspended the accounts of prominent journalists from top media organisations in the implementation of his earlier announced rules on “doxxing”.
Journalists whose accounts were suspended include New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell, CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, Matt Binder of Mashable, The Intercept's Micah Lee and Steve Herman of Voice of America.
The accounts of independent journalists like Aaron Rupar, Tony Webster and Keith Olbermann were also suspended.
The account of a social media company called Mastodon, known to be an alternative to Twitter, was also suspended.
Despite that Musk has been speaking strongly on his mission to maintain free speech on Twitter, the suspension of the prominent journalists’ accounts came a day after Twitter suspended more than 25 accounts that tracked the planes of government agencies, billionaires and high-profile individuals, including that of Musk.
Also, Musk in November lashed out at those complaining about his new policy to charge verified accounts $8 per month.
It was earlier reported that he had planned to jack up the price of the Twitter Blue subscription plan from $4.99 to $19.99 per month, and would make the service the only way to retain verified-user status.
According to the plan, users would have 90 days to join the subscription programme or have their verified status revoked.
But there were backlashes from Twitter power users including writer Stephen King, who said, “$20 a month to keep my blue check?”
King, therefore, tweeted to his 6.9 million followers. “They should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” Later, King added, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”
Reacting to King’s objection, Musk said, “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” adding that, “I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”