The tech billionaire has drawn a lot of criticism since taking over Twitter.
(Photo: AP)
san francisco Tech billionaire Elon Musk caused a stir with a surprising vote on his own future as head of the short message service Twitter. “Should I resign as head of Twitter?” Musk asked in a tweet on Monday night, giving users the opportunity to answer this question with a yes or no.
On Monday morning, around 15 million participants showed a majority for his replacement (57 percent yes, 43 percent no).
In the poll tweet, Musk wrote that he would submit to the outcome of the vote. According to the tweet, the vote runs until 12:20 p.m. (Central European Time).
Should the majority remain in favor of replacing Musk and should the CEO actually resign, the exact consequences for the company would still be unclear. The fact is, however, that Musk would remain the most powerful man on Twitter even without his managerial post, after all he owns the company.
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Elon Musk is the most powerful person on Twitter even after his resignation
The 51-year-old Tesla boss took over the short message service in October for $44 billion and laid off a large part of the workforce to reduce the costs of the loss-making company.
There were concerns in parts of politics and civil society that the multi-billionaire could use the world’s most important short message service according to his taste and negatively influence democratic opinion-forming, for example by hardly allowing any action to be taken against false information. Other actions by the controversial entrepreneur also caused sharp criticism. He recently blocked several US journalists’ Twitter accounts, but later unblocked them.
Musk keeps conducting polls on Twitter
It’s not the first poll Musk has conducted on Twitter. For example, he had a vote on whether former US President Donald Trump could work on the short message service again. Yes, he can, was the answer with a narrow majority, whereupon Twitter unblocked the account again in November. Last year, Musk also committed a Twitter vote to selling a tenth of his Tesla shares.
His plan to no longer allow Twitter users to advertise their presence on certain competing platforms – including Facebook, Instagram or Mastodon – caused resentment. Musk promised in another tweet on Monday night that major changes to the platform’s guidelines would also be put to the vote in the future. “I beg your pardon. Will not happen again.”
Musk lets users vote on stepping down as Twitter boss
Musk has always presented himself as a champion of freedom of speech. He finally propagated conspiracy theories on Twitter and used the platform to promote the US Republicans in his tweets. The online service has developed into an important communication platform in recent years: governments, authorities and politicians use Twitter for their public relations work all over the world.
More: Elon Musk is no longer the richest person in the world
First publication: 12/19/2022, 3:04 a.m.