Twitter’s chief twit Elon Musk hinged his future at social media app to a poll, one of his favourite ways to make decisions, on Sunday evening. In the 12-hour poll, Musk asked whether he should step down as head of Twitter and promised to “abide by the results.” Well, the results are in, and the “yes” votes won.
More than 17.5 million users voted in the billionaire’s poll. Of those, 57.5% (more than 10 million) voted for Musk to step down as head of Twitter and 42.5% (7.4 million) said he should remain. While Musk said he would honour the results of the poll, it’s not clear what he’ll do in this case. He could decide to redo the poll, as he did when he asked Twitter users to vote on when he should unsuspend the accounts of people, many of them journalists, who he claims revealed his location in real-time.
The chief twit had not commented on the results of the poll by Monday morning.
It’s hard to know what Musk’s position is about possibly giving up his throne at Twitter, which he has obviously enjoyed ruling over the last month and a half. After publishing his poll on Sunday, Musk revealed that the real challenge at hand was finding a CEO that could “keep Twitter alive.” He dismissed claims from some users that he had already found a replacement.
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive,” Musk said in response to one user claiming Musk would hang up his crown. “There is no successor.”
No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022
The billionaire also implied that taking over Twitter had caused him a lot of pain. In response to a comment from Lex Fridman, a researcher at MIT and podcast host, asking Musk to let him run Twitter, the billionaire said there was one catch.
“You must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?” Musk stated.
Musk’s poll comes amid growing discontent from investors in Tesla, which had its worst week since March of 2020. Tesla’s stock has lost more than 60% of its value this year. Most of the losses for Tesla investors began after Musk made an offer to buy Twitter in April, according to Yahoo, before trying everything in his power to back out.
Last week, major Tesla shareholder Leo KoGuan, a self-proclaimed “Elon fanboy,” slammed Musk for abandoning the electric car company.
“Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO,” KoGuan tweeted. “Tesla needs and deserves to have working full time CEO.”
Theoretically, Musk’s poll could give him a way to justify putting Twitter aside to spend more time at Tesla, which accounts for the majority of his wealth. Musk has sold nearly $US40 ($56) billion worth of Tesla stock over the last year.
Whether he will want to step down is another question.
“As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” Musk tweeted on Sunday evening.
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