Ten Million Voters Said Elon Musk Should Step Down As Twitter Boss
Elon Musk has just made yet another controversial move in regards to Twitter, and this time around, he may have been playing with fire. Ever since the entrepreneur spent a whopping $44 billion on purchasing Twitter, he'd been acting as the sole leader and the captain of this ship, which some might say is sinking. In fact, one of his first moves upon buying the social media platform was to fire the entire board of directors and become the sole CEO. Now, it seems that Musk may have changed his mind about just who should be in charge.
So far, Musk has ruled Twitter with an iron fist. He started out by cutting a large portion of Twitter's workforce, and for those who remained, he had really high expectations. In an email sent out to the remaining staff, he said that he needed them to be more "hardcore" in order to meet the goals of Twitter 2.0. Meanwhile, the platform suffered from a lack of moderation and various issues caused by the lack of oversight — hardly helped by the drastic decrease in workforce numbers.
Musk has frequently used his own Twitter profile to share updates and engage in discussion on topics related to the platform. The billionaire also makes use of the polling feature — one example of this is Musk's poll as to whether the account of former president Donald Trump should have been reinstated. The poll ended with a "yes," and Musk followed through, unbanning Trump from the platform. This time around, Musk's poll results affect the future of the Twitter CEO himself.
The poll leaves no doubt as to what Twitter users want
On December 19, 2022, Elon Musk tweeted a short message with a simple "Yes" or "No" poll. The tweet read: "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll." It's hard to say what the billionaire expected to hear in response, but the answer is pretty clear. A total of 17,502,391 people participated, and based on those results, 57.5% of Twitter users want Elon Musk to step down. This means that 42.5% of the userbase — or, at least, those who voted — would prefer if Musk stayed at the helm of Twitter.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Now, there are far more questions than there are answers. After such a public promise, it's difficult to imagine that Musk won't follow through on his promise, but it might happen. If a new CEO (or a board of directors) will be appointed, what will Musk's role be? Will he still control everything behind the scenes or will he focus on running all of his other companies?
Musk himself hasn't given any answers, beyond cryptic teases like "Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it," but one thing is for sure: he based his Twitter future on the results of a poll, and millions of anonymous voters asked him to leave.