Elon Musk’s Twitter Poll Results Are In: The People Don’t Want Him as CEO
Musk asked in a Twitter poll if he should step down as CEO. People overwhelmingly said “yes.”
Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has made a habit of governing by poll. But he may wish he had held off on the latest one.
Musk asked his followers Sunday night if he should step down as head of Twitter, promising to “abide by the results” of the poll. The poll closed Monday morning, and the results are clear: More than 17.5 million people voted, with 57.5 percent saying “yes” and only 42.5 percent saying “no.”
Musk’s purchase of Twitter in late October has been rocky, to say the very least, and many analysts assumed the deal started as a joke that then went too far. It’s been rumored that Musk never wanted to take the company’s reins in the first place and has been looking for a way out.
Since taking over, Musk has fired almost all of the top executives and the entire board of directors, as well as nearly half the company’s workforce. Many other employees have quit. Advertisers have left the platform in droves due to Twitter’s increasingly lax content moderation rules.
Meanwhile, hate speech has flourished and Nazis are being allowed back on the platform. Musk seems to be governing by whim rather than following a business plan.
It’s gotten so bad that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter over the weekend to the board chair of Tesla, which Musk founded, questioning whether he was qualified to continue leading the electric vehicle company.
In her letter, Warren cited reports that Musk had improperly reallocated Tesla funds and employees to Twitter to keep the social media platform afloat, and warned that he could have Tesla overpay for advertising space on Twitter to fill the void left by other companies.
And on Friday, the European Union threatened to impose sanctions on Twitter after Musk suspended multiple journalists’ accounts.