More than half of 17.5 million Twitter users who responded to a poll that asked whether Elon Musk should step down as head of the social media platform voted in favor of him doing so, according to results posted Monday morning.
Some 57.5% of them voted "Yes," while 42.5% voted "No" against Musk stepping down as chief of the micro-blogging platform after the billionaire launched the poll on his Twitter account Sunday.
Neither Twitter or Musk immediately responded publicly about whether Musk would step down, but the Tesla and SpaceX CEO initially said that he would abide by the results.
Meanwhile, scores of users appeared to be awaiting his response with baited breath.
"So…Bye?" one user posted.
"Doesn't mean immediately right? Could be 3, 6, 9 months from now," another asked.
The move asking users for their opinion comes on the heels of Musk clashing with some users on multiple fronts, including him acknowledging he made a mistake in launching new speech restrictions that banned mentions of rival social media websites.
In yet another significant policy change, Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.”
The decision generated so much immediate criticism, including from past defenders of Musk, that he promised not to make any more major policy changes without an online survey of users.
The action to block competitors was Musk's latest attempt to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet.
Banned platforms included Facebook, Instagram, and newly created rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump's Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn.
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Twitter had said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that include the banned websites in their profile a practice so widespread it would have been difficult to enforce the restrictions on Twitter's millions of users around the world. Not only links but attempts to bypass the ban by spelling out “instagram dot com” could have led to a suspension, the company said.
A test case was the prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who in the past has praised Musk but on Sunday told his 1.5 million Twitter followers that this was the “last straw” and to find him on Mastodon. His Twitter account was promptly suspended, and soon after restored as Musk promised to reverse the policy implemented just hours earlier.
Musk said Twitter will still suspend some accounts according to the policy but “only when that account’s (asterisk)primary(asterisk) purpose is promotion of competitors.”
Twitter previously took action to block links to Mastodon after its main Twitter account tweeted about the @ElonJet controversy last week.
Mastodon has grown rapidly in recent weeks as an alternative for Twitter users who are unhappy with Musk’s overhaul of Twitter since he bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began restoring accounts that ran afoul of the previous Twitter leadership's rules against hateful conduct and other harms.
That social network, which has gained more than 1 million new users since Oct. 27, now hosts 1.9 million monthly active users, according to the Mastodon website.
In comparison, Twitter had more than 237 million daily active users in the quarter ending June 30, the company said in July. Users were up 16.6% compared to a year ago.
'Assassination coordinates'
Last week, Musk banned the @ElonJet account then changed Twitter's rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, claiming they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.”
He also suspend accounts of voluminous journalists who cover Twitter including reporters working for CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Many of those accounts were restored following an online poll by Musk.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned. She said she was suspended after posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview.
The paper's executive editor, Sally Buzbeecalled it an “arbitrary suspension of another Post journalist” that further undermined Musk’s promise to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.
The promise to let users decide his future role at Twitter through an unscientific online survey appeared to come out of nowhere Sunday, though Musk had also promised in November a reorganization was happening soon.
Musk was questioned in court on Nov. 16 about how he splits his time among his companies. Musk had to testify in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company.
Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer instead. Musk also said he expected an organizational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been more than a month since he said that.
In public banter with Twitter followers Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted.
Contributing: Associated Press writers Matt O'Brien and Brian P. D. Hannon.
