Elon Musk has declared that he will leave his position as Twitter’s CEO, but will remain in charge of the company’s software and server teams. Musk said he will step down as Twitter CEO as soon as he finds “someone foolish enough to take the job” in response to a poll he created on Twitter that received support for it.
Nearly 58 percent of those who voted in the poll, which attracted more than 17 million responses, thought Musk should step down as Twitter’s CEO.
Musk has historically followed decisions made in such informal referendums, including reinstating former US President Donald Trump’s account, which is fast becoming a defining characteristic of his reign over Twitter.
Even if Musk were to actually keep his word and resign as CEO, little would likely change despite his earlier declaration that he would follow the results of the Twitter poll. Musk has stated that he will continue to lead the software and server teams at Twitter, and given that the microblogging platform now primarily consists of those two teams following the company’s massive layoffs, he may still have direct control over Twitter.
Given that Musk maintains a high level of product control in his other businesses, including Tesla and SpaceX, and that he also owns Twitter, his latest move may not necessarily end the ups and downs that the social networking site has experienced since he took control of it in October.
No one wants the job of someone who can actually keep Twitter alive, according to a different tweet from Musk. No successor exists.
However, it is important to note that the poll’s findings helped Tesla’s stock price, which had dropped more than $100 since November 1 due to investors’ apparent belief that Musk would start spending more time at the company.
Musk has used the polls he produces to inform his policy decisions during his brief ownership of Twitter. He has also suggested that this might become standard practise for the business moving forward, despite repeatedly admitting that bots and fake accounts were skewing the results of such polls.
He tweeted “interesting” in response to a tweet that suggested that bots may have influenced the poll results regarding Musk’s leadership of Twitter. A controversial new policy that forbade links to specific other social media platforms, including Facebook, Mastodon, and link aggregator Linktree, was publicly criticised by Musk hours before the poll’s release.
