On December 18, 2022, Elon Musk posted a Twitter poll asking users if he should step down as the platform’s CEO.
The people have spoken, and more than half of the respondents said, “Yes.” More importantly, Musk said that he “will abide by the results of this poll.”
A couple of days later, he shared his thoughts about policy-related polls in response to a user’s tweet. Does this mean the Musk Twitter age is over?
Why do people want Elon Musk to step down?
Roughly 17.5 million people joined the Elon Musk survey. About 57.5% said “Yes,” and 42.5% responded “No.”
His recent changes to the platform likely impacted the votes significantly. Days after his Twitter acquisition, he immediately removed over half of the existing workforce.
Elon Musk claimed he would defend freedom of speech once he owned the social media network. Yet, he assured advertisers that it would not become “a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.”
He quickly put his long-term goals into question as he removed speech moderation. As a result, the network allowed people to post negative and offensive comments without penalties.
Then, Musk turned account verification into a paid service. Anyone could have a verified account by paying $8.00 monthly.
In response, people paid for verification to impersonate celebrities and companies and share silly comments.
Musk allowed users to express anything without consequences. However, Twitter has cracked down on content that could affect the CEO or the company’s bottom line.
For example, the platform permanently suspended Elon Jet, the account that tracks the real-time flight activities of Musk’s private jet.
Its owner Jack Sweeney said that he uses publicly available data. He owns other accounts that track the flights of other celebrities, but only Elon Jet got suspended.
The recent changes caused many people to leave Twitter for other social media platforms like Mastodon.
However, Twitter disabled links to that social media competitor. Clicking one will not direct you to Mastodon, but it will display text saying, “Warning: this link may be unsafe.”
Elon Musk has not been satisfying customers with his recent changes to Twitter. As a result, they answered “yes” when he asked them if he should step down as CEO.
Conclusion
The man himself responded to the Elon Musk survey two days after posting it. Twitter user @Unfilteredboss1 commented:
“Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy-related polls. We actually have skin in the game.” Musk replied, “Good point. Twitter will make that change.”
Yet, his latest tweet said, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”