Elon Musk took to Twitter on Sunday to ask his followers if he should step down as CEO of the company. Earlier in the day, he had made a policy change that had never been done before. “Should I step down as head of Twitter?” he asked, adding that he would “follow the results of this poll.”
As of the time, this article was written, more than 2 million votes had been cast for “yes.” Around 6 a.m. ET, the poll will be over. In an earlier tweet, Musk said that when Twitter changes its rules in the future, the public will be able to vote on the changes. “My apologies. “It won’t happen again,” he promised.
The vote happened after Twitter made a big rule change earlier in the day that made it illegal for users to link to competing sites like Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Donald Trump’s Truth Social.
With its new “Promotion of Alternative Social Platforms” policy, Twitter said it would delete posts that link to these websites. It also told users not to try to get around the ban and said repeat offenders could be banned for good.
In the span of a few hours, the company temporarily shut down the account of Paul Graham, who started Y Combinator and was an early supporter of Musk’s plan to take over Twitter. Graham was upset with the policy and told his followers to find him on Mastodon.
It’s important to remember that Musk has already said he plans to let someone else run Twitter day-to-day. In fact, he swore that he would do that. Last month, he told a court, “I frankly don’t want to be the CEO of any company.”
A vote from the public won’t change that, but it might hurt his pride. Musk also didn’t say in his tweet that he is under a lot of pressure from Tesla investors to turn his attention back to the car company.
Since Musk bought Twitter at the end of October, the price of Tesla’s stock has dropped by a lot. It went down 22 percent just in December. Because of all of this, some of Musk’s biggest fans have turned against the billionaire.
