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Musk breaks silence after Twitter survey says he should step down

December 20, 2022 | | Print Article

‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk broke his silence after running a poll on Twitter where millions of users voted he should step down as CEO of the social media platform, and it was a surprising first response to the outcome.

Musk has ostensibly decided that from now on, only Twitter Blue subscribers will be allowed to vote on future policy-related polls. That is not a direct response to the vote to oust him even though the billionaire vowed to “abide” by the results of the disastrous poll.

In the end, 57.5% of over 17 million users voted for Musk to resign. Evidently, Musk was surprised by the outcome and did not immediately respond to it.

Just before 11:30 pm on Monday, Musk responded to notorious file-sharer Kim Dotcom, who suggested that the poll had been infiltrated by the government and was skewed by bots, a suggestion that has crossed the minds of many who support Musk.

“Hey @elonmusk, it’s unwise to run a poll like this when you are now deep state enemy #1. They have the biggest bot army on Twitter. They have 100k ‘analysts’ with 30-40 accounts all voting against you. Let’s clean up and then run this poll again. The majority has faith in you,” Kim Dotcom tweeted.

“I’m hoping that Elon did this poll as a honeypot to catch all the deep state bots. The dataset for this poll will contain most of them. Some good data-mining and he could kill them all in one go,” the user added.

Musk replied to the tweet with one word, “Interesting.”

The decision to restrict voting on polls came after a suggestion by a user, “Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls. We actually have skin in the game.”

Musk responded, “Good point. Twitter will make that change.”

Twitter Blue is a paid-for subscription that allows users to purchase a blue tick verified badge for their account and will allow them to access added features on the platform. It costs $8 a month.

Before the poll was finalized, Musk tweeted, “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”

He responded to another user, stating, “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.”

Musk warned users that Twitter could still be destined for bankruptcy as well.

A number of commentators have rightly noted that should Musk step down as CEO, he would still retain the final say on major decisions as the owner of Twitter. In other words, it’s a distinction without a difference.

Musk’s poll follows a policy change that barred users from linking to certain rival social media websites, including Facebook, Instagram, and Mastodon. It caused a massive backlash and was reversed within hours.

“Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again,” Musk commented.

Despite the reversal, Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, defended her son’s management of Twitter in recent days and promoted his other companies.

Musk has previously indicated he would eventually step down as head of Twitter. It remains to be seen if he will since the company is currently in crisis.

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