Elon Musk appeared to put his future in charge of Twitter on the line, posting a poll asking whether he should step down and vowing to abide by the results.
“Should I step down as head of Twitter?” he tweeted, asking
the site’s users to click yes or no.
“I will abide by the results of this poll.”
With four hours until the end of the poll on Monday, 56.7
percent of nearly 14 million respondents had voted yes.
In Twitter exchanges with followers, Musk said he did not
have a replacement lined up.
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive.
There is no successor,” he said.
Making a “fun suggestion” to Musk, MIT research scientist
Lex Fridman offered to run the platform for a bit for no salary.
In a downbeat response, Musk said Twitter was “in the fast
lane to bankruptcy.”
“You must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest
your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy
since May. Still want the job?” Musk asked.
The unpredictable billionaire posted the poll shortly after
apparently acknowledging he had made a mistake banning Twitter users from
promoting their accounts on rival social media platforms.
“Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy
changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again,” he tweeted.
The sudden shift in the rules was the latest in a series of
controversial changes made by Musk since he took over the company in October —
upheaval that has led a growing number of users to encourage followers to view
their posts on other sites.
Twitter had announced that the company would “no longer
allow free promotion of specific social media platforms.”
Users would thus be barred, for example, from posting
“Follow me @username on Instagram,” Twitter said.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey questioned the new policy
with a one-word tweet: “Why?”
After some notable accounts were suspended under the new
policy, including tech investor Paul Graham, Musk tweeted that instead of
considering individual tweets, the policy would be limited to “suspending
accounts only when that account’s *primary* purpose is promotion of
competitors.”
Series of controversies
Musk has generated a series of controversies in his short
tenure at the helm of Twitter, including layoffs, reinstatement of some
far-right accounts and the suspension of several journalists.
Shortly after taking over the platform, he announced the
site would charge $8 per month to verify account holders’ identities, but had
to suspend the “Twitter Blue” plan after an embarrassing rash of fake accounts.
It has since been relaunched.
On November 4, with Musk saying the company was losing $4
million a day, Twitter laid off half its 7,500-strong staff.
Musk also reinstated the account of former president Donald
Trump and said Twitter would no longer work to combat Covid-19 disinformation.
In recent days, he suspended the accounts of several
journalists — most recently, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz — after
complaining some had divulged details about the movements of his private jet
that could endanger his family.
The suspension of the journalists — employees of CNN, The
New York Times and The Washington Post were among those affected — has drawn
sharp criticism, including from the European Union and the United Nations.
The US Federal Trade Commission said it was tracking
developments at Twitter “with deep concern.”
The Washington Post’s executive editor Sally Buzbee said the
suspension of Lorenz’s account “further undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he
intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.”
Some of the suspended accounts have since been reactivated. -AP