Is it the ultimate troll or the end of a six-week fever dream?
Elon Musk on Sunday night posted a poll on whether he should step down as head of Twitter and vowed that he “will abide by the results.” On Monday, when the poll closed, the message was clear: It’s time go.
The final result showed that 57.5 percent of voters want him to step down while 42.5 percent said he should stay. Over 17.5 million votes were cast in the yes-or-no ballot.
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Whether Musk will actually make good on his promise to honor the result remains to be seen.
“As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” Musk tweeted after posting the poll Sunday.
In replies to his followers, he also declared: “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.”
“You must like pain a lot,” he said to one person who offered to take over. “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?”
This is not the first time Musk has used a Twitter poll to make significant decisions about the direction and the future of the social media platform.
Last week, after his banning of several high-profile journalists generated mass outrage, even from some allies, he asked the public whether he should bring them back immediately.
The result was that almost six out of 10 said he should, and Musk did reinstate them. Of course, he then temporarily suspended another journalist, Taylor Lorenz of The Washington Post for an alleged violation of Twitter rules.
The bans, reinstatements, polls, and constantly changing “rules” are all part of the superstorm of chaos that has thrashed Twitter since Musk took over in a $44 billion deal.
The atmosphere has seen advertisers flee, high-profile accounts defect to rival platforms, and shares in Musk-owned Tesla sink.
Musk spent Sunday at the World Cup in Qatar while Washington Post editor Sally Buzbee, among many others, blasted him for booting Lorenz, whose account was restored just hours later.
It wasn’t even clear why her account had been suspended: She suggested it was because she tweeted out where followers could find her on competitors’ platforms, like Mastodon, but the ban happened shortly after an influencer manager that Lorenz had written about complained to Musk that she had been doxxed in the article.
So-called doxxing has been a sore spot for Musk, especially posts by @ElonJet, an account run by a college student who tracks the billionaire’s private jet—though as many commentators have noted, flight movements are public information, and therefore not a secret.
