Musk polls Twitter users on whether he should be CEO—57.5% want him to quit

"Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll."

Jon Brodkin – Dec 19, 2022 3:33 PM | 617

Credit: Aurich Lawson

Elon Musk polled Twitter users yesterday on whether he should remain as the company's CEO and claimed he would abide by the results. The poll concluded with 17.5 million votes, with a large majority urging Musk to step down.

"Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll," Musk wrote. The "Yes" option was selected by 57.5 percent of poll respondents.

Musk hasn't confirmed whether he will actually step down. "The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive," Musk wrote last night after posting the poll. "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor," he also wrote in response to a tweet speculating that he "already has the new CEO picked out."

Even if Musk does cede the CEO title, he would still be in charge as the owner of Twitter. Musk has said in the past that "CEO is a made-up title" and doesn't "mean anything." He has called himself the "Technoking" of Tesla and "Chief Twit" at Twitter, but officially is the CEO of both of those companies and SpaceX.

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Musk has also previously said he intends to eventually give up the top spot at Twitter. "I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time," Musk said last month in testimony during a trial over his pay at Tesla.

Musk promises votes on major policy changes

Meanwhile, Musk wrote yesterday that Twitter will rely on polls for major policy changes in the future. Over the weekend, Twitter implemented but then quickly deleted a policy that banned links to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Truth Social.

"At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL," the now-deleted policy says. The policy also said that accounts "used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended."

"Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won't happen again," Musk wrote.

The official Twitter Safety account announced the ban on social media links in a series of tweets yesterday, but those tweets were deleted. Shortly after Musk promised to hold votes on major policy changes, the Twitter Safety account posted a poll asking whether Twitter should "have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms." The poll runs for 24 hours and ends tonight.