More than 10 million people voted for Elon Musk to step down as Twitter’s chief executive in a poll he posted to the site late Sunday.
But the billionaire, who bought the company and took over as head just 50 days ago, has insisted there is no successor in the wings. “No one wants the job that can actually keep Twitter alive,” he said on the social network. “There is no successor.” To answer to another user who said they could get the job done, Musk added, “You have to like a lot of pain. One catch: you have to invest your savings in Twitter and it’s been on a fast track to bankruptcy since May. Do you still want the job?
On Sunday, Musk asked Twitter users if he should step down as head of the company, promising to abide by the results of his poll.
When the poll closed Monday, 57.5% said he should resign.
As the majority owner of the private company, no one can force Musk out. But a series of mind-boggling decisions in recent days have caused even some of his closest backers to cut ties with him.
A decision last week to ban an account tracking the location of his private jet was followed by a mass suspension of critical journalists covering the ban. That in turn led to an exodus of some engaged users to other social networks, primarily decentralized competitor Mastodon, whose own account was banned for posting a link to the jet tracker’s account on the rival platform.
On Sunday, Musk responded by banning all links to other social networks, including Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, and even small platforms like Nostr, used by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Linktree, a homepage builder tool favored by influencers .
That ban was lifted at the end of the day, following a Twitter poll of the Twitter Safety account Musk saying that “In the future there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Will not happen again.” But the move was the final straw for some. Paul Graham, an Anglo-American venture capitalist who had backed Musk just a month earlier, said: “It’s remarkable how many people who have never run a company think they know how to run a technology company better than someone who has Tesla and SpaceX.” Graham also declared the move “the final straw,” telling users they could find a link to his Mastodon profile on his personal website, and his account has been suspended from the position.
Musk has a history of using Twitter polls to stamp important decisions, selling a tenth of his Tesla holdings after one poll in 2021restoring Donald Trump’s account after a second last month and restoring a series of suspended accounts follows a third. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted after the Trump poll.
But in many cases he has given the impression that he had already made up his mind about the outcome before posting: for example, he had already announced a sale of his Tesla asset long before putting it to the vote, and his plan to kill Donald Trump to restore had been discussed before he even bought Twitter. The decision to step down as CEO had also been suggested long before the Twitter poll was published. On November 16, he told a Delaware judge that he intended to “cut my time at Twitter and find someone else to run Twitter over time.”
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