Elon Musk has said he will resign as Twitter’s chief executive officer when he finds someone “foolish enough to take the job”.
It was not immediately clear if Musk was serious, and no formal announcement beyond the tweet had been made. The tweet came after Musk hosted a poll on the social media platform in which users voted for him to leave the position.
The poll, which Musk posted on Sunday night, asked simply: “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.” The question garnered over 17.5 million responses, with 57.5% of participants voting yes.
Since Musk bought the social media site in October, he has fired about half of its staff and attempted a rollout of Twitter’s paid-for verification feature before putting it on pause. The feature was relaunched last week. Civil liberties groups have also criticized his approach to content moderation, accusing him of taking steps that will increase hate speech and misinformation.
Twitter also faced controversy over a rule that users would no longer be allowed to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms targeted for “prohibition,” although it appeared to quickly backtrack on that policy. A growing number of Twitter users have left under Musk, or created alternative accounts on rival platforms and included those addresses in their Twitter profiles.
Musk had previously attempted to crack down on certain speech, shutting down several Twitter accounts that were tracking the flights of his private jet and the jets of other wealthy people. He had equated the accounts to doxxing, saying they posed a risk by revealing people’s locations.
Well, the real bottom line is, he said he never wanted to be a CEO of any company, preferring to see himself as an engineer.
