Twitter users vote for Elon Musk to step down as CEO
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About 58 per cent of the 17.5 million votes cast were in favour of Twitter CEO Elon Musk stepping back from the leadership role.
PHOTO: AFP
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SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter Inc users have voted for Mr Elon Musk to step down from his role as head of the social platform in a poll the billionaire entrepreneur said he would respect,
About 58 per cent of the 17.5 million votes cast were in favour of Mr Musk stepping back from the leadership role.
If he heeds the results, it would mark the end of 53 chaotic days at the helm, which have involved dismissing top executives,
Mr Musk, who is also chief executive officer of Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp, has dedicated much of his time since acquiring Twitter on Oct 27 to the social media service, drawing criticism for his abrupt policy changes
The stock of Tesla, his most valuable holding, has sunk by about a third since the acquisition.
It is not the first time Mr Musk has put major corporate decisions to Twitter users.
He conducted a poll of his followers on whether to reinstate Mr Donald Trump’s Twitter account, and allowed the former US president back on the platform the following day.
There is no clear replacement at Twitter, with almost all of the company’s top rank executives having been fired or resigned over the past few months.
Mr Musk said in later tweets that “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor”, and “it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May”.
The threat that Twitter might veer into financial difficulties has been constant during Mr Musk’s tenure, who in his first address to Twitter employees in November said bankruptcy was a possibility if it does not start generating more cash.
The company has almost US$13 billion (S$17.6 billion) of debt that is now in the hands of seven Wall Street banks that have been unable to offload it to investors.
Mr Musk had previously indicated that he would be in charge of Twitter only for a limited time to complete the organisational overhaul he thought it needed to prosper, and has complained of having “too much work”
Tesla shares gained 4.8 per cent in US premarket trading on Monday.
Shares in the carmaker have slumped 57 per cent this year amid concerns the chaotic takeover of Twitter has distracted Mr Musk from the firm that propelled him to becoming the richest person in the world – a title he lost last week to luxury titan Bernard Arnault.
Mr Musk was in Qatar on Sunday to watch the World Cup final match between Argentina and France.
Mr Elon Musk was in Qatar on Sunday to watch the World Cup final match between Argentina and France.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“With the Twitter chaos front and centre and resulting in a major headache and overhang for the Tesla story, we believe Musk needs to name a permanent CEO of Twitter (and not Musk himself) to end the pain,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
The poll comes after Twitter’s Sunday policy update,
Minutes before that poll, Mr Musk apologised and tweeted: “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes.”
A few hours later, an official Twitter account started a separate poll asking users if the platform should have a policy preventing accounts that advertise other social media platforms on Twitter.
The policy update would impact content from social media platforms like Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post, while allowing cross-content posting, Twitter support said in a tweet.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently invested in social media platform Nostr, replied to the Twitter support post with one word: “Why?“ In a reply to another user posting about the Nostr promotion ban, Mr Dorsey said, “doesn’t make sense”.
Short-video platform TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, was not included in the list.
Last week, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council,
