Twitter users believe Elon Musk ought to step down as CEO

By Justin Jones On Dec 19, 2022

Twitter users believe Elon Musk ought to step down as CEO; on Sunday; he asked Twitter users if he should resign as the platform’s CEO. In a Twitter “poll” that ended on Monday after 12 hours, more than 17 million votes were cast, and the results were crystal clear: 57.5 percent of the respondents said he should resign.

Mr. Musk had previously declared that he would respect the outcome of the vote. Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to the results of the poll on Twitter.

If he follows through, Elon Musk will cede control of the business he paid $44 billion for in late October. Since then, the company has made numerous layoffs, advertising sales have decreased, executives have resigned, and countless high-profile user accounts have been suspended due to violations of recently created policies.

On Sunday, Twitter announced a rule prohibiting users from sharing usernames and links from other social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Mastodon. Later, the same direction appeared to have been relaxed.

The founder of the start-up accelerator Y Combinator, Paul Graham, tweeted on Sunday that Mr. Musk’s most recent Twitter actions were “the last straw.” Despite backing Mr. Musk’s takeover, Mr. Graham wrote on Sunday, “I give up. On my website, there is a link to my new Mastodon profile. His account was momentarily shut down.

About two dozen accounts that followed the whereabouts of private planes, including one that followed Elon Musk’s private jet, were suspended by Twitter last week. The company cited a new rule that prohibited accounts from sharing the “live location” of other people. Some journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and other publications had their accounts suspended last week under what appears to be the same policy.

Mr. Musk tweeted: “No one wants the job who can keep Twitter alive. After asking users if he should continue serving as Twitter’s CEO. There isn’t a replacement.

Mr. Musk revealed last week that he had sold additional shares of Tesla stock worth $3.6 billion. Mr. Musk has now pledged $23 billion worth of Tesla stock this year, a large portion following his April commitment to refrain from selling shares to finance his Twitter deal.

Twitter received more attention than the Golden Child; given that many Musk supporters want him to step down as CEO of Twitter, Tesla has been another significant issue for investors and is probably what caused this poll result, according to analysts Daniel Ives and John Katsingris at Wedbush Securities.

With the billionaire finally realizing that there has been “growing frustration around this Twitter nightmare that grows worse by the day,” they continued, Musk’s resignation from Twitter would be “a major step forward.”