Late on Sunday, Elon Musk published a poll asking users if he should resign as the CEO of Twitter, the social media site he acquired in October and which has been dogged by scandal ever since. About 57% of respondents, according to preliminary poll findings, supported Mr. Musk’s resignation. After expressing regret for blocking links to many “prohibited” social media sites, including Facebook, a move that received vehement criticism, he published the 12-hour survey.
“My apologies. Won’t happen again,” Mr Musk tweeted around the same time he launched the poll, whose results he promised to abide by.
Mr Musk’s tenure at Twitter has seen him hand several key decisions over to users, including whether former president Donald Trump’s banned account should be reinstated or whether journalists accused of “doxxing” personal information should have their bans reversed.
But Mr Musk seemed to massively raise the stakes at a personal level by placing his own position at the company that cost him an initial $44 billion, and billions more since, in the hands of Twitter users.
Several poll respondents claimed Mr Musk knew it would likely oppose him remaining.
“As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” he tweeted, adding that he did not have a successor picked out.
Since walking into Twitter’s head office in San Francisco carrying a sink in late October, barely a day has gone by without Mr Musk drawing global headlines from decisions he made, many seemingly on a whim, at the platform.
Shortly after he arrived, he fired most of the staff and openly criticised the working culture of his new company as being too “woke” and not industrious enough.
Mr Musk, who runs several other companies including Tesla and SpaceX, gave what amounted to a real-time glimpse into his combative managerial style and hit back at claims staff were sleeping in the headquarters building.
His tweets took a new turn last week as he toyed with several journalists using Twitter by banning them, then sometimes reinstating them after a backlash.
Those bans came after he shut down a Twitter account that was tracking the flights of his private jet.
Then on Sunday, in the move he later apologised for, he banned accounts linking to mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and Mr Trump’s Truth Social.
Mr Musk has also frequently tweeted his right-wing political views, alienating a large chuck of his liberal Tesla customer base and triggering a seemingly unending selloff in stocks of the electric car maker that has cost Mr Musk tens of billions of dollars.
Earlier this month, he attacked Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading US expert on infectious diseases in a move that the White House branded “dangerous” and “disgusting”.
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