Elon Musk promised that he would step down as the head of Twitter should his recent poll vote in favor of it. However, it seems that Musk is now going back on his word although the poll ended with the majority saying he should resign.
After the poll ended Musk tweeted that only paid Twitter Blue subscribers would be eligible to vote in future polls related to policy and didn’t mention anything about resigning.
Musk, who is a regular user of Twitter, remained silent during the first hour after the poll. He finally broke his silence when he replied with “Interesting”, to several suggestions that the poll results were distorted by fake accounts.
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The CEO responded to another user’s suggestion, “Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy-related polls”, and said: “Good point. Twitter will make that change”.
Musk is the majority shareholder of the privately-held company, so no one can force him out. But he is also known for using Twitter polls as a rubber stamp to make major decisions. He sold a tenth of his Tesla holdings following one poll in 2021. He also restored Donald Trump’s account following another poll last month and reinstated a number of suspended accounts with yet another poll later on. Musk tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” after Trump’s poll.
In many cases, however, he gave the impression that he already knew the outcome of the poll before posting it. He had already declared a sale of Tesla stock long before he put it up for a vote, and his plan to reinstate Trump was discussed before he bought Twitter.
Before the Twitter poll was published, there had been hints that he might step down as chief executive. He stated to a Delaware judge on 16 November that he would reduce his time at Twitter to “find somebody else to run Twitter over time”.
