Elon Musk May Resign as Twitter CEO At present, Asks Twitter Customers to Vote on His Future

Elon Musk has tweeted a ballot asking Twitter customers to determine whether or not or not he ought to step down as CEO, and promising he’ll abide by the consequence. The ballot is open until roughly 4:30pm India time, or 3am PST, and so the consequence can be recognized quickly. Musk has had a tumultuous few months as CEO, shedding hundreds of Twitter’s workers and implementing large coverage adjustments such because the botched rollout of a repurposed Twitter Blue premium subscription plan and reversing bans on a number of controversial personalities and organisations together with former US President Donald Trump.

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I’ll abide by the outcomes of this ballot.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

Musk has beforehand said that he didn’t wish to function CEO of Twitter for lengthy, indicating that he would discover another person for the job. He is at present CEO of Tesla Inc, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and the Musk Foundation. He has lately confronted criticism for neglecting his different jobs, significantly by distinguished Tesla shareholders. Amid experiences of advertisers leaving the platform and a big drop in income, Musk has been centered on producing revenue however has stated chapter is feasible for the social networking platform.

His tenure as CEO has been controversial, beginning with a big spherical of layoffs and encouraging extra workers to stop or work “extraordinarily hardcore” hours. He has additionally made basic adjustments to Twitter as a platform and has acted to dismantle a lot of the platform’s content material moderation capabilities within the title of selling freedom of speech. He has feuded with Apple CEO Tim Cook a few promoting income and Apple’s 30 p.c minimize of in-app transactions. As for product adjustments, he has recommended that the character restrict for tweets might go as much as 4,000, essentially altering the aim of the platform, and has additionally indicated that every one customers will be capable to edit Tweets after posting them. 

Musk lately polled Twitter customers about whether or not to reinstate Donald Trump’s suspended account, though it was not clear whether or not any measures had been taken to forestall vote manipulation. This got here after a promise to solely make selections about content material moderation and account reinstatements via a “content material moderation council with broadly numerous viewpoints”. However, Musk later advised firm staff that the proposed council would solely be “advisory” and he could be the ultimate arbiter of all such selections anyway. It is unclear whether or not such a council was ever established, and in the meantime Twitter’s present Trust and Safety Council has additionally since been disbanded. 

Most lately, Musk was within the information for out of the blue banning the accounts of a number of journalists who cowl Twitter, in addition to an account that reposts public-domain details about the actions of his personal jet after explicitly promising to not. Musk has beforehand referred to himself as a “free speech absolutist”.