Elon Musk has tweeted for the first time since more than 10 million people voted in favor of him stepping down as Twitter’s CEO, stating that future policy-related polls will be limited to paid Twitter Blue subscribers.
Musk polled Twitter users on Sunday about whether they thought he should leave his position as CEO, and he promised to follow the results of the poll. 57.5% of those who responded to the survey on Monday said he should resign.
Musk, who frequently uses the platform, did not tweet immediately after the poll. His silence was finally broken when he said, “Interesting,” in response to several allegations that the poll’s results were tainted by phony accounts.
Replying to another user’s suggestion that “Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls”, Musk said: “Good point. Twitter will make that change.”
Twitter Blue is a paid subscription service that allows users to purchase a blue tick verified badge for their account.
No one can force Musk out as the majority owner of the privately held company, but a series of perplexing decisions over the last few days has caused even some of his closest supporters to cut ties with him.
Last week, he banned an account that tracked the location of his private jet, which was followed by the suspension of all critical journalists who reported on the ban. This resulted in an exodus of some engaged users to other social networks, most notably Mastodon, its decentralized competitor, whose own account was banned for posting a link to the jet tracker’s account on the rival’s platform.
Musk reacted on Sunday by prohibiting all links to other social networks, including Mastodon, Instagram, and Facebook, as well as minor platforms such as Nostr, used by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Linktree, a homepage creation tool popular among influencers.
After a Twitter poll from the Twitter Safety account, that ban was lifted by the end of the day, with Musk saying: “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.”
Musk has a history of using Twitter polls to rubber-stamp major decisions, including selling a tenth of his Tesla holdings after one poll in 2021, restoring Donald Trump’s account after another last month, and reinstating a number of suspended accounts after a third. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted after Trump’s victory.
However, in many cases, he has given the impression of having already decided on the outcome before posting: for example, he had already announced a sale of his Tesla holdings long before putting it to a vote, and his plan to reinstate Trump had been discussed since before he even bought Twitter.
Long before the Twitter poll was published, the idea of stepping down as CEO had been floated. On 16 November, he told a Delaware judge that he planned to reduce his time at Twitter and “find somebody else to run Twitter over time”.
