Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Sunday polled users of his newly-bought social media service on whether he should resign his top post, and most of them said yes. He said he “will abide by the results of” the poll.
When voting closed on the poll, 57.5 percent of users had voted yes, while 42.5 percent voted no. More than 17.5 million people voted. It wasn’t clear how long the poll had been open.
The vote followed weeks of chaotic policy changes. In the most recent instance, the service banned real-time sharing of other people’s locations as Musk declared he would take legal action against a user who shared the whereabouts of his private jet. Several journalists from CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post were also banned under the policy.
Before tweeting the poll Sunday, Musk said: “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.” He had originally promised no policies would change until a “moderation council” could be convened, but he walked that back later.
Musk has previously hinted he would resign. In November, less than a month after his Twitter deal closed, he said he planned to “reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” Axios reported.
After posting the poll, he tweeted: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”
Two hours later, he posted: “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.”
Shortly after posting the poll, he told a user: “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”
Musk tweeted Sunday that the company has “been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May.” Since taking over, he has tried to shift away from the service’s ad-supported business model with a focus on subscriptions.
