On Sunday, the brand new owner and CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk published an off-the-cuff poll users of the social platform asking if he should step down as the pinnacle of the corporate. By 3:30 a.m. EST, 15.2 million votes had been solid, with the vast majority of respondents (57%) in favor of the billionaire leaving office.
Musk has claimed he will abide by the outcomes of the poll, which is as a result of close early Monday morning, but it surely’s unclear if he will actually achieve this.
In court in November, Musk said, “I expect to scale back my time on Twitter and find another person to steer Twitter over time.” Nevertheless, on Sunday he tweeted that he did no successor possible for him at a social media company.
“The query isn’t finding a CEO, it’s about finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive” he wrote.
Twitter polls are straw polls, meaning they’re informal and never comparable to skilled opinion polls. Malicious bots or unauthentic accounts may additionally have the ability to record a response to a Twitter survey.
Sunday’s poll by Musk followed a web-based backlash after “Chief Twit” (as he called himself) made abrupt changes to rules affecting Twitter users last week.
For instance, the corporate introduced a recent social platform promotion policy on Sunday that prohibits users from sharing links to certain other social media accounts. Musk’s longtime friends and supporters, including Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, expressed dismay on the policy, which caused Musk to later apologize and step back.
A number of days earlier, Twitter made changes to its “doxxing” policy. now specified by the corporate as “sharing someone’s private information online without their permission.” The brand new policy prohibits users from sharing other people’s live location information, home addresses, contact information, or physical location information, but many do not understand what kind of data crosses the road on Twitter.
Musk’s policy changes have been used as justification for suspending the Twitter accounts of many American journalists, commentators and others who’ve criticized the CEO or his corporations in the past. Some accounts were fully or partially restored a few days later, but not all.
The suspensions marked the ultimate chapter in Musk’s rocky takeover of Twitter. He led an roughly $44 billion acquisition of the corporate in October, and his leadership has resulted in massive staff cuts, a rise in racist hate speech, advertisers fleeing or spending cuts on the platform, and the reinstatement of previously blocked accounts.
says Musk Twitter usage has reached an all-time high since he took power the variety of views related to hate speech has decreased.
The Twitter billionaire’s leadership is bleeding and raising concerns about his other ventures.
For instance, Musk has sold billions of dollars Tesla shares this 12 months to fund the acquisition of Twitter. He also attracted talent from each Tesla and SpaceX, including executives, engineers and lawyers, to assist him out on Twitter.
Earlier this month, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson asked SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell whether Musk’s Twitter “distraction” could affect SpaceX’s work with the space agency, reported NBC News. Nelson said she assured him that may not be the case.
But Musk’s Twitter behavior is having a negative impact on his automotive company’s public image and stock price. Tesla shares have fallen about 60% year-to-date since Sunday night. This comes amid a broad decline in upside stocks that has hit the tech industry Nasdaq Composite down by greater than 30% for the reason that starting of the 12 months.
Tesla’s largest retail shareholder, Leo Koguan, tweeted on December 14 that “Elon has abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no CEO.” He appealed to the corporate’s board of directors to take motion. “Tesla needs and deserves to have [a] works full-time as CEO,” he wrote, criticizing the corporate’s management for seeming inaction.
Musk tweeted last week that he would “make certain” that Tesla shareholders will profit from Twitter in the long term.
Survey in Germany The Spiegel found it last week 63% of respondents think so that Elon Musk’s public appearances as CEO of Twitter had a mostly negative or clearly negative impact on their perception of Tesla.
And only 9% of respondents in this survey said Tesla may be very or mostly liked as a brand – the corporate fell far behind VW, BMW, Opel and others in Germany. That is despite the indisputable fact that Tesla is investing heavily in the German market. In March this 12 months, it opened a large vehicle assembly plant in Grünheide near Berlin.