Elon Musk tweeted for the first time since more than 10 million people voted to step down as Twitter’s chief executive, saying that only paying Twitter Blue subscribers can vote in future political polls. On Sunday, Musk asked his Twitter users whether he should step down as CEO of the company and vowed to stick to his vote. When the poll ended Monday, 57.5% said he should resign. Musk is typically a prolific user of the platform and does not tweet for hours immediately after voting. His silence was finally broken when he replied “interesting” to some suggestions that fake accounts distorted the poll results. Responding to another user’s suggestion that “only blue subscribers should be allowed to participate in political polls,” Musk said: “Good. Twitter will make this change.”
Twitter Blue is a paid subscription that allows anyone to purchase a blue tick verification badge for their account. As the majority owner of a privately held company, no one can force Mr. Musk. Still, a series of surprising decisions over the past few days have made even some of his closest supporters end their relationship with Mr. Musk. I cut it off. After the decision was made last week to ban his private account from tracking the location of his jet, a large number of critical journalists reporting on the ban were suspended. This led to the exodus of some dedicated users to other social networks. Most notably, Jett’s Mastodon, a decentralized competitor whose own account was banned for posting a link to his tracker’s account on a competing platform. On Sunday, Musk responded by banning all links to other social networks. This includes Mastodon, Instagram, and Facebook, used by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Linktree, the influencer-favorite homepage-building tool.
That ban was lifted later that day after a Twitter poll by the Twitter Safety account.
“There will be a vote on major policy changes in the future. Sorry, it won’t happen again.” Musk has used Twitter polls to approve key decisions, sold a tenth of his Tesla holdings after the 2021 poll, and restored Donald Trump’s account a second later last month. , has a history of restoring dozens of suspended accounts after a third. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei. However, more often than not, he gives the impression that he has already decided on the outcome before posting it. For example, he had already announced the sale of his Tesla stake well before he voted, and his plans to revive Trump were discussed before he acquired Twitter. The idea of stepping down as CEO was also hinted at long before the Twitter poll was released. On November 16, he told a Delaware judge that he intended to spend less time on Twitter and “over time find someone else to run Twitter.”
