Musk launches poll asking if he should step down as Twitter CEO
This photo illustration shows a phone displaying Elon Musk's Twitter page where he is conducting a survey about his future as the head of the company, Los Angeles, U.S., Dec. 18, 2022. (AFP Photo)


Twitter CEO Elon Musk Sunday launched a poll on this social media platform regarding his future as head of the social media network, asking users whether he should step down from the position, adding that he would abide by the poll results.

As of 5:57 a.m., almost 12 million users had participated in the poll, with 56.3% voting in favor of him stepping down and about five hours remaining before the poll closed on Monday.

The billionaire did not give details on when he would step down if the poll results said he should. Replying to one Twitter user's comment on a possible change in CEO, Musk said, "There is no successor."

Musk had told a Delaware court last month that he would reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the company.

The poll comes after Twitter's Sunday policy update, which prohibited accounts created solely to promote other social media firms and content that contains links or usernames for rival platforms.

Minutes before that poll, Musk apologized and tweeted, "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes." A few hours later, an official Twitter account started a separate poll asking users if the platform should have a policy preventing accounts from advertising on other social media platforms on Twitter. The policy update would impact content from social media platforms like Meta Platforms' Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post, while allowing cross-content posting, Twitter support said in a tweet.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently invested in the social media platform Nostr, replied to the Twitter support post with one word: "Why?" In a reply to another user posting about the Nostr promotion ban, Dorsey said, "doesn’t make sense."

Short video-platform TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance Ltd, was not included in the list.

Last week, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group formed in 2016 to advise the social media platform on site decisions.

The policy change follows other chaotic actions at Twitter since Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, bought the social network. He fired top management and laid off about half of its workforce while seesawing how much to charge for the subscription service Twitter Blue.

Musk on Saturday reinstated the Twitter accounts of several journalists that were suspended for a day over a controversy over publishing public data about the billionaire's plane.

His decision to lift that suspension followed the results of a Twitter poll he had issued, in which most respondents voted for the journalists' accounts to be restored immediately.

Government officials, advocacy groups and several journalism organizations heavily criticized the suspension of those accounts, with some saying that Twitter was jeopardizing press freedom.