CNN
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Twitter boss Elon Musk confirmed late on Tuesday that he would step down as the company’s chief executive, but only if he identifies a successor, in a Twitter poll he launched this week for the first time directly. Speech, millions of users voted to remove him.
in seconds tweetMusk said, “Once I find someone stupid enough to take this job”, he will resign!
He added that after stepping down as CEO, Musk will “manage the software and server teams” at Twitter, suggesting he may continue to have significant influence over the company’s decisions.
The announcement came after more than a day of silence on polls following the results. On Monday, after more than 17 million users voted — 57.5 percent of whom said Musk should resign — the billionaire executive only addressed the results indirectly. He suggested that future Twitter polls might be limited to paid users of Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.
Musk’s poll asking users whether he should resign as CEO follows Twitter’s abrupt suspension of several journalists who covered him, as well as Twitter’s decision to ban, then unban, with other social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram ), sparking a backlash and Mastodon, a fast-growing Twitter competitor that has grown eightfold in size since October.
Musk’s brief tenure as CEO has led to a sweeping, sometimes shaky turnaround at one of the world’s most influential social media companies.
Under his leadership, Twitter has laid off most of its staff, alienated major advertisers and welcomed former President Donald Trump back to the platform after being suspended from office on Jan. 1. 6 Riots at the Capitol and an internal communication about Twitter’s operations to reporters before Musk took ownership of the company.
Musk forced remaining employees to commit to being “extremely stubborn” at work and to stop enforcing Twitter’s policy against Covid-19 misinformation.
Within days, Twitter rolled out and then had to pull a paid verification feature that was immediately manipulated by satirical accounts parodying verified major brands, athletes and other public figures on the platform.
Musk’s penchant for making major product changes based on informal Twitter polls underscores his ad-hoc and impromptu management style. But the practice has drawn growing criticism from many Twitter users. Last week, Twitter suspended several journalists who reported on the accounts that Musk had permanently banned from tracking his plane.
Mounting criticism of Musk culminated in Sunday’s poll, which was an effective, albeit unscientific, referendum on Musk’s handling of the company since he closed his acquisition of Twitter in late October.