Elon Musk’s time as Twitter’s CEO may soon end after poll decides he should step down

Following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the company has made drastic changes over the last several weeks. Nearly half of Twitter’s workforce was laid off as the company completely restructured its revenue model. Musk’s intentions included speeding up Twitter, unbanning people who may have been wrongly banned, and to severely reduce the number of spam bots on the site.

Following the recent re-relaunch of Twitter Blue, last-minute policy changes were met with criticism by Twitter users including a vaguely unclear policy about using Twitter to promote third-party platforms. After that Musk stated that he’d be holding Twitter polls to decide on future policy changes.

Should we have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms?

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) December 19, 2022

Well, the very next poll that Musk held was asking users whether the new CEO should step down as the head of Twitter. 57.5% of 17,503,391 voters said Musk should step down while the remaining 42.5% said Musk should remain.

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

Signs (other than the Twitter poll) point to Musk’s imminent departure as Twitter’s CEO. Tesla’s stock has dropped more than 60% YoY as the auto industry begins another decline after the one brought by COVID lockdowns. Meanwhile, the changes brought to Twitter may end up costing the platform $4 billion, as per tech analyst Dan Ives.

No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022

Musk himself Tweeted, “There is no successor”, in response to a Tweet that suggested Twitter already had a new CEO lined up to succeed Musk as the head of Twitter. Perhaps there’s no successor… yet?

Controversy struck when several journalists' accounts were suspended following an interaction on Twitter Spaces where Musk popped into a discussion amongst journalists and was stumped by their questions, prompting his sudden departure from the Spaces.