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- Twitter users on Monday voted in favor of Elon Musk stepping down as the company’s chief.
- The results of a poll posted by Musk on Sunday showed 57.5% of votes in favor of his departure.
- Musk said before votes were cast that he’d abide by the results of his poll.
Twitter users have voted in favor of owner Elon Musk giving up his leadership of the social-media company, with the billionaire saying before the vote he’d abide by its result.
On Sunday, Musk posted a yes-or-no poll on Twitter asking whether he should step down as the company’s head. The results on Monday morning showed 17.5 million people voted, with 57.5% — around 10 million — in favor of him stepping down.
Shortly after the poll closed, Tesla stock was up nearly 5% in premarket trading. Musk is the CEO of Tesla and some shareholders of the electric-vehicle maker are concerned about how much energy he’s expending at Twitter.
Upon posting his stay-or-go poll on Sunday, Musk tweeted: “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.”
He followed up the post with further tweets saying “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” and “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.”
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was among several people urging Musk to stay at Twitter. “Stay the course,” he tweeted, minutes before the poll closed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also told Musk not to step down.
YouTuber MrBeast, meanwhile, said he was in favor of Musk leaving his leadership role.
Since buying Twitter in late October, Musk has polled users on various issues around the running of the social-media platform, such as reinstating the account of former president Donald Trump and bringing back video-sharing app Vine. Musk has used the mantra “vox populi, vox dei,” which translates from Latin as “voice of the people, voice of God,” to justify some of his controversial actions.
But Musk hasn’t followed through with action on the results all of his polls. Critics used the “vox populi” phrase to mock him and accuse him of hypocrisy after he didn’t abide by the results of a poll in which Twitter users voted in favor of Musk reinstating accounts he said had “doxxed my exact location in real-time.”
Accounts including @ElonJet, which published publicly-available information on the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet, and the personal account of its owner, Jack Sweeney, remain suspended from the site.
Musk’s actions at the helm of the social-media platform have proved divisive, with some people lauding him for vowing to promote free speech and change Twitter’s content-moderation policies. Others have cited fears of a rise in hate speech on the site and have questioned Musk’s hypocrisy for suspending some journalists.
Advertisers have fled the site over concerns about content moderation, and Musk has seemingly introduced new policies on a whim, some of which he later reversed. He has also drastically shaken up Twitter’s workforce, with thousands of staff members resigning, being fired, or being laid off.
