Elon Musk said yesterday that he will step down as the chief executive officer of Twitter as soon as he finds a successor to take over the position after 10 million users voted that he should quit.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Anadolu Agency quoted Musk as saying on Twitter.
“After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” he added.
10 million votes to quit
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Known for his history of using Twitter polls to rubber-stamp major decisions, Elon Musk tweeted his “clever” response after more than 10 million people voted that he step down as Twitter’s chief executive.
He now says that only “paid Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to vote in future policy-related polls.”
On Sunday, Musk asked Twitter users whether he should step down as the head of the company, promising to abide by the results of his poll. When the poll closed on Monday, 57.5% said he should step down.
As the majority owner of the privately held company, no one can force Musk out, but a succession of bizarre decisions over the past few days has triggered some of his closest backers to break ties with him.
He can’t fight 10 million
Barring an account that tracked the location of his private jet last week was followed by a mass suspension of critical journalists who reported on the ban.
That resulted in the departure of some engaged users to other social platforms, predominantly its devolved competitor Mastodon, whose own account was banned for posting a link to the jet tracker’s account.
But with the poll he initiated, even if he is tempted to remain as CEO, he can’t fight against the massive 10 million users who voted for him to resign. He also have to keep up to his word that he will quit if he loses the poll.
Musk likewise banned all links to other social networks, including Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, and even minor platforms such as Nostr, used by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Linktree, a homepage creation tool favored by influencers.
That ban was rescinded by the end of the day, after a Twitter poll from the Twitter Safety account, with Musk saying: “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.”
The idea of stepping down as chief executive has already been hinted long before the Twitter poll was published. On 16 November, he told a Delaware judge that he planned to reduce his time at Twitter and “find somebody else to run Twitter over time.”