(Washington) A majority of participants in a poll launched by Elon Musk on Twitter voted Monday for the entrepreneur to abandon the direction of the social network.
57.5% of the more than 17 million voters said they were in favor of a departure from Mr. Musk, who pledged to respect the result, but did not react immediately.
“Should I quit running Twitter? “, had asked the billionaire in the night from Sunday to Monday on the social network.
“I will stick to the results of this poll,” he promised.
In an exchange with one of his Twitter followers, Mr. Musk assured that he had no designated successor. He said in another post that the platform was “on the fast track to bankruptcy.”
Since the takeover at the end of October, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX has sparked many controversies by laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, reinstating suspended accounts, suspending those of journalists and seeking to launch a new paid subscription.
“From the botched subscription plan to the banning of journalists to daily political controversies, it’s been an all-out storm as advertisers fled, leaving Twitter to widen its deficit,” noted Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. Securities, which estimates the company’s potential losses at $4 billion a year.
According to investment adviser Gary Black, Mr Musk is also under pressure from Tesla’s board of directors to let go of the reins of Twitter and refocus on the automaker, whose stock has fallen more than 33% since the start. acquisition of the social network.
“The numbers are hard to ignore,” Mr. Black tweeted.
The poll launched by Mr. Musk came after a new decision by the social network that caused a lot of reaction.
Misunderstanding of the new rules
Twitter announced on Sunday that it would no longer be possible to post links to competing networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon or Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social network.
It is now prohibited to tweet a message like: “Thank you for following me @ID on Instagram”, indicated the platform.
These new rules have aroused the misunderstanding of many users, including Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former boss of Twitter.
After some accounts were suspended under the new rule, including that of investor Paul Graham, Mr. Musk qualified his decision.
He first tweeted that instead of targeting individual tweets, the policy would be limited to “suspending accounts only when the ‘primary’ purpose of that account is promoting competitors.”
The stormy billionaire then claimed that “major political changes” on the social network would systematically be subject to a vote.
Accounts suspended
Last week, Mr. Musk deleted and then restored the accounts of several American journalists from CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post in particular, causing the European Union and the UN to react. The Vice-President of the European Commission even threatened the entrepreneur with sanctions.
The multi-billionaire first suspended @elonjet on Wednesday, an account that automatically reported his private jet trips, then those of journalists who had tweeted about the decision, accusing them of putting his family at risk.
These were reinstated on Saturday, but some said they were told to delete certain posts if they wanted to make full use of the platform.
On Saturday evening, the Twitter account of a Washington Post journalist, Taylor Lorenz, was in turn suspended for several hours.
“Elon Musk has suspended my Twitter account,” said the journalist, who covers the technology sector, on her blog.
His account was restored on Sunday.
Since taking over the reins of Twitter, Mr. Musk has reinstated numerous banned accounts, including Mr. Trump’s. It also ended the fight against misinformation related to COVID-19.
On the other hand, he suspended the account of rapper Kanye West after the publication of several messages deemed anti-Semitic and refused the return to the platform of far-right conspirator Alex Jones.