Elon Musk announced on Twitter on Tuesday his intention to leave the head of the social network as soon as he has “found someone crazy enough” to replace him, explaining that the billionaire will therefore focus on the “software and servers”.
The owner of the microblogging platform reacted to the result of the poll he himself had launched on Monday on Twitter, asking whether he should retire from the head of the company or not, 57% of the 17 million voters answering by the affirmative.
If he had initially said that he would comply with the result of his poll, Mr. Musk had sent rather contradictory signals in recent hours, seeming at first to believe that the result had been distorted by the vote of bots .
Less than eight weeks after taking control of the social network for 44 billion dollars, Twitter does not see the storm calming down. The company is on the brink of financial abyss having lost a number of advertisers to the risk posed to brands by the billionaire’s desire to reduce content moderation.
Earlier in the day, Elon Musk had retweeted the result of an opinion poll carried out by the HarrisX institute, with its own sample of users of the platform, which gave 61% of those questioned in favor. of his retention as Chief Executive Officer.
“Interesting, this seems to suggest that we do have a slight bot problem on Twitter” reacted the owner of the platform in response to the institute’s tweet presenting the results.
A comment came after Elon Musk endorsed another tweet suggesting his poll had been botned. He also estimated that any new survey would now be reserved for paying users of Twitter.
In the past, the businessman had relied on polls to support controversial decisions, such as reactivating former US President Donald Trump’s account, as well as other users who had been suspended.
The result of its latest poll initially led to a rise in the title of Tesla, whose investors are increasingly critical of the attention given to Twitter since the takeover, to the detriment of the automaker, they believe.
Several American media had for their part assured that Elon Musk had gone in search of a replacement, citing anonymous sources, information that the owner of Twitter had then rejected with a simple mocking emoticon on the social network.