Steph Deschamps / December 22, 2022
Musk announced Tuesday on Twitter his intention to leave the head of the social network once he has "found someone crazy enough" to replace him, explaining that he will then focus on the "software and server teams.
The owner of the microblogging platform was reacting to the result of the poll that he himself had initiated on Monday on Twitter, asking whether he should step down as head of the company or not, with 57% of the 17 million voters having answered in the affirmative.
If he had initially stated that he would comply with the result of his poll, Mr. Musk had sent in recent hours rather contradictory signals, seeming at first to believe that the result had been distorted by the vote of bots.
Less than eight weeks after its takeover of the social network for $44 billion, Twitter does not see the storm subsiding. The company is on the verge of a financial collapse having lost a number of advertisers in the face of the risk that the billionaire's desire to reduce content moderation represents for brands.
Earlier in the day, Elon Musk had retweeted the result of an opinion survey conducted by the HarrisX institute, among its own sample of users of the platform, and which gave 61% of respondents in favor of his retention as CEO.
"Interestingly, this seems to suggest that we have a slight problem of bots on Twitter," said the owner of the platform in response to the tweet of the institute presenting the results.
A comment that came after Elon Musk approved another tweet suggesting that his survey had been victimized by bots. He also said that any new poll would now be reserved for paying Twitter users.
In the past, the businessman had already relied on polls to support debatable decisions, such as the reactivation of the account of former U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as other users who were suspended.
The result of its latest poll initially led to a rise in the share of Tesla, whose investors are increasingly critical of the attention given to Twitter since the acquisition, to the detriment of the car manufacturer, they believe.
Several U.S. media had assured that Elon Musk was looking for a replacement, citing anonymous sources, an information that the owner of Twitter had then rejected by a simple mocking emoticon on the social network.