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Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, US News, Social Media, News
Rachel Lang
Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, US News, Social Media, News
Elon Musk is putting his future as the head of Twitter in the hands of the social media platform's users, asking his followers via poll if he should step down.
The tech mogul was straightforward in his tweet, writing: "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll."
The tweet went viral in minutes and has garnered nearly 73,000 retweets one hour after Musk posted it.
At time of writing - so, 11:30am AEDT - 58 per cent had voted yes.
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The post had already racked up a massive 3,830,293 votes in the first half hour of being live, and there's currently 10 hours to go before Musk's fate is decided for him.
And with millions weighing in, it really could go either way.
So watch this space.
It isn't the first time Musk has allowed Twitter users to make some big decisions for him.
On December 16, the Twitter head asked followers when he should 'unsuspend accounts who doxxed my exact location in real-time'.
58.7 per cent of people voted for 'now', thus bringing an end to a rather rocky week for the billionaire.
The doxxing disaster kicked off on December 14 after Twitter suspended college student Jack Sweeney from the platform.
Sweeney, 20, set up the @Elonjet account in June 2020, which uses publicly available data to track Musk's private jet.
But the college student had his account banned with Musk threatening legal action after an alleged ‘crazy stalker’ followed a car carrying his son in Los Angeles on Wednesday (December 14). Musk said the man ‘blocked’ the car from moving and ‘climbed on the hood’.
Following the incident, Musk wrote in a tweet: “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.
"Posting locations someone travelled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is OK."
He also tweeted to say: "Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organisations who supported harm to my family."
Musk then went on to suspend several journalists who had written about Sweeney's ban from the social media platform.
That move saw the Twitter head honcho broadly roasted for his actions as they directly contravened his vow to bring free speech to the social platform.
Just one month ago, Musk tweeted that he would not ban the @ElonJet account: "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk."
Which brings us full circle to his last poll.
That is, the most recent one before his offer to bow out of acting as Twitter's head honcho.
So what will happen next? We'll have to wait and see.