Musk posted a poll asking users whether he should step down as the company’s chief executive.
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What’s the opposite of quiet quitting? Because that’s what Elon Musk seems to be doing as CEO of Twitter.
After another head-spinning day on the bird app, Musk posted a poll asking users whether he should step down as the company’s chief executive (“I will abide by the results of this poll,” he said.) As of 5am ET, more than 57% voted “yes”—he should step down.
As bizarre as it sounds that a CEO would leave their professional fate to random people (and an untold number of bots), there’s reason to think that Musk will actually abide by the results: He restored former President Trump’s account after that choice won in a poll, and also reinstated banned journalists’ accounts this weekend when users voted in favor of that option.
But in even posting the survey in the first place, Musk seems to be issuing a cry for help. In the roughly seven weeks since he (reluctantly) bought Twitter for $44 billion, the only constant has been chaos—from the debacle of a rollout of Twitter’s subscription service to haphazard and inconsistent application of content moderation policies.
That chaos reached a climax yesterday
A new rule instituted (briefly) by Twitter caused even Musk’s most loyal supporters to lose faith in him. The company said Sunday that it will no longer allow the “free promotion” of certain rival social media sites on its platform: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, and three others.
- In response, former CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that the policy “doesn’t make any sense.” (Dorsey previously said that Musk was “the singular solution I trust” to lead Twitter.)
- Venture capitalist Paul Graham, who just last month bashed Musk critics, tweeted “This is the last straw. I give up” after Twitter announced the rule change. Graham’s account was subsequently suspended, then reinstated.
After receiving pushback, Twitter once again reversed itself and deleted its posts about the new rule.
Big picture: While criticism from his backers may have been the immediate cause of Musk publicly questioning his role as CEO, the fundamental issue is that Twitter is simply a failing business under Musk’s ownership. As advertisers have paused spending on the platform and Musk faces $1 billion in annual interest payments, Twitter has reportedly been seeking new equity investors to help fund the company.
As for the question of whether Musk has a replacement in mind if he does step down, he said yesterday “There is no successor.”
