On Sunday, Musk posted a yes-or-no poll on Twitter asking whether he should step down as the company’s head. When it closed Monday morning, 17.5 million accounts had voted, with 57.5% — about 10 million — in favor of him stepping down.
Shortly after the poll closed, Tesla stock was up nearly 5% in premarket trading. Musk is the CEO of Tesla, and some shareholders of the electric-vehicle maker are concerned about how much energy he’s expending at Twitter.
With his poll, Musk tweeted: “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.”
He followed up the post with tweets saying, “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” and, “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.”
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was among several people urging Musk to stay at Twitter.
“Stay the course,” he tweeted minutes before the poll closed.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also told Musk not to step down.
The YouTuber MrBeast, meanwhile, said he was in favor of Musk leaving his leadership role.
Since buying Twitter in late October, Musk has polled users on various issues around the running of the platform, such as reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump and bringing back the video-sharing app Vine. Musk has used the mantra “vox populi, vox dei,” which translates from Latin as “voice of the people, voice of God,” to justify some of his controversial actions.
But Musk hasn’t followed through on his promise to obey by the poll result. Critics used the “vox populi” phrase to mock him and accuse him of hypocrisy after he didn’t abide by the result of a poll in which Twitter users voted in favor of Musk reinstating accounts he said had “doxxed my exact location in real-time.”
Accounts including @ElonJet, which published publicly available information on the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet, and the personal account of its owner, Jack Sweeney, remain suspended.
Musk’s actions at the helm of the social-media platform have proved divisive, with some people lauding him for vowing to promote free speech and change Twitter’s content-moderation policies. Others have cited fears of a rise in hate speech on the site and have questioned Musk’s intentions for suspending some journalists.
Advertisers have fled the site over concerns about content moderation, and Musk has seemingly introduced new policies on a whim, some of which he later reversed. He has also drastically shaken up Twitter’s workforce, with thousands of staff members resigning, being fired, or being laid off.
