More than half of the 17.5 million Twitter users who responded to a poll asking whether Elon Musk should step down as head of the social media platform voted in his favor, according to results published Monday morning.
About 57.5% of them voted “yes” while 42.5% voted “no” against Musk stepping down as head of the micro-blogging platform after launching a poll on his Twitter account on Sunday.
Neither Twitter nor Musk immediately publicly responded to whether Musk would step down, but the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX initially said he would abide by the results.
Meanwhile, many users were waiting for his response with bated breath.
“So…bye?” A user post.
“Doesn’t mean immediately right? Could be 3, 6, 9 months from now,” asked another.
The move to ask users for their opinions comes on the heels of Musk clashing with some users on multiple fronts, including admitting he blundered in introducing new speech restrictions that restrict mentions of rival social media websites.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
In another significant policy change, Twitter announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.”
The decision generated so much immediate criticism, including from Musk’s past defenders, that he vowed not to make any major policy changes without an online survey of users.
The move to block competitors was the latest attempt by Musk to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that tracked the flights of his private jet.
Banned platforms included Facebook, Instagram and newly minted rivals Mastodon, Tribal, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation as to why it did not include those seven websites in the blacklist but others like Parlour, TikTok or LinkedIn.
Twitter said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that included banned websites in their profiles, a practice so widespread that it would have been difficult to enforce the bans on Twitter’s millions of users worldwide. Attempts to bypass the ban by spelling out not just the link but “Instagram.com” could lead to suspension, the company said.
A test case was prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who has praised Musk in the past but told his 1.5 million Twitter followers on Sunday that this was the “last straw” and to find him at Mastodon. His Twitter account was immediately suspended, and immediately reinstated after Musk promised to reverse the policy implemented hours earlier.
Musk said Twitter will still suspend some accounts in accordance with the policy but “only when that account’s (asterisk) primary (asterisk) purpose is to promote competitors.”
Twitter previously took action to block links to Mastodon after its main Twitter account tweeted about the @ElonJet controversy last week.
Mastodon has grown rapidly in recent weeks as an alternative for Twitter users since Musk bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began rehabilitating accounts that violated previous Twitter leadership rules against hate speech and others. harms
That social network, which has gained more than 1 million new users since October 27, now hosts 1.9 million monthly active users, according to the Mastodon website.
By comparison, Twitter had 237 million daily active users in the quarter ended June 30, the company said in July. Users were up 16.6% from a year ago.