Elon Musk.Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty
Elon Muskis says he will step down as CEO of Twitter two months after paying $44 billion for the social media platform.
He later shared the results that revealed 57.5 percent of people who voted said yes, while 42.5 percent said no.
Musk then tweeted in response: “I will resign as CEOas soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
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Musk defended his actions, even though they were widely seen as anti-free speech.
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“Samedoxxing rulesapply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” Musk wrote on Twitter last week, adding in a follow-up tweet, “Theyposted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.”
He also responded to another user who accused him of having a “meltdown,” writing, “Criticizing me all day longis totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”
Musk alsoblocked links to upstart rival Mastodon– in a move which drew eyes from regulators – after the site provided information about ElonJet, and Musk accused it of tracking his aircraft.
The suspensions come after Musk tweeted last month, “My commitment to free speechextends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”
He also wrote in April, “I hope that even my worst criticsremain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
By the time the poll closed 12 hours later, 57.5 percent of 17.5 million votes cast were in favor of his departure.
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Musk had been mum since the results were finalized, but he did caution on Sunday: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”
In considering the options for a new CEO, Musk said that person “must like pain a lot” to run a business that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May.”
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive,” Musk tweeted. “There is no successor.”
Musk’s rocky reign extended to the real world too, when he appeared at aDave Chappellestand-up show in San Francisco in early December, and"a good 80% of the stadium"was booing him. TheLos Angeles Timesreported at the time that the billionaire was booed for nearly five minutes.
Musk attempted tobrush off the criticism, suggesting that only 10 percent of the crowd was booing him.
“Still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter),” he tweeted.
source: people.com
