Musk launches poll on whether he should quit as Twitter CEO

Twitter CEO Musk launched a poll on the social media platform on Sunday (Dec 18) asking whether he should step down as head of the company, adding that he would abide by the poll results.

The poll is scheduled to close around 1120GMT on Monday although the billionaire did not give details on when he would step down if the poll results said he should.

Replying to one Twitter user's comment on a possible change in CEO, Musk said "There is no successor".

Musk told a Delaware court last month that he would reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the company.

The poll comes after Twitter's Sunday policy update, which prohibited accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social media firms and content that contains links or usernames for rival platforms.

Minutes before the poll, Musk apologised and tweeted "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes."

A few hours later, Twitter started a poll asking users if the platform should have a policy preventing accounts that advertise other social media platforms on Twitter.

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

The policy update would impact content from social media platforms like Meta Platforms' Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post while allowing cross-content posting, Twitter support said in a tweet.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently invested in social media platform Nostr, replied to the Twitter support post with one word: "Why?". In a reply to another user posting about the Nostr promotion ban, Dorsey said, "doesn't make sense".

Short video-platform TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance Ltd, was not included in the list.

Last week, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group formed in 2016 to advise the social media platform on site decisions.

The policy change follows other chaotic actions at Twitter since Elon Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, bought the social network. He fired top management and laid off about half of its workforce, while seesawing on how much to charge for subscription service Twitter Blue.

Musk also suspended the accounts of several journalists over a controversy on publishing public data about the billionaire's plane.

Musk reinstated the accounts after criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and several journalism organisations on Friday, with some saying the microblogging platform was jeopardising press freedom.

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