Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that he would step down as the head of the social media platform if a poll that he launched shows a majority of users want him out.
“Should I step down as head of Twitter?” Musk asked. “I will abide by the results of this poll.”
After less than 30 minutes, the poll had already garnered two million votes with 55% voting, “yes.”
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Musk said in a separate tweet, “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”
The poll from Musk comes after he faced backlash during the World Cup on Sunday after the company put out a statement saying that it was going to ban users from being able to promote their other social media accounts on other platforms.
“Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes,” Musk tweeted. “My apologies. Won’t happen again.”
The policy was issued in a blog post that the company posted on the site during the World Cup, an indicator that it knew the news would not be well received, thus the attempt to bury it in the newscycle.
“We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter,” the company said in a statement. “Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.”
Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 18, 2022
The company said that it would “remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) … or providing your handle without a URL” to the aforementioned platforms or to “3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio.”
“Additionally, any attempts to bypass restrictions on external links to the above prohibited social media platforms through technical or non-technical means (e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation) is in violation of this policy,” the statement continued. “This includes, but is not limited to, spelling out ‘dot’ for social media platforms that use ‘.’ in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform.”
The statement said that cross-posting from other platforms is not in violation of the policy, including from the sites that were listed. The company said that it would allow people to pay to promote their social media accounts on other platforms.
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