Vox Populi Vox Dei: Will ‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk stay CEO or step down?

Vox Populi Vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God].

So said Elon Musk in November after conducting a Twitter poll about reinstating many suspended accounts.

Today, the Twitter owner put up another poll – this time asking if he ought to step down as CEO and promising to ‘abide by the results’.

So what happened? Will Musk actually step down as Twitter CEO? And what happens if he does?

Let’s take a closer look:

The ayes have it

More than 17 million users participated in Musk’s unscientific poll on Monday – the ayes took it in a landslide of 57.5 per cent to 42.5 per cent for the nays.

Interestingly, the poll comes a day after Musk was seen attending the World Cup in Qatar alongside Jared Kushner.

Which may be significant in light of reports that Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund invested $375 million in Twitter through a subsidiary in exchange for shares of Musk’s holding company.

Another significant fact is that Musk has often floated his ideas as trial balloons on Twitter.

Recall the aforementioned poll on restoring accounts and, even more famously, his November exchange with author Stephen King.

After the author complained about having to pay $20 per month for a blue tick, Musk responded that Twitter needed to pays its bills and asked if King would be willing to pay $8 dollars – which eventually became the asking price for the blue tick.

A former Twitter staff member told the BBC Musk was “showing himself to be the incompetent fool we all knew he was”.

“His investors are surely looking at this now and questioning whether he was the right horse to back. I imagine he’s getting pressure from investors to step down and is using this poll to make it look like he’s following the will of the people instead of the will of those paying his bills.”

Dan Ives, senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, told the BBC he believed Musk would probably name a new temporary CEO “in the next 24 hours”.

A verified Twitter user speculated this was the case.

Will Musk actually resign?

Unlikely.

While Musk has not directly responded to the poll results, he did tell his followers on Sunday that he does not have a replacement lined up.

Musk last month said he had too much work on his plate and would reduce his time at Twitter, and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company.

Making a “fun suggestion” to Musk, MIT research scientist Lex Fridman offered to run the platform for a bit for no salary.

Offering a negative response, Musk said Twitter was “in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”

“You must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?” Musk asked.

Though Musk claims there is no successor, at least one high-profile individual has, if only in jest, volunteered to step into the breach – Snoop Dogg.

Hours after Musk put up his poll, the rap mogul asked his own followers if he ought to run Twitter – with 81 per cent giving the idea the thumbs-up and 19 per cent the thumbs down.

What happens next?

Analysts say the future is bleak for Twitter – and Tesla.

CNN quoted Ives as saying that Twitter was set to lose $4 billion per year after its advertisers fled.

“This has been a black eye moment for Musk and been a major overhang on Tesla’s stock which continues to suffer in a brutal way since the Twitter soap opera began with brand deterioration related to Musk a real issue,” Ives said on Monday.

The piece noted that even if Musk steps down, he will remain in complete control of the company’s future.

Tesla shares are down 60 per cent this year.

This comes as Tesla investors are concerned that Musk, a self-confessed “nanomanager” who has been personally involved in working-level decisions from car styling to supply chain issues, is distracted at a critical time for the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker.

Tesla shares gave up some of their premarket gains and opened up about two per cent at $152.90. They have lost nearly 60 per cent of their value this year.

Analysts at Oppenheimer downgraded Tesla, saying the negative sentiment on Twitter could linger long term and become an overhang on Tesla.

“If he (Musk) does decide to step down, that could inject Tesla shares with a temporary shot of optimism, amid hopes he might finally pay the carmaker the attention it needs,” Susannah Streeter, an investment and market analyst with Hargreaves Lansdown, said.

“(There is) way too much uncertainty,” Tesla investor Matthew Tuttle of Tuttle Capital Management said, adding that he planned to sell most Tesla shares that he bought on Friday.

“A CEO is supposed to make decisions that are in the best interest of a company and shareholders, not based on what random people on Twitter think.”

Series of controversies

The unpredictable billionaire posted the poll shortly after apparently acknowledging he had made a mistake banning Twitter users from promoting their accounts on rival social media platforms.

The sudden shift in the rules was the latest in a series of controversial changes made by Musk since he took over the company in October — upheaval that has led a growing number of users to encourage followers to view their posts on other sites.

Twitter had announced that the company would “no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms.”

Users would thus be barred, for example, from posting “Follow me @username on Instagram,” Twitter said.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey questioned the new policy with a one-word tweet: “Why?”

After some notable accounts were suspended under the new policy, including tech investor Paul Graham, Musk tweeted that instead of considering individual tweets, the policy would be limited to “suspending accounts only when that account’s *primary* purpose is promotion of competitors.”

Musk has generated a series of controversies in his short tenure at the helm of Twitter, including layoffs, reinstatement of some far-right accounts and the suspension of several journalists.

Shortly after taking over the platform, he announced the site would charge $8 per month to verify account holders’ identities, but had to suspend the “Twitter Blue” plan after an embarrassing rash of fake accounts. It has since been relaunched.

Twitter has been hit by a growing series of controversies generated by Musk during his short tenure at the helm of the platform

On 4 November, with Musk saying the company was losing $4 million a day, Twitter laid off half its 7,500-strong staff.

Musk also reinstated the account of former president Donald Trump and said Twitter would no longer work to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

In recent days, he suspended the accounts of several journalists — most recently, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz — after complaining some had divulged details about the movements of his private jet that could endanger his family.

The suspension of the journalists — employees of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post were among those affected — has drawn sharp criticism, including from the European Union and the United Nations.

The US Federal Trade Commission said it was tracking developments at Twitter “with deep concern.”

The Washington Post’s executive editor Sally Buzbee said the suspension of Lorenz’s account “further undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.”

Some of the suspended accounts have since been reactivated.

With inputs from agencies

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