Elon Musk polls Twitter users on whether he should stay on as CEO
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Twitter CEO and poll enthusiast Elon Musk posed another question to his followers on Sunday night: should he stay or should he go?
"Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll," Musk tweeted. In a follow-up tweet, he added, "As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it."
With more than 6.1 million votes and nine hours left of the poll, "yes" is winning, with 57.6 percent. In the comments of his tweet, many users encouraged one another to vote "yes" or "no," while others shared their thoughts on why Musk decided to make the poll — some believe he already has a successor in mind, and several are sure Twitter investors from Saudi Arabia and Qatar told him to step down. As The Washington Post notes, Tesla stock has dropped substantially since Musk took over Twitter in October, and experts believe the company's outlook will improve if Musk removes himself from the platform.
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Musk's latest poll came hours after Twitter announced it would stop allowing users to directly post links to several other social media websites, including Instagram and Facebook. He acknowledged the backlash this decision received, tweeting, "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won't happen again."
Last week, Musk suspended an account that shared the publicly available flight data of his private jet, as well as the accounts of several journalists who reported on the matter; most were reinstated on Saturday, after Musk conducted a Twitter poll to see if their suspensions should be lifted immediately or in a week.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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