Elon Musk's Twitter poll says he should step down as CEO

The results are in — Twitter users have officially voted for CEO Elon Musk to step down from his post.
On Sunday, Musk tweeted out a poll: "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll."
After 17,502,391 votes, 57.5 percent of participants said Musk should resign from his role. The survey officially closed around 6:20 a.m. ET Monday morning, per NBC News. Musk had previously said he would eventually step down as CEO, as noted by The Verge's Alex Heath.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The crude-but-consequential poll arrived after a particularly volatile few days at Twitter HQ — earlier last week, the platform suspended a number of journalists for supposedly doxxing Musk in real-time, though the journalists affected denied ever doing so. Their accounts were reinstated Saturday following backlash. Then, on Sunday, Twitter announced it would no longer allow users to share links to rival social media websites, only to seemingly reverse the policy decision hours later.
In response to speculation about Musk's reasons for posting the poll in the first place, which saw some theorizing that he had already chosen a replacement and wanted a reason to start the hand-off, the CEO said "there is no successor" and "no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive." Others believe the poll could have something to do with the financial position of Musk's other company, Tesla; the electric carmaker's stock saw a premarket bump in the wake of Musk's poll.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestone
Speed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two years
Speed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on X
Speed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Another Starship blast sets back Musk's Mars hopes
Speed Read Nobody was killed in the explosion, which occurred in south Texas
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'
Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
What Elon Musk's Grok AI controversy reveals about chatbots
In the Spotlight The spread of misinformation is a reminder of how imperfect chatbots really are
-
Elon Musk's SpaceX has created a new city in Texas
Under The Radar Starbase is home to SpaceX's rocket launch site
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellites
Speed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space