It’s been over 36 hours since individuals voted overwhelmingly for Elon Musk to step down as CEO of Twitter (out of some 17 million votes, 57.5 p.c have been in favor of Musk resigning). However as a substitute of instantly and publicly accepting the outcomes, which he mentioned he’d do, Musk is now casting doubt on the validity of his ballot after Musk himself launched it on Twitter, a platform that he owns.
It’s not simply nameless Twitter customers who might want Musk to step down. Outdoors buyers are additionally calling for Musk to focus much less on Twitter and extra on Tesla. They see the Twitter drama as distracting Musk from his extra profitable enterprise at Tesla, which has seen its inventory value fall precipitously in latest weeks. Musk has lengthy mentioned he ultimately needs to step down as Twitter CEO, so it’s unclear why he appears so unwilling to just accept the outcomes of the ballot calling for him to finish his chaotic reign as head of the corporate.
The latest ballot debacle demonstrates Musk’s self-destructive attachment to working Twitter, even though it has jeopardized his popularity and enterprise success since he took over in October. It’s additionally one other instance of how Musk can’t appear to deal with criticism — from debating the proportion of individuals within the crowd who have been booing him at a comedy present to firing staff who criticized him, and now, dismissing the legitimacy of the Twitter customers who voted him out of the corporate he simply purchased.
Quite than touch upon the outcomes of the ballot instantly, Musk took to Twitter on Monday morning and inspired questions on whether or not the outcomes have been respectable. He engaged in a Twitter thread by a person suggesting {that a} “deep state” bot military was rigging the ballot towards him. Musk replied to a different person in the identical thread who prompt that solely paid subscribers to Twitter Blue ought to be capable of vote in polls: He mentioned, “Twitter will make that change.”
Polls have been a popular tactic in Musk’s erratic management type for making main choices at Twitter. When he polled customers about whether or not Twitter ought to reinstate the account of former US President Donald Trump, for instance, Musk shortly accepted the outcomes that have been narrowly in favor of bringing Trump again on. Hours after the ballot closed, Musk tweeted that “the individuals have spoken” and reinstated Trump’s account.
This time, although, Musk is dragging his toes. On Tuesday, Musk replied to a tweet by market analysis agency HarrisX, which performed its personal ballot and located that 61 p.c of individuals wished Musk to remain on.
Fascinating. Counsel that perhaps we’d nonetheless have an itsy bitsy bot drawback on Twitter …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2022
Musk has complained about Twitter bots since earlier than he purchased the platform. At the moment, he tried to make use of the platform’s bot drawback as an excuse to get out of the deal. However since he took over, Musk has mentioned he’s wiped Twitter of extreme bots. It’s complicated, then, that he would run a ballot on Twitter concerning the destiny of his personal management if he didn’t have full confidence in its validity.
However once more, it was all the time a part of Musk’s plan to ultimately discover a substitute CEO for Twitter. In November, he informed a Delaware courtroom, “I anticipate to scale back my time at Twitter and discover anyone else to run Twitter over time.”
A part of what appears to be holding Musk again, nevertheless, is that he sees no good substitute.
“Nobody needs the job who can truly hold Twitter alive. There isn’t a successor,” tweeted Musk on Sunday. Then, on Tuesday, he replied with laughing emojis at a latest NBC story reporting that he’s actively searching for a brand new CEO.
So now Musk has created a synthetic deadline for him to do one thing he already wished to do — however clearly, Musk nonetheless isn’t prepared.
