Elon Musk Finally Addresses Vote to Oust Him as Twitter CEO, Announces Big Policy Change
Elon Musk on Sunday posted a poll to Twitter asking users if they thought he should step down as CEO of the social media giant.
Since then, things have become confusing, at best, even after Musk announced a major policy change at the company.
The results of the poll were unequivocal — except for the minor detail that, as an online opt-in poll, it had very little claim to represent reality in any meaningful way in the first place.
The “Yes” respondents who said Musk should step down handily defeated those replying “No,” by a margin of 57.5-to-42.5 percent. But there were problems.
First, as already mentioned, this was not a scientific poll by any measure. Ronald Fisher was probably spinning in his grave before Musk even hit “send” on that tweet. There has never been any reason to accept the results of any Twitter poll as indicative of anything, so why Musk would promise, as he did, to abide by these results is a complete mystery.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
One wonders if he wrote that tweet in the presence of Joe Rogan, if you know what I’m saying.
Second, there were almost certainly a number of bots involved in that voting, and maybe a very large number of bots. That speaks both to the question of the validity of the poll as well as the motivations and political ideology of those who program the bots.
Again, especially given how much Musk has decried the presence of bots on Twitter, one has to wonder why he’d bother posting a poll, much less promising to submit to the will of the people as supposedly revealed by it.
Third, there was the question of what would happen if Musk did, in fact step down — especially after he announced in a subsequent tweet that there was no suitable successor to be found.
It seems like that probably would have been a good thing to ascertain prior to posting the poll to begin with, but maybe Musk didn’t expect the results he got.
No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022
At any rate, since the poll closed, questions have swirled. What’s next? If not Elon, whom? If not now, when?
Well, Elon has tweeted on the topic a number of times since, but I’m not sure he’s clarified anything.
For example:
Good point. Twitter will make that change.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022
But you didn’t make a poll for this change in major policy to occur. 🤔 https://t.co/CrDLs2059A
— Danny Ivers (@divers) December 20, 2022
So, is Musk stepping down? Is he getting rid of bots, re-polling Twitter Blue accounts and then stepping down if that’s how they vote? How is that going to work if he still doesn’t have a suitable successor identified?
You guess is as good as mine.
It might, in fact, be as good as Musk’s at this point.
But at least we got something out of all of this: another great Babylon Bee headline.
Elon To Stay As Twitter CEO After Counting Mail-In Votes https://t.co/n1zdl5uhJB
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 19, 2022
Every cloud has a silver lining, I guess.
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