A majority of participants in a poll launched by Elon Musk on Twitter voted Monday for the entrepreneur to abandon the direction of the social network.
Among the more than 17 million voters, 57.5% said they were in favor of the departure of Elon Musk, who pledged to respect the result, but did not react immediately. “Should I leave the management of Twitter?” Asked the billionaire overnight from Sunday to Monday on the social network. “I will stick to the results of this poll,” he promised.
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In an exchange with one of his Twitter followers, Elon Musk assured that he had no designated successor. He said in another post that the platform was “on the fast track to bankruptcy.”
Since the takeover at the end of October, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX has sparked many controversies by laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, reinstating suspended accounts, suspending those of journalists and seeking to launch a new paid subscription.
Promotion of other social networks prohibited
This announcement came after widespread criticism of Twitter’s decision announced on Sunday to ban its users from posting links to competing networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon or Truth Social.
It becomes, for example, prohibited to tweet: “Thank you for following me @Identifier on Instagram”, indicated the platform.
>> Read more: Twitter prohibits its users from promoting competing social networks
These new rules have aroused the misunderstanding of many users, including Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former boss of Twitter. “Why?” he soberly tweeted.
After some accounts were suspended under the new policy, including that of investor Paul Graham, Elon Musk qualified his decision. He tweeted that instead of targeting individual tweets, the policy would be limited to “suspending accounts only when the ‘primary’ purpose of that account is promoting competitors.”
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Accounts suspended
Since its acquisition by the boss of Tesla and SpaceX at the end of October, for 44 billion dollars, the moderation rules put in place on Twitter by Elon Musk, self-proclaimed defender of freedom of expression, are far from unanimous.
In recent days, he has deleted and then restored the accounts of several American journalists from CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post in particular, causing the European Union and the UN to react. The Vice-President of the European Commission even threatened the entrepreneur with sanctions.
>> Read again: After suspending them, Elon Musk announces restoring the Twitter accounts of journalists
The multi-billionaire had first, on Wednesday, suspended @elonjet, an account that automatically reported the routes of his private jet, then the accounts of journalists who had then tweeted about the decision, accusing them of putting his family in danger.
These were reinstated on Saturday, but some said they were told to delete certain posts if they wanted to make full use of the platform. And, on Saturday evening, the Twitter account of a Washington Post journalist, Taylor Lorenz, was in turn suspended for several hours.
“Elon Musk has suspended my Twitter account,” said the journalist, who covers the technology sector for the Washington Post, on her blog. Her account was reinstated on Sunday, and she tweeted at 12:38 p.m.
Controversial decisions
Elon Musk has made controversial decisions since his acquisition of Twitter, reinstating banned accounts, including Donald Trump’s, and ending the fight against Covid-19 misinformation.
But he also suspended the account of rapper Kanye West after the publication of several messages deemed anti-Semitic and refused the return to the platform of far-right conspirator Alex Jones.
>> Read also: The worst content surges on Twitter with its takeover by Elon Musk
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