Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he has no successor ready to lead his social media platform if he exits his leadership position atop the company.
Mr. Musk said Sunday he would abide by the results of a Twitter poll asking if he should step aside as the company’s head — and the majority, 57%, of the 17.5 million voters urged him to exit.
As the clock wound down and millions of votes poured in, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO said he did not have a clear idea of who should run Twitter.
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive,” Mr. Musk tweeted. “There is no successor.”
Relying on an internet poll to make a major leadership decision at a company whose acquisition cost more than $40 billion appears dramatic, but Mr. Musk previously signaled he did not plan to stay in charge at Twitter.
In November, Mr. Musk testified in a Delaware court that he anticipated reducing his time working on Twitter and would find someone else to run it.
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Some Twitter investors expected that a transition in Twitter’s leadership would occur approximately three to six months after his takeover in the fall of 2022.
Mr. Musk, however, has faced constant criticism for his censorship decisions, ranging from complaints that hateful content had flourished under his watch to objections regarding his reasons for suspending some Twitter users.
Twitter said Saturday it has increasingly limited the visibility of hateful content since Mr. Musk’s takeover. Impressions of toxic content containing hateful slurs in the last week represented 0.015% of all English-language impressions of content on Twitter, the company said via its @TwitterSafety account.
“Overall impressions of Tweets that contain slurs in English have stabilized, and remain below our pre-acquisition baseline,” Twitter said via the @TwitterSafety account.
Recent decisions by Mr. Musk to ban users who he said shared his private location data and put his family at risk sparked outrage online, as some of the users worked for prominent media outlets.
While some of the suspended users later saw their accounts restored, Twitter also took steps to prevent people from using its service to direct its audience to use competitor social platforms.
Twitter said it would allow cross-posting from any social media platform but it would not permit the free promotion of other services on Twitter.
“Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribal, Nostr and Post,” Twitter said via its @TwitterSupport account on Sunday.
Twitter later removed the posts announcing the policy shift and published a poll on its @TwitterSafety account asking whether it should implement such a policy.
Mr. Musk said Sunday that major policy changes at Twitter would be accompanied via a vote.
He also issued a warning to his detractors and said those seeking power are often the ones who do not deserve it.
“As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” he tweeted.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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