What happens if Elon Musk steps down as head of Twitter after poll?
The Tesla chief ran a poll on the site to determine whether he should stay on with the majority voting for him to go. Does this mean anything in practice?
Elon Musk has not been in control of Twitter for a full two months yet but it appears like his role as head of the social media giant could be coming to an end. On Sunday he launched a poll regarding his future as the head of the company, at least that is the assumption. He said he would abide by the results.
There were 17,502,391 votes. 57.5% were in favour of him stepping down while 42.5% were against the proposal.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
As of yet Musk has not made any comment on the results of the poll.
Musk promised to abide by the result of the poll, though it is unclear what is meant by stepping down as head. Would he give up his role as CEO? Would it stop his incessant tweeting?
What happens next?
Whether Musk does step down or not is up in the air at this point. The vagueness of stepping down as head could mean anything from being less active on the daily running of the platform to selling the company. Considering the swathe of advertisers and public flak the site has been getting, most recently for the banning of a number of accredited journalists, the latter is unlikely.
One group that would no doubt be pleased by Musk stepping down would be Tesla investors. During 2022, Tesla stock has fallen by 50% to a market value of $470 billion. Coupled with a poor investment atmosphere there are also worries that Musk is committing too much time to Twitter instead of his other companies. Tesla stock rose 3.5% in pre-market trading on Monday.
Tesla’s most prominent investors now openly feuding with Elno. pic.twitter.com/vXMTWsGrke
— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) December 17, 2022
“It appears Musk’s reign as CEO of Twitter will come to end and thus be a major positive for Tesla’s stock starting to slowly remove this albatross from the story,” wrote Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities.