Kori Barnes 
Woah, the future of Twitter has gotten a little more personal to its users.
After the CEO of Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk, received endless backlash over his latest decisions regarding the beloved app, he posted a particularly intriguing and controversial poll for users to vote on. On Sunday, Musk posted this poll on his platform that gathered over 560k likes and 17.5 million votes. He tweeted, “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll”” with the two options listed as “yes” and “no”. With a 57% vote of “yes” and 43% of “no,” it seems the people have spoken. Musk tweeted, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.” Even with that said, users are speculating whether Musk will actually follow through on his promise despite losing the poll?
Musk also tweeted, “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.” Sunday, he later added: “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.”
This is not the first poll that Musk has provided on his platform for users to vote on system regulations of this favored platform. Previously, he’s posted a poll to decide whether to unsuspend a majority of accounts across the platform and to restore the accounts of tech journalists that were caught in the crossfire of Musk. He’s even used a poll on whether to restore former President Donald Trump’s account, which the majority of users voted “yes” on.
I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022
Although the users have chosen their decision on Musk’s fate for his newly acquired CEO position of Twitter, he isn’t showing that he’s convinced with the result. According to cnn.com., “In a tweet Monday, roughly 12 hours after his CEO poll ended, Musk suggested that he would change how polling on Twitter works so that only those who pay for Twitter’s updated subscription service can vote. After one Twitter user said, “Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls,” Musk responded, “Good point. Twitter will make that change. While it’s unclear how he would restrict voting to only those who pay for the company’s subscription service, such a change could dramatically reduce the number of Twitter users who could vote in polls. It would also skew those who can vote to the users who are willing to pay up for Twitter Blue, which includes the controversial paid verification feature Musk pushed to introduce.” Although the vast majority of users aren’t paying for this feature, they are threatened by the features they’ve become accustomed to for free being taken away. However, some users aren’t shocked regarding his statement after his public loss.
Will the future of Twitter see past 2030? We’re not sure, but users across the platform have made it known that they’ll be using the app until they can not anymore. What is everyone’s limit regarding new regulations and restrictions? Not sure, but we’ll soon find out with this new CEO in charge.
By Kori Barnes, University of Southern California
Insta: @korixnicole
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