While the rest of the globe was basking in the glow of an incredible final World Cup game between Argentina and France, Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk was running a poll to ask if he should remain as its head or step down. The respondents weighed in, the poll closed Monday, and Musk was voted out by 57.5% to 42.5%—a crushing defeat for the world’s second-richest man.
With more than 17 million votes, Musk claimed he would honor the results of the poll. Of course, that’s not exactly what he said Sunday, tweeting, “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”
Then adding, “There is no successor.”
RELATED STORY: Determined to burn Twitter to the ground, Elon Musk dissolves Trust and Safety Council
Just hours before the “Chief Twit” created his poll (he’s since removed that title from his profile), the nefarious South African CEO of Tesla and SpaceX was seen in Doha, Qatar, watching the World Cup with his buddy Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, along with a few presumably wealthy Saudis.
The Hill reports that in early December, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Oregon Rep. Ron Wyden of the Senate Finance Committee requested records on Kushner’s family business—all related to concerns about whether Kushner had possibly unethically influenced Trump’s policies in the Persian Gulf.
Musk live-tweeted from the World Cup match, saying that at one point that “24,000 tweets per second, alleging that to be “the highest” number “ever for a World Cup.”
Musk was also busy Sunday creating new limits on tweets that promoted other social media platforms such as Mastodon, Truth Social, and Facebook.
“We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms,” CNBC reports. “However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.”
As of Monday morning, the tweet announcing the policy was removed.
The Washington Post’s technology columnist Taylor Lorenz had been suspended over the policy, but by Monday, she was reinstated, Bloomberg reports.
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Early last week, Twitter began suspending a number of people (including a number of journalists) for “breach of privacy and of the Twitter Rules,” based on its “doxxing” policy, which the company explains as “sharing someone’s private information online without their permission.”
“These policy changes, today, combined with hostility to press and bans this past week, are significant, historic and should inform the ongoing stance of media, tech, and academia along with governments,” Alex Howard, director of the Digital Democracy Project, told CNBC.
As Daily Kos reported on Dec. 13, dissolved the company’s Trust and Safety Council, a worldwide group of more than 40 organizations and experts from 13 regions, formed in 2016, who volunteered their time to ensure Twitter users “feel safe expressing themselves,” the website reads.
Council members were notified of the dissolution on Monday via an email signed simply, “Twitter,” The Washington Post reported.
One council member told the Post anonymously that disbanding the group was discarding “years of institutional memory that we on the council have brought. […] Getting external experts and advocates looking at your services makes you smarter.”
It remains to be seen if Musk will really step down and away from Twitter before the trash fire he created implodes completely.
In all of his bluster, polls, and suspensions, Musk managed to tweet one truth Sunday night, “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.” Here’s hoping for a new and less fascist CEO.
Well, that was an awesome way to finish out the 2022 election cycle! Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard revel in Raphael Warnock's runoff victory on this week's episode of The Downballot and take a deep dive into how it all came together. The Davids dig into the turnout shift between the first and second rounds of voting, what the demographic trends in the metro Atlanta area mean for Republicans, and why Democrats can trace their recent success in Georgia back to a race they lost: the famous Jon Ossoff special election in 2017.
We're also joined by one of our very favorite people, Daily Kos Elections alum Matt Booker, who shares his thoughts on the midterms and tells us about his work these days as a pollster. Matt explains some of the key ways in which private polling differs from public data; how the client surveys he was privy to did not foretell a red wave; and the mechanics of how researchers put together focus groups. Matt also reminisces about his time at "DKE University" and how his experience with us prepared him for the broader world of politics.