“Should I leave the management of Twitter? This is the question asked on the night of Sunday to Monday by the billionaire on the social network, promising to stick “to the results of this survey”. As a result, 57.5% of users, out of the more than 17 million participants, voted for his departure.
In an exchange with a Twitter user, Elon Musk also assured that he had no designated successor. He also said the platform was “on the fast track to bankruptcy” in a response to computer scientist Lex Fridman, who jokingly offered to take the reins of Twitter.
The poll was launched by Elon Musk shortly after the stormy entrepreneur announced that “major political changes” on the social network would systematically be subject to a vote.
” Why ? »
This announcement came after widespread criticism of the decision announced on Sunday to ban Twitter 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 @Identifiant on Instagram”, indicated the platform.
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 said that instead of targeting individual tweets, the policy would be limited to “suspending accounts only when the objective principal of this account is the promotion of competitors”.
Since its acquisition by the boss of Tesla and SpaceX at the end of October, for 44 billion dollars (about 42 billion euros), the moderation rules put in place by Elon Musk, self-proclaimed defender of freedom of expression, are far from achieve unanimity. 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. These journalists had relayed that the multi-billionaire had also suspended @elonjet, an account that automatically reported the routes of his private plane, accusing them of putting his family in danger.
His actions caused the European Union and the UN to react; the Vice-President of the European Commission even threatened the entrepreneur with sanctions.
Succession of controversial decisions
The journalists’ accounts were therefore restored on Saturday, but some said they had been ordered to delete certain publications if they wanted to make full use of the platform. And, on Saturday evening, the account of a Washington Post journalist, Taylor Lorenz, was in turn suspended for several hours. His account was reinstated on Sunday.
Earlier today, Elon Musk said it was a “temporary suspension due to a prior disclosure of personal data by this account.” His tweet was in response to Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital, an investment firm founded by Peter Thiel, investor and supporter of former US President Donald Trump, who asked him about the subject.
The journalist explained that she asked Elon Musk a question on Twitter for an article she was writing, because she could not reach him through traditional channels. “At 8:30 p.m. I tried to reach him on Twitter for a comment,” she said, adding that when she later “tuned in (at Twitter) to see if he had responded to our request”, his account was “suspended”. “I have not received any communication from the company about the reasons for my suspension or the terms that I violated,” she said.
Musk has made some controversial decisions since his acquisition of Twitter, reinstating accounts that had been banned, 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.